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Love Letters to Anne

An Adoption Story Chapter Twenty Three

By Michael DeMaraisPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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I was about 6 or seven. We lived in the townhouse, this was where they told me I was different from most other kids, so I remember it clearly. Anyway, I was having a fit about something. I was acting out figuring that if I was bad enough I would be given back to my momma. My real Momma.

I would have these kinds of outbursts into my mid-teens. Of course, none of it worked. All that antisocial behavior and thought patterns, all my rebellious non compliance, rooted in that I was incomplete. I was angry at the world, but I felt I had been bullied into this, so I took an intense dislike to bullies.

I still have the 2nd or 3rd grade report card that the teacher put in her comments: “Sometimes fights with the other boys…” It was not the size of the dog in the fight, it was the size of the fight in the dog. I would live by my own rules. Everything else had been stolen from me. I would live free, and one day I would find them again.

Momma was waiting. She said that she told everyone in her life that was ever important to her, I was coming back. She was right, I was. And even when I didn’t know how or when, I knew it would be, even when I couldn’t see how it would be.

But in those days, the pain was heavier, the darkness blacker. I had to learn to break free of those things, but back then, they were my comfort. The pain to remind me I was alive, the blackness to escape it.

I felt like if I could be stripped of my birthright and the world could hide my family from me, then the world could go to hell. See, it didn’t matter that materially I was taken care of most of the time, what I lacked was something much more important. I had no identity.

So, I created the character I was to become. I chose very carefully among heroes I had wanted to emulate. Tolkien, Lewis, Nietzche, Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu…Gandhi, MLK Jr. Even fictional characters could be borrowed from. All the best qualities, it was my dream, I could make me what I wanted. They couldn’t tell me who I was, so they couldn’t define me. But I could.

I really liked Han Solo. I could identify with Luke and his tragic hero path, but Solo was so much more sophisticated. And he lived life on his terms. This was me, at least it was what I wanted, that and to be Batman.

I had to be a superhero, too much fit the storyline to me. I just didn’t have any superpowers. Except anger. That was my superpower, hatred. And viciousness. I wanted revenge on the world at one time, but it was not to be. I decided to settle for the win I could get. And I let all of that anger go. It was around that time that I began to get ready for healing. A preparation for the good that was making its way towards me.

But first, I had to burn through the anger. As a friend likes to say, I had to get my head right. But nothing I had experienced made this easy or even possible at that point. Yet, it was a truth I had to let it go to receive the blessing I was seeking.

It was reconciling the anger with the righteous indignation and offense I had taken to the whole adoption process and issue. No one had consulted me. Where was my voice? I was chosen and selected the same way you choose a puppy in a store. I was a commodity. And the fact that I had not been asked, really sat poorly with me. How dare you act as if I am less than I am? How dare you expect me to feel less because I lacked something most take for granted?

I had rights. Human rights. And this assumption that everyone made, that I was ok with the way things had turned out, well that assumption was wrong. What had been stolen from me was something you learn in your core being. Your identity, where you come from. These things matter. They help shape you, give you an understanding of things you would otherwise have to find a context for.

I had not lost these things, they had been taken from me when I was still wet with placenta covering me. The world is not fair. Lesson one. Then I shall not be either. No quarter.

adoption
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Michael DeMarais

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