When I was about 14 or so, my dad took me to Morocco. We went to visit the family he stayed with while he had been in the peace corps. And I was such a brat. I was scared, in my own defense. I didn't want to be there. Having been conditioned to avoid any idea of origin, I wasn't excited to see people who looked like me. Being adopted is a blessing, but the confusion of it all is rarely talked about. We're not supposed to make noise about it, we adoptees. It sounds ungrateful. As though the life we were given is being judged, or called not good enough. Not every adopted person has this experience, but I’ve spoken to enough to know that a silent theme exists. It's a shame that to answer the echo of our ancestry is a challenge to anyone, because at the root of it is a notion of snubbed charity. When people find out I'm adopted, everything shifts. As a kid I was often uncomfortable around my friends moms, because I had experienced the sad gaze of so many when hearing nearly anything about my background. It wasn't their fault. They didn't know any better, and they always truly had bleeding hearts. But I didn't want or need that, I mostly just wanted to watch tv with their kid. The habitual othering, the constant reminders of being different made me dig my heels into normality. I would prove it. I would force it. I would ignore everything that made me feel aware of my difference and when I got old enough, I would damage my life for it. I wanted to understand, but couldn't. I guess there was a kind of misshapen jealousy, and I never knew what to do with it.
Sometimes people, particularly the elderly, will comment on what a blessing it must have been to be adopted, and what good wonderful parents I must have to have done such a thing. And they aren't wrong. Except the plural part. Just one parent, not two. But the imprint after so many moments like this becomes a deep lie of a knowing. The lie tells me in a gentle coo that identity cannot and should not be explored, because to do so would be disrespectful to what's been given. That to have an identity is wrong.
Thankfully my dad, the man who adopted me, isn't without understanding of my heritage. We were brought together by fate. As a young man, he was stationed in Morocco for years with the Peace Corps. That's how I fell into his life. The last time I went back to Elgara, there was a young woman there from the Peace Corps who was shocked to meet me since the last person to be stationed there was my dad. She said that all of her training was basically a series of stories about him.
So often we are unaware of our origin, and our legacy- which is why both are worth keeping in mind. We are much more than what we share on any app, and the journey to self discovery happens through the risks, challenges, pleasures and pains of learning to dance through our lives. It can be hard, and there are a lot of falls, missteps, and fuck ups. But hey, we get back up. Or we don't. But we choose regardless.