I am back! I decided after some light prodding by friends to continue on with this newsletter, despite my greatest imposter syndrome insecurities. I took a break because my life actually became a bit busy which excused me from writing and also allowed me to believe the narrative that this whole project was dumb because who wants to read a long email these days? But I press on, knowing that for some people this hits and will for now continue to send these as I remind you they might get caught in your promotions tab.
I also took a break because I actually did write a newsletter about two months ago, but never sent it. I carefully crafted it, reading it out loud several times to make sure I didn’t mess up any grammar or overlook a misspelling, which happens a lot because I am my worst copy editor. I moved it from Google docs to the Substack editor, the final stop before publishing. I woke up early on that Tuesday, giving it a final read through and polishing off anything that needed a final touch. And then- I just couldn’t send it. It was the most personal of essays and also an essay that made me think: what exactly am I trying to do with this newsletter. It began as a way to explore some of my religious upbringing, both the traumatic parts and the weird. It morphed into a collection of essays that I would hope to one day curate into some sort of book. I wavered on style (should it lean more funny? Or serious? Or both? Idk!) and frequency of publishing (twice a month seems too much! Once a month seems too little!). I also re-read this particular essay and felt that I had possibly victimized myself a little, which would elicit pity that I wasn’t looking for through the writing of it. I calculated all these things, then shut my laptop and decided waiting one more week would clear things up. Because who was really checking that my newsletter was going out timely? I felt at that point my newsletter had hit a lull, and publishing anything at any rate was better than nothing. So I waited a week. Then another. And another. Till my newsletter actually did become nothing and that final unreleased essay dropping further down in my Google docs recently opened list.
Part of that was also due to the world opening up and lending itself to actual in person conversations. What I was saying with my newsletter over the 6 months it lived I could now say out loud to friends and new people. I didn’t need this outlet to feel something out or start a conversation, I could actually do that over QR codes and maskless faces. And a huge topic of many discussions was something that I wrote my lengthiest and most personal unreleased essay about: adoption, and more specifically the fact that I finally decided to do 23andme in April.
I wrote that newsletter about a week after I got my results from the company. The results live both in my email and on the 23andme app. They would finally tell me if my adopted dad was correct about my heritage being 50% Greek (paternal father 100% Greek) and part Irish and German (birth mother). He said this to me over bites of iHop pancakes when I was 21, without ever once making eye contact. I never pushed him to elaborate but since he’s Bulgarian he likes to occasionally remind me that I am very close to him, geography wise. I believed him but also you just never know with dna testing these days and until I see it with my own eyes I would continue to live with the only identity I know: the identity of not having an identity.
So what were the results? After 34 years of not knowing, what was the answer? Was my dad correct or did he misread some form bundled in all the adoption paperwork?? Well, I don’t know. I don’t know because after two months, I still haven’t opened the email. I let the app fade into the cloud from inactivity, so if I do open it it’ll be intentional because I’ll need to re-download the app. I was initially waiting for the right moment to click on it- I had a trip planned to Hawaii and figured there wouldn’t be a better place to find out truly where I’m from. But instead I ended up just drinking two thousand spicy margaritas and getting very tan.
The unopened results now follow me around everywhere I go because they live in my back pocket. Some days I think about them, and other days I completely forget their existence. I forget because no matter who it says I really am, that isn’t the person I’ve lived. I liked that when we went around the class growing up and said what countries our parents were from, something very common growing up in South Florida, I could proudly say my dad was from Bulgaria and then get to hit them with a “but…” and the “but….” is where I thrived. “But… I am adopted so who knows where I am actually from!” The but… would later follow me to doctor’s appointments where I got to say “but… I am adopted so no family history!” and now it follows me with the surge of birth charts because I don’t have a solid birth time. I selfishly love to live in this exception. I love to live in the area where I am different because being adopted is different but people don’t really acknowledge this. Bringing up adoption is usually met with “wow, you are so lucky!” and the Christian hit “see God had a plan for you!” with an accompanying sneaky pro-choice wink. It’s putting you on a pedestal saying your life is great and you should appreciate it without wanting to realize there is grief, loss, abandonment, depression, commitment issues and several other not so nice things tied to an adopted person.
I have always applauded myself as being the adopted kid that didn’t come off too adopted. I had good parents and since my dad had two kids in Bulgaria before he met my mom, the idea of a biological family was doomed from the start. I call my older half brother and my younger adopted brother both my brothers without a qualifier, which tends to throw people off but in my head it makes perfect sense. My older brother isn’t my half brother, he is my full brother because would a half brother take their half sister on a ski trip and promise her a pitcher a beer after she wiped out skiing because she is not, in fact, a good skier but instead of the pitcher of beer, he takes her to the top of a mountain because he thought she was, in fact, a good skier and could do this one last run with her “half” brother but she got so scared she started shaking because this particular run was the most treacherous at the ski resort and they both ended up panic yelling at each other as they side stepped their way down the mountain to safety?? No, that is only full sibling behavior and the fact that we have different moms doesn’t change anything and should not “click” in anyone’s brains that our relationship isn’t anything but full sibling chaos. (I will also provide the anecdote that when my brother first moved to America I was 4 years old, he was 16, and he learned English by talking to me so I thought it would be funny to tell him we eat dog food but call it something else so he ate a bite. We were full sibs from the start.)
The topic of finding out my heritage also leads into people’s curiosity about me finding my birth family. Finding my birth family has always been complicated for me. I just… don’t care to do it. I have no ill will towards my birth mother for giving me up but I also don’t feel as if she needs to hear from me. Or at least, I’m not there yet. I know I have a younger biological brother and instead of trying to find him, I did the one thing any writer in LA does: I wrote a pilot about it.
I’ve learned a lot about myself this last year through researching adoption trauma. Which I sort of hesitate at using the trauma word, but the accompanying material associated with adoption trauma really hits a lot of buttons for me. Again, I love my parents and I truly love my life. If you are reading this then we probably know each other in real life and we care a lot about each other. At some point you, the reader, have made my life better and brought me a lot of joy. Without adoption, I would not have you so I am grateful in the many ways my life has turned out. But again- that does not mean that underneath there isn’t some shit swirling around. This essay has helped to put into words the way I’ve been feeling even though I do believe every adoption story is different and there is no linear approach to the way we feel, and this essay hits at about 80% for me.
The dominant cultural narrative of adoption as a noble act — the whole better life thing — squelches adoptees ability to speak openly about our pain. My life is not better because someone adopted me, my life is different. And no Lifetime movie can capture how complicated reunion feels.
“But you were adopted so young! It was like you were always theirs!” is something that has been continuously pressed onto me. I get it, we always try to make people feel better about a situation. But adoption is something that I’ve never dealt with because I never understood it from a biological standpoint. I’ve only ever viewed it as a “I am very lucky I always had someone to love me.” I’ve placed my worth on someone else’s view of me rather than on the literal chemistry my brain was concocting from birth. I used to go about my life thinking I’m depressed because of circumstance rather than figuring out there was maybe more to it. Or that I have anxiety because things aren’t going my way and I am scared, not because there is a deep seeded fear of abandonment resulting from being taken away from my mother at 6 weeks. That this anxiety can stem from a fear of non-acceptance. When you’re a baby, your instincts are to be with your biological mom and when you are taken from them, even in the most loving of ways, it causes the serotonin in your brain to dip which causes a form of trauma called relinquishment trauma. You’re searching for the smell, the voice, the aura of the person’s body you were formed in. And when that person never comes back, your brain automatically downloads the sensation of loss and abandonment as one of your first saved emotions in your brain’s hardware.
When a child is not with their first mother day after day, the newborn frequently becomes anxious and confused causing the infant’s body to release stress hormones. Even newborns that are placed with the adoptive parent within days of their birth can feel traumatized. Newborns know their mother is missing and they are being cared for by strangers.
Even surrounded by the most loving and caring circumstances my brain registered abandonment as one of my first learned experiences so unknowingly my life would now consist of a journey to not be abandoned. It’s why a lot of adoptees turn out to be valedictorians, class presidents (hi), people pleasers (double hi) and overly responsible adults who strive for perfection (screaming hello with the add on that I am a Virgo). They unknowingly go through life on a mission to not get left behind again, doing everything they can to earn their place and feel worthy.
Overall, I do think my personal trauma associated with adoption isn’t as severe as others so finding out my heritage felt like it would also disqualify me from feeling bad. Not that I want to feel bad but “if you have good parents, a great life AND you have the answers then what’s there to feel abandoned about?” A lot, baby! And I know people have become more sympathetic but I’ve always loved the part of me that had no me. I was fully myself without there being a reason to my quirks. Not that finding out I am actually Greek will change anything but the air of mystery is now a little drier. It’s been nice having people guess where I’m from based on facial features, food preferences or the way I simply cannot talk without exaggerated hand motions (which I am sorry to at least three beverages for knocking over… maybe more). I got to patch together a life without any reason because no one could explain the way I was because of a genetic marker. I made my life my own, despite it forming from a rocky start. It helped me feel fully me at some points because a lot of the time I did feel like something was missing and I was different. And the missing part was never a hole in my heart a birth parent could fill, but finding out who I truly am away from what people expected of me. And just to touch out nature vs. nurture- I do still believe in it because I am fully my adopted mother when it comes to emotions (we cry a lot).
Some of this newsletter was written over the course of the last week intertwining the unreleased version. I combed through it again, hoping it doesn’t create pity for me but awareness about some of the misconceptions about adoption (and to reason further why I want to live in this version of myself that doesn’t know my genetic history). The previously mentioned pilot I’ve been writing has taken me 4 years to complete because I’m trying to get the nuances of adoption right, which honestly will never happen. It’s hard to show it to some people since the emotional porn everybody desires is a good old fashioned reunion story. Or they like to use the narrative of “well everyone wants to see the relationship with the long lost parents!” when it should be about their relationship with adoption outside of their biological parents. It’s the relationship between the adoptee and the friendships they form, the decisions they make, and who they are when no one else is around. It’s not about them putting a button on who they are based on who birthed them. I can’t watch stories of reunion without wanting to see the emotional reunion taking place inside the person who was adopted- the relationship between themselves and accepting who they are. I’ve slowly been reuniting myself with the whys of who I am and it’s made me a better person who actually says no. Also most reunions don’t go well, create more trauma, etc. “But what if it’s the other way! You could do a documentary about it!” Which, hell no to that. I truly do not think meeting my birth parents will fill any hole but I do think a flourishing screenwriting career will absolutely do that (hehe).
Also if you are wanting to see my 23andme results, there’s a line. I still have no intention of opening them up soon (but don’t worry, I will eventually) but if you’re looking to sneak a peek and try to keep it secret from me, take a number. :)
re: what’s going on
Instead of a round-up of things I’ve enjoyed and would recommend, here is a list of things that absolutely could have prevented this newsletter from happening. I was very close to pushing this again, and the only reason I did this was because I made an Instagram post about it. So here are all the great excuses I should have leaned into because of my fear of being too perceived. I also spent the last month working a 12 hour/day production job so I don’t have any likes or recommends because I have barely sat down.
On my last day of work, an oil leak sprouted from my car.
My hip deciding be a little bitch, despite acupuncture and rest (I have not ran in over three weeks, god help my brain).
One flea that I found in my apartment which forced me to completely upend my apartment’s harmony with course correcting back to a flealess residence. I get it, fleas happen, but I was promised with indoor cats and a second floor apartment this would be rare. I currently have curtains and blankets soaking in hot water and borax while I wait for an array of flea fighting products to arrive at my door.
A nest of wasps taking shade and comfort in the awning over my bedroom window. They have also decided to relax and cool off under the living room awning and my roommate’s window awning so we have to keep all the windows tightly shut or else we will have wasps inside our home. Their day of reckoning will be soon, but not swift.
The third act of the feature I finished in March, just sitting twiddling its thumbs waiting for me to run a physical on all the things that need addressing.
Addendum to the oil leak: my car’s windshield wipers fuse and it’s ability to charge my phone have both ceased to work, causing some real bad situations.
Ok that’s it at the time of writing this newsletter: 12:48PM on June 28, 2021.
Oh and I currently am not employed!
Hopefully by next newsletter, my Virgo brain will take care of all of the above and I can finally write about something lighter, perhaps that 2018 Carpet Beetles Incident.
Bettthhhh we need an update. Miss you.