things that shouldn't be said out loud.

Everyone tells me I look like my dad. My birth mothers second daughter looks just like her. They have the same nose, the same mouth, the same eyes, and the same colour skin. I'm the odd one out. With my slanted eyes, swollen lips and skin paled by 25 years of Canadian winter, I don't look like I belong. Probably because I simply don't.

One of the things my father and I talked about before communication came to a halt was the fact that I was the baby that looked like him. I can't help but wonder if I had looked more like my birth mother maybe she would have kept me. My sister was born 13 months after me almost to the day. According to my birth mother, her father like mine and all her children's fathers (excluding the last) too was a deadbeat. So why keep your first and your third (and the fourth and fifth) but not your second?

The child in me wants to scream "because she hated you, that's why!" but adults don't say things like that out loud, or even dare to contemplate the possible validity of such a statement. To be fair, she never got to know me to decide if she hated me or not, but then she did make the decision that she'd rather not get to know me.

When I came to see her, she paraded me around town (my friend in toe) like some sort of freak show, proclaiming to anyone who'd listen how my friend and I were her "two daughters".

I don't know why she did that. I don't know why she does anything, but I hated every second of it.

It was an interesting experiment though. By the end of the trip, my white friend had more than enough of being a minority, and constantly being put on display. I told her welcome to my world. From the time I could remember I was surrounded by people who looked nothing like me, but claimed to be my family. From the time I could remember, I stuck out.. a black spec in a sea of white clinging to the white arm of a woman who everyone knew wasn't really my mother.

I thought it would be different with my birth mother, but it was just the same. People still weren't buying that she was my mother.

I've come to a decision. Whether it be temporary or permanent will have to be determined at a later date. I have no desire to have anything to do with my birth mother. She made the decision that she'd rather not get to know me all those years ago, and now its my turn to decide that I too rather not know her either.

I know I'm over simplifying the situation. I know it was much more than whether or not she liked me or not that made her decide to abandoned her first daughter born, but I do wonder if appearances would have made a difference. I truly believe that people for the most part fool themselves into believing things are much more complicated than they really are in an effort to preserve the idea that we somehow are more than simply animals who act on instinct.

I mean when you think about it, there is nothing wrong with acting on instinct and trusting your gut. We understand so little about our own consciousness that to believe that it is somehow different or more complex than that of other creatures is really rather silly and conceited on our part.

I don't look like my mother, I look like my father. A man she never did know or love. When she looked at me and held me as a baby, did she resent me? Did my appearance remind her of the person who was suppose to save her but didn't?

I mean it happens all the time! I've heard stories of women with children that resemble their father and for whatever reason these women seem to not get past that fact. Its ironic though, because the feeling in regards to my birth mother is mutual.

And I should perhaps feel guilty about it, and to an extent I do.. but not enough to force a relationship with someone I do not know, I do not love, and can't ever see being a positive force in my life. She doesn't look like family. Neither do the rest of her children really.. and that's a disappointment.

Its hard to admit, but things didn't click when I saw my mother, I still didn't get where I fit in. All my life all I wanted was to be part of a real family with people that looked like me. My friend even admitted to me on our trip that if my birth mother hadn't known the right dates she would have thought she were a fraud based solely on the fact that we look nothing alike. As shallow as this sounds, I think if I had resembled her more I might be a little more active in trying to establish some sort of relationship. Cause the thing is, my big sister from my dad's side I love, and did love from the moment I laid eyes on her. We look just alike.

But thoughts like these shouldn't be said aloud, on account that they aren't very nice, and are extremely confusing.

Can you really return a child?

Melissa and Tony Wescott are afraid of their son. They're so afraid of the boy they adopted that they're trying to have Oklahoma law changed so that they can return him to the state's care.
"He tried to burn our home down. The note said, 'I'm sorry you had to die,'" Melissa Wescott told "Good Morning America."
She said she and her husband have found butcher knives under his mattress and lighters hidden in his bedroom.
The Wescotts' 11-year-old son has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital in Tulsa, Okla., for nearly a year. But now doctors say he's not a danger to himself or anyone else, and the boy is scheduled to be released from the hospital next month

This story absolutely breaks my heart. I cried both times I watched the clip above. I was actually planning on doing a post on adoption before I read about this, but my mind still hasn't worked itself out to the point where I can coherently express myself.

The reason this story affected me so much is because as an adoptee, I know what it feels like to be told that your getting sent back. From age 12 until I was a legal adult (18 years old) my adoptive mother constantly threatened to call CAS (the Canadian equivalent to CPS) and have me removed from her care.

But here's the thing, I never threatened to burn down the house, or threaten to kill her. Actually, the opposite is true. I was a normal kid who didn't always clean my room when I was supposed to. Somehow fights over me cleaning my room would lead to her kicking me out of the house, or threatening to call CAS. From age 12 on, I had to beg friends parents to let me stay over, or if that didn't work wander the streets until morning and see if I would be allowed back into the house.

One time things got really bad, and after fighting my amother told me to get into the car (I didn't dare disobey her). She was going to drop me off at CAS. On the way she got so angry that she threatened to crash the car into a concrete pole, because she felt it was better off if she were dead. I guess she felt that I had to die too. She swerved the car away from the pole at the last second...

The horrible part is I ended up bawling and begging her to take me back home. Now that I'm an adult, I realize that was probably one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. But I was 12! How is a 12 year old really supposed to know whats best for her? I had issues, but for the most part I was a good kid! Most of the issues I had as a kid were probably due to the stress caused by living in such a crazy environment. The worst I did was skip class, and smoke weed every now and again. While some of my friends ended up snorting coke, and eventually smoking crack, I never once tried any sort of hard drugs. I got through high school only because I was smart enough that I didn't really need to study and I was lucky enough to have incredibly understanding teachers that understood that I had issues at home and didn't make a huge issue about my attendance.

I'm spending Christmas with friends instead of "family". There's not much "family" anyway - my grandfather passed when my amother was 3, and my grandmother passed away a few years ago (she is the only person in my afamily that I considered actual family). My amother never married. She has a sister she doesn't talk to because she's "crazy", and my aunt and uncle live on the other side of the country. I'm not really close to any of my cousins, even though one lives not too far from me.

I'm not really family to them any more than they are family to me. A few years back, my grandmothers family put out a family tree book. Every family member had a little section in the book with a few paragraphs dedicated to them...that is everyone except for me. I was mentioned as my amothers "chosen" daughter.

After getting into an argument with my amother about an incredibly rude and hurtful comment she made which she refused to apologize for making (I shouldn't say that, she did but it was more to the tune of "I'm sorry if you were offended by what I did, but I don't think I was being offensive...") I asked her why she bother adopting me in the first place. She responded by telling me she was tired of me bullying her about adopting me, and that I needed to get over it...

She's probably right. I probably should just get over it, and I'm probably making a big deal out of nothing. But there's a part of me that thinks that's probably all bullshit.

I know the situation with this little boy is different. My birth mother never abused me, I was 17 days old when I was adopted. She didn't drink or smoke during her pregnacy, in fact for the 17 days that I was hers she even breastfed me. I know she must have loved me if she was willing to bond that way with her child knowing she may never see her again. She gave me up because she wanted me to have a better chance at life in the North.

Still, I think its even more troubling that these parents want to give this child back knowing all that he has been through. Does this child not still deserve to be loved? Will no one fight for him? Will nobody give him a chance? All he's probably known is trauma and horror, I can't imagine what being kicked out his new family will do to him.

I've cried enough for tonight, I'll write more later.

The journey so far...

It seems like another lifetime ago when I felt the need to look like I did in that photo. I was weave-a-licious (and yes, those are blue contacts I'm sportin). I don't think I ever really questioned whether or not altering my appearance so significantly was the thing to do; I just did it. I knew deep down I wasn't being true to myself, but I didn't care. I made excuses to myself as to why I couldn't just be happy with my unaltered natural hair: it was too thick, too kinky, too nappy, it shrunk up when washed, it never could be pressed completely straight, it was just too difficult...the list of excuses I had as to why I felt my hair wasn't good enough could fill a book.

I never had an addiction to the creamy crack. My hair is far too fine to put up with chemicals (or heat for that matter) for very long. I did however love extensions and weaves! When I read that piece by Joy Bryant in which she proclaims that her weave made her feel more human, I remember thinking about how at one time I could completely relate to those sentiments.

But things changed.

Ever since I cut my hair, and have made a commitment to wearing it sans weave or extensions, I've been able to truly realize the beauty of my kinks and coils. I wouldn't trade them for anything! Not only that, but caring for my hair is actually a whole lot of fun.

I've begun to realize that wearing hair that once grew out of the head of someone else is a rather questionable practice. I had watched some clips from a documentary awhile back about a British pop stars search to the question: Whose hair is it anyway? The hair extensions the stars wear comes from the heads of women and girls who are probably getting paid nothing or very little for their sacrifice. The cheap stuff most normal people buy however...literally comes from the garbage.

That's just depressing.

I am not willing to wear trash on my head. There is something very lowly and pathetic about wearing garbage.

So my journey continues on, and I'm enjoying every step on the way...

Check out my new blog about natural haircare and all things green!