My Feelings About Being Adopted

This is something that I haven't really talked about to many people, but I feel it is a huge part of my story. I don't think many people are reading, so that is what is allowing me to write this at this time.

I grew up in a normal nuclear family until I was around age twelve. I had always tried to figure out why my sister and I were only seven months apart, but in my young mind I never guessed one of us was adopted. I always looked like my mom. I looked more like my mom then my sister did. She has blond hair and blue eyes. She is tall and very thin. My mom and I both have dark hair and dark eyes. We are shorter in stature and we are not completely thin. We both have hazel eyes. We both even have hair on our legs that grows fast. Trust me, that is extremely annoying. When Mom told me that I was adopted thoughts ran through my head that she was lying. I thought my sister was adopted, and she was telling me I was because she thought I could handle it better then my sister. Later on, I gave into the fact that my mom never gave birth to me. As I grew up, I accepted this.

There were always things after I found out that made me compared my sister and myself. Whenever she got something better or more clothes for school, I blamed it on the fact that she was their biological child. Whenever my dad was more mean to me, I figured it was because I was not his blood. I didn't really go through abandonment issues until I found out that I was the only one she gave up for adoption. (My parents didn't know that she had given a boy up when she was fifteen.) I wondered why I was given up. My parents said that she had two boys that she kept. I wondered if it was because I was a girl. Why wouldn't a mother want her baby girl? I never understood, and I probably won't until later in this reunion. She has told me that it was because she couldn't take care of me. I will accept this. I now know it wasn't just because I was a girl. She has three other girls now that are in her life. I used to be angry with her, mainly because, I thought she had given me up for the wrong reasons. I don't know why I get angry sometimes. I think it is because when I'm mad at my parents I wonder what my life would have been like with her. She has told me that it wasn't good, and I believe her. It doesn't make me wonder any less, though.

There's always something else I've wondered. What would it have been like to grow up with an older brother? I'm the oldest child in my family. Well, there's only two of us and my sister is younger so that makes me, of course, the oldest. I don't know if it is some kind of bond that I still have with my birth family, but I've always thought about an older brother. I never wanted an older sister. I wanted an older brother who would protect me when a boy was picking on me. I wanted an older brother who would go kick some guys ass because he had broke my heart. My dad was never that sort of man. He would just rather not get involved in the fact that I even had a boyfriend. That, of course, was when I was younger. Now that I'm older, he loves the fact that I'm engaged.

I wonder if it's every adoptee who feels this way. Wonders if they weren't good enough or loved enough. I hope that's not the reason that anybody is put up for adoption, but to think that, is to be naive. It does happen. I just hope that's not the beginning to my story.