Awareness Warning: This post discusses suicide and suicidal ideation. If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or call 911.
I grew up the adopted only child of two average middle-class white people. We had it all, or at least what society told us we should: the house, the two cars for the two-car garage, and a neighborhood full of people who fit the same profile. As kids, we ran from one house to the other making Kool-Aid, bologna and ketchup on toast sandwiches, and racing skateboards and precariously balanced boxes down the hilled street. Perfect suburbia. There were weekly soccer games and swim meets, bike rides around the neighborhood lakes, and kids with enough freedom to simply be kids. My grade school years seemed golden and perfect. We were like the Thomas Kinkade model of what society says childhood should be. And then I went to junior high.
In the fall of 1983, all my white middle-class friends and I started riding the bus to our junior high. We stood on the safe corner at the edge of the neighborhood where the bus picked us up each morning and dropped us back off in the afternoon. Our new-to-us school was in a different part of town where the houses weren’t so prim and proper or manicured, and the kids weren’t so white. Even though I lived on a street where the southern end contained duplexes and townhouses, I’d never been exposed to the temporary-type housing that surrounded the school. I lived by sanitized and managed rental properties in my neighborhood. There were also houses near the school, but they were in the midst of business districts and gnarled traffic. There were no lush green lawns or two-car garages. Homes survived in a dirty, dusty urban complex. I loved that school and that neighborhood.
Junior high is where kids get weird. And I was thrust into a new school environment at the same time. Somehow, that unsettling felt amazing. All the safe and familiar spaces and people I knew had changed. I still had the same kids I’d been through grade school with there with me, but now there were new kids, too. Kids with brown skin in all different shades. And they came from cultures I knew nothing about. There were special classrooms where kids who didn’t speak much English went to get extra help. That part pissed my parents off. They didn’t think it was fair that “those kids” got extra assistance that was not also extended to the white kids. After all, we should all be treated equally—which for my parents never meant equity. I can’t tell you how many times I heard my dad say we were being bussed into Hell’s Kitchen. I’m glad I didn’t understand the reference he was making.
Something about that new environment brought out the rebel in me. It was like I had permission to try all sorts of new things. I stuck with many of the traditional roles I’d been used to. Those that fit the “good girl” model I had known until this point (other than the couple of times I’d tried to run away when I was younger). I still got good grades and I still earned recognition for things my parents were happy to brag about. But I also started to do a lot of things that they’d have been mortified to know. I started hanging out with the stoners at the gas station across the street before and after school. There wasn’t necessarily a big mix of cultures in that group, but the kids were a hodgepodge of misfits. I think that’s why I initially gravitated toward them. They were the kids who lived on the fringes of the school citizenry. The word misfit is defined by Merriam-Webster as something that doesn’t fit or that fits badly. That was the undercurrent of my life as a kid of adoption. I was the square peg forced into a round hole. The extra puzzle piece that never fit into the big picture. I began to thrive in this new world of sneakiness and suspicious activity. I felt alive. I had this whole new persona that I could live out during the day and then switch back out of on the way home. The school bus was my teleporter between who I was and who I was supposed to be for the sake of my parents. I loved junior high.
There was a series of different personalities I tried on. I was far from fitting the jock/athlete role, but I did try a couple of sports. Most likely I probably played some sort of minimum required and obligated time that each student athlete was allotted. I had wanted desperately to play the viola when I’d hit upper elementary school but had been told I already played the piano and that was enough. Therefore, band and orchestra classes were out as options. My choir classes were good, and at least I could get some soul-feeding music making that way. I excelled in math so that was something my parents could support me in (see: bragging rights). I loved my English classes, especially in 9th grade when I had Mr. Bowman. He was a small black man that many of the students towered over. He introduced us to adult literature by adult authors and treated us like young, independent, and capable human beings. Each week’s memorization assignments gave us an opportunity to learn Thoreau, Chaucer, Frost, Shakespeare, Burns…the list was incredible. Mr. Bowman’s influence ignited my love of English as a subject, the love of reading, and my first pleasures of the writing process. And because he was also a bi-weekly writer for one of the Denver Metro area newspapers, his well-vetted influence was acceptable to my parents. My school-sponsored extracurricular activities included the yearbook staff, student government, and establishing a peer-counseling program in the school. There was an activity bus that ran a late route each day after school. That way, kids that stayed after school could still catch a ride back to their neighborhood. By 9th grade I was riding the late bus nearly every day. It wasn’t because I was involved in school activities.
By the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I was a smoker. I didn’t really consider the fact that my parents might not approve if they found out. After all, my mother smoked so how could she judge my choice to do so as well? I did still hide it from them. I started experimenting with alcohol that same summer. I remember once wrecking my bike on the way home. Bloody knees and wrists in tow, I laughed about it all the way back to my house. I was old enough to be left home alone while my parents worked each weekday in the summer months. I usually had a daily list of chores that greeted me each morning. I quickly figured out that getting that list done and out of the way afforded me the freedom to do what I wanted most of the day. Since it was the era before cell phones and caller ID, an occasional call from wherever I happened to be to check-in with my mother at work was the only accountability that was required.
I also began to experiment with boys. There were lots of those to choose from, even right there in the neighborhood. I quickly figured out the thrill of teenage arousal for both parties involved. I also found out I held power. If I let a boy fool around with me, he would pay attention to me more. I had something that was sought after. It fed the part of me that believed I was never wanted. And if one boy lost interest, there were always more to pursue. At least part of me felt desirable.
I spent as much time as possible away from home. Or at least away from my parents’ presence. It was the beginning of me feeling smothered by their expectations. The expectation that I would be who they needed me to be for their sake. The core of my being was in conflict with them. When I was away from them, I was able to feel less trapped and confined. Although I knew better than to openly admit it as a cool teenager, the soundtrack of Annie was still one of my favorites. I cried every time I sang along with “Maybe”—the song where Annie fantasizes about her birth parents. As close as I’d come to talking about those feelings with my parents was asking to dress up as Annie for Halloween when I was about 10 years old. They thought it was cute. Inside, I was screaming for them to acknowledge that there was a me that existed before they brought me home. That “me” continued to scream internally for decades.
Not only did I hide who I was, I hid the pain of who I was. A lot. All the quick fixes that helped me escape the pain became my regular companions. Whether it was booze or adrenaline, boys, or other people who let me speak my mind, anything that helped me escape from the shell of myself was where I wanted to be. All the while I kept up the dance of trying to be the kid my parents wanted me to be. I was exhausted. So much so that I consciously considered suicide for the first time. I’d already been into self-harm, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not so directly. I used hammers in an attempt to smash my hands and fingers. That was a big deal as a piano player. It was like I thought if I could break something and go to the doctor to have it fixed, maybe the emotional parts of me could be fixed, too. I also loved razor blades. They cut so cleanly that the pieces torn apart could be easily put back together. The scar that was left was so minor that no one talked about it anyway. Just like being adopted. I eventually sat on my parents’ bed one day while they were at work. I sat on my dad’s side of the bed, because that’s the side that had the loaded handgun in the nightstand. I pulled it out, sat it on my lap, and just looked at it. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t shaking. I wasn’t crying. But my stomach hurt like it often did. I took off the safety and picked up the gun, but I never turned it directly toward myself. I just turned it over and over in my hands. For a long time. And then I pushed the safety back on and put the gun back in its proper place in the drawer. I’m not sure how many times I went through that ritual, but it was more than just that one day.
I had stomach issues a lot of the time. I’d been to the doctor several times, but they couldn’t seem to figure out the cause of my distress. Maybe I was allergic to something? Or dairy bothered me? Or I had an ulcer? After all, my dad and his mom had ulcers, so maybe I did, too? But the upper GI series ordered by the doctor didn’t reveal anything. I suppose emotional injuries that cause physical symptoms are hard to diagnose.
I was a walking time bomb. I spent my days blowing out the fuse. As much as I would say I was a mess, I recall junior high as one of my favorite times in my childhood. The independence and physical separation that time afforded me gave me just enough escape to survive. Maybe not healthy escape, but essential escape. Had there not been some sort of outlet for all that was churning within me, it would have sucked me down into a darkness I’m afraid I wouldn’t have escaped. It is only as an out-of-the-fog adult that I can identify what was really going on for me internally at that time. I wish someone would have known that when I was writhing and rolling on the floor with stomach pain that it had nothing to do with a physical condition. Or that only celebrating the parts of me that my parents deemed acceptable created more conflict for an already struggling self-image. Or that when I got in trouble, lecturing me about what a horrible person I was only solidified the voices in my head that already told me that. I wish someone could have told me that all the messed-up things I was feeling didn’t mean that I was messed up. I wish closed adoption and all the secrecy that it came gift-wrapped in wasn’t a thing. I wish I’d been given space to grieve the loss of my first mother over and over instead of only being allowed to visit the ghost of who she was in my head. I wish adoptive parents were more realistically prepared for parenting the child they take home. And that they were willing to listen. I wish I wasn’t expected to live eternally grateful for the “better life” society assumes I gained. Better than what? Some perceived life based on the societal norms that fueled the adoption industry following World War II? I’m calling bullshit on the wilderness I was forced to wander. My truth can no longer be withheld. It is why I have to write, and it’s why I don’t want to be a misfit anymore.