I was adopted when I was born. My birth mother was 17 when she had me. I grew up as a teen using dugs with a huge resentment towards her for 21 years. I hated her for giving me up. It created abandonment issues and low self esteem inside me. felt less than, and unwanted. I was jealous of all my friends for knowing their background and ethnicity. I was jealous that they had REAL parents. I felt stupid that I didn’t know anything about myself, and when I went to the doctor, they always asked me about my medical family history, and I had no answers for them. As a child, when I got upset I had the tendency to lock myself in my bathroom and stare at my fingerprints because it was the only thing I had left of my birth parents. I dreamed about how they looked, and what my life would have been like if I were still with them but I always went back to hating them for throwing me away. Last year, I finally got the chance to meet my birth mother. It was a life changing experience. She wasn’t what I dreamed of, and the story about how I came to be was not what I had imagined. My birth mother had been raped by her step brother, and that’s how she got pregnant. She was bulimic too, so she couldn’t tell that she was pregnant until it was too late to have an abortion. I realize now that I was so judgemental towards my birth mother. I had no idea what she had been through, and I was so selfish that I never even thought about her feelings. Today, my birth mother and I are still in contact. We email each other every so often, and I just found out that I have a baby brother. They live in Portland, and I hope to visit them soon!
