This Sunday (November 20th) marks the twenty-sixth anniversary of my arrival in the Netherlands.
It's 1996. November. A regular Wednesday with a temperature much lower than autumn in the tropicals. I'm allergic to cow milk and my older brother is happy to have a little sister who looks like him. I'm a baby who doesn't cry and a toddler who plays alone in a corner. Two decades-and-a-half later and I'm still not used to the cold of Western Europe.
It's 2012. June. We go back to the Philippines for the first time. It's Day when we leave and Night when we arrive. I saw a Snowman-shaped cloud and my brother is irritable because he was unable to smoke. I'm excited for two days and go visit the orphanage. Feelings I cannot name bubble up inside me and I'm a wreck for the rest of our stay. I couldn't understand time differences back then. I still don't to this day.
It's 2022. November again. It's less cold than so long ago, but gas prices are up and the heater is down. My brother just turned thirty. I have trouble going outside on my own and dread picking up calls. I moved out now and have three fur babies to take care of. They're the reason I'm still here.
At age sixteen I had no idea how much this thing inside me had made an impact. And how it will for the rest of my life.
I was just a baby when I was adopted, and a child still when visiting my birth country many years later. Now, it's only a few moments before I hit my thirties. It feels like I'm out of time, even though I never thought I'd make it this far.
I'm lucky to have had a wonderful upbringing. My adoptive parents did everything they could to make my brother and me comfortable. Food, fairytales, and culture. But it remains a fact that my brother and I were the only brown children in our elementary school for our entire run there.
And I know my natural mother couldn't have taken care of me. She would have been ostracised. Not to mention the trauma it would bring her to keep me. I do not blame her.
Doesn't take away the fact that adoption is inherently a traumatic experience. The first person you get attached to abandons you.
Flunking out of school when I used to be at the top of the class. Seeing numerous psychiatrists and therapists who eventually fell through. I made friends with whom I cried and laughed, and then eventually dreaded their presence when I couldn't keep up or was too confused about who I was.
So many years lost just stuck inside my own head.
But we're getting better. Keeping up with the days, going for hikes with the dogs and volunteering at puppy schools.
Investigations on adoption agencies, therapists who are adopted themselves.
We'll be alright.
- Lina
For more (un)hinged adoption ramblings go visit my side-blog.
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