Dear Mom and Dad,
Hello. I’m not sure where to begin, so I guess I’ll introduce myself. I’m now 21 years old and a senior at a university in Washington State. I have a younger brother who was adopted from Texas, a Jewish mom and a dog named Max. I really enjoy pho, beer, and making music.
I was adopted in December of 1994, one of several hundred girls adopted from China during that year. I guess you can say I’m kind of O.G.
Millions of questions are racing through my head as I write this, knowing you’ll never read it, but maybe it'll provide some reassurance for other adoptees and let them know that they’re not alone in their thoughts.
When I was younger, my feelings towards you were complicated. You were figments of my imagination, yet, at the same time, real. Real people with real thoughts and feelings. I used to have romanticized ideas of you being royalty who had to run away to the countryside during the rise of communism. Maybe I was a princess, a Mulan…kind of. Was she a princess? Or maybe you two were peasant farmers, and the evil one-child policy made you give me up because I was a girl. The latter is probably more realistic.
I felt conflicted. I still do. Abandonment issues stem from the idea of not being wanted, and mine from being my adoptive mom's second choice, while I’m also going through an identity crisis as a Chinese woman.
When I was younger, I was angry at how someone could give their child up for adoption. I didn’t fully grasp the concept that maybe you guys were trying to give me a better life, that maybe it was painful for you, too.
The fact that I felt abandoned wasn’t made better by the knowledge that before my mom decided to adopt, she tried having a biological child. She was always open about her fertility struggles and always said, “I just wanted a child, and I got you.” Stories like “Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born” and “Love You Forever” were constantly read in my house, yet sometimes I couldn’t shake the fact that if my mom had kids, would she have gotten me?
Growing up in New York, I was in a Chinese class and culture class, and my mom would take me to the Chinese New Year celebrations in Chinatown. However, I can’t speak Chinese, and I don’t really know that part of me. Can I miss something I’ve never had? Even though I'm automatically marked off as Asian, I feel like people create this background on what my life is like. Well, it’s not like that.
What would my life have been like with you? Would I already be married? Would I have children? Would I be in the countryside or in an urban setting? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS.
While this affects me as a person, and just me, I’m worried about how this will affect me as a parent. I’ll believe in the inherent goodness, and a wave of love will hit me immediately when I see my children. When I see them, I’ll realize what struggles you went through. I’ll finally understand the process by which you decided to give me up. This letter, I guess, is more for my future, not my past. To my future children: sorry for probably being a helicopter parent.
I’m smart, and I know the reality; it’s hard to give your child up. I don’t know your specific reasoning, nor do I require that. However, feelings sometimes don’t have logic, so I apologize if this letter offended you. I believe you two are probably fantastic people, and you’ve given me a life by being absent. Please understand that. I have family and friends, an education. I can be lazy, I can be active...I have a choice.
And with that, I say thank you.
