Just about every child goes through a phase in life when they wonder if they are adopted. They start dissecting their family and the attributes that members possess thinking that they must have been adopted at some point because they definitely do not have their sister's hair or their father's smile. But, what happens when someone discovers that they were adopted? Does the child become angry that they were lied to and rebel? Does the child go out and search for their birth parents, convinced that their life would have been better raised by another family? I am sure many think that those options are the most common but that just is not true, at least not in my case.
My biological parents died when I was only a baby, nine months to be exact, in a car crash that occurred in a cemetery on Halloween night. Trust me, not even I could fabricate that part! I was adopted by my biological father's brother Henry, and his wife Laurie, my aunt and uncle. They took me in and loved me as their very own and I never knew the difference. They fed me, clothed me, cared for me, and loved me unconditionally. The entire family welcomed my arrival with open arms. Laurie's parents never treated me different than their other grandchildren and I never felt that I was different in any way. Honestly, I really should have known seeing as I am the shortest person by a long shot, almost my entire family is around 6 feet tall and I am around 5 feet, 2 inches. It's honestly pretty comical that I never just figured it out. But, nonetheless I never knew I was different and I never once thought that I did not belong in my family. They did not think those things so why should I have?
There are times when I think about what my life would have been like if my biological parents would not have died. I wonder where I would have gone to school, who my friends would have been, and who I would be as a person today. I wonder what my parents were like constantly, and I really wish I could have met them. I have only ever seen a few photographs of them and never together. Who do I look like more? Do I have the same personality traits as them? I wonder where we would have lived and what my relationship would be like with them. I wonder what my relationship would have been like with my biological half sisters, would we have been closer than we are now? It is all such a big mystery and sometimes I really do yearn for some of those hypothetical questions to be answered. But, when I look around and see what my life is like now I find it hard to imagine anything better. My life has not been a fairy tale, and a lot of bad things have happened along the way, but I would not change a single moment, because I would be giving up all the wonderful things that I have now.
My adoptive parents did what no one else could have, they gave me a different life with a new start. They showed me all the love in the world and never once questioned why they wanted me. I learned that I was adopted when I was 13 years old, in an honestly horrible way as well. My father's mother told me that I was adopted and guess what the first thing out of my mouth was? "I want to go home". I was not resentful or hateful, and I did not want to run away. All I wanted was to go home and have my mom, I'll say it again my mom, explain everything to me. I never viewed her any differently and I never viewed any of my family any differently. I came to respect them even more because being adopted taught me the ultimate form of acceptance. Being adopted showed me how much you can love another person even if they are not blood relation.
Many people cannot understand that I have never seen my mom as anything except my mother. I cannot think of my late father as anything other than my dad. I do not look at them any differently than I did before I found out, simply because nothing has changed. They still raised me, cared for me, and loved me. Those details never changed, the only thing that did was who gave birth to me. Maybe it would be different if my biological parents were still alive and had just given me up for adoption. Maybe I would seek them out to meet them and find out why they gave me away but, that just is not the case in my situation. I like being adopted, it adds to my story and enriches my background. The reason why I am glad that I am adopted is because my parents chose to love me when they did not even have to be my parents.
