Resurfacing

For the past few months, I haven't thought about adoptee stuff at all. 

I stopped teaching myself Korean. 

I dropped out of all adoptee group activities. 

I stopped reading books about adoption. 

I stopped therapy for the most part. 

I think it was a combination of things. 

The culmination of the work I had done on identity and my sense of self was going to Korea. After getting back, I was riding high on the rush of coming back from a life changing experience and when that died off I was left with a weird feeling of "And now what...?" 

Also soon after I got back from Korea, I dated an fellow Korean adoptee. We shared a lot in common about how we felt about identity and adoption. It was the first time I had dated someone who was adopted and that commonality is strong because no one else can understand what it is like. 

It was also the first time I had dated someone Korean and having that sense of identity mirrored back was a new experience. I grew up with white parents in a primarily white town. Boyfriends in the past have been different ethnicities but dating someone who looked so similar to me was a new experience. Living on the West Coast is the first time I have spent time with Asian Americans. I remember when I was younger, I could never see myself dating someone who was Asian because I had a lot of anxiety about other people discriminating against me more. I was afraid the instances of people speaking to me slowly in English or think I was culturally Asian would increase. It seems silly now, even offensive, but it reinforces how strongly I used to feel as if  "I am me, and those are Asian people. I'm not white but I'm not them- I'm something different." I also had this weird fear that people would think I was vain if I dated someone Asian because they'd look like me...Wow, that's embarrassing to type out loud...but it's painfully true. It was nice to know that I had put those fears to rest and that I had actually come out on the other side. It was comforting to date someone who had a shared identity and it helped me shape my view of my own. I can't explain in what ways or how or why, but it was transformative, even though that word sounds cheesy to me :) 

Ultimately, it was brief. He and I were in very different places and we parted ways. Afterwards, I pushed away everything that had to do with adoptee issues. Adoptee schtuff had become the center of my world- the filter that every other part of my life was seen through. I reminded myself that for 27 years it was a minimal part of my life- almost non-existent. I felt like I had to get back to a place to where being an adoptee was a part of my identity but not my whole identity. 

I focused on auditioning again, started an Etsy shop, visited New York, and I started dating someone who is lovely and amazing and while not an adoptee, shares the experience of being Asian American and navigating the gray area between being American and being prideful of being Asian. 

But adoptee ish has been rearing it's head once again- often times in ways that take me by surprise. 

I kind of (naively) thought. "You know, maybe I'm over all the adoptee stuff. I did the work, squared it away, and I can close the book on that part of my life. Now it's a part of my identity and I can move forward with no strings attached."  

But alas, that is not the case, and will most likely, never be the case. 

- I still feel awkward and kind of guilty when Korean people talk to me in Korean and I have to explain I don't speak Korean. 

- I had 2 Korean Americans say the other night, "God, I wish I was adopted. I would have loved to grow up with White parents." It wasn't pointed at me, but it made my blood boil. 

- I got into a drunken conversation with someone about how it worries me when people say, "If I can't have kids, I'll just adopt." Which made me question my own feelings on adoption. I realized later, I am pro-adoption but I want adopting parents to realize that adopting is more than taking a child in and making them your own. I was listening to a researcher on adoption the other day and she said that in America there was a cultural shift towards adoption- it used to focus on needy kids finding a home, orphans taken in by other community members, and then it changed to needy parents wanting children when parents facing infertility outnumbered children in need due to the rise of birth control and the social acceptance of single motherhood. 

- I get really bothered by adoptees who have different views on adoption than I do. I get really upset when I hear people describe themselves as bananas or twinkies. "I know I should like kim chi but it's gross." "Did someone order rice yet? Because, you know, we're Asian so we have to have some rice."

  Maybe it is because those comments all relate to this idea that because we are Korean we should socially perform in a certain way to prove to people we are Korean or that there are things that should be inherently in us, besides the way we look, that are Korean despite not having grown up in that culture. 

  It is a question that I have mentioned in previous posts: Besides looking Korean, how do we connect to Korea and Korean culture when it isn't a culture we were raised in? and what is the importance that we do? 

Little instances like the ones I just mentioned remind me that adoptee identity is an ongoing process, unique to each individual. For me, the pendulum swings back and forth. Sometimes I feel a strong draw to Korean identity and adoptee identity and sometimes I feel really disconnected from it. I guess the most important part is not to feel an obligation to either part- to not feel guilty when I don't feel connected to it and to follow my interests in it surfaces. 

I went looking for a podcast or something to listen to about the Korean adoptee experience and I found this: Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging

It is a presentation by a Korean American, that is not adopted, about research into the Korean Adoptee experience. She touches on a lot of really interesting adoptee issues. The population crisis happening in South Korea as a result of adoption, the culture surrounding the conditions of adoption in Korea, the culture of adoptees trying to form a sense of identity among each other. 

The question answer portion was tough to listen to for me. People were asking the presenter, with varying levels of sensitivity, questions regarding the adoptee experience. I had a hard time with the way some of them posed questions, referring to adoptees as a collective "they." "I've heard they end up having identity crises later in life." "Do they all want to find their birth parents?" "I met an adoptee who has no desire to know anything about Korea and I think that's weird because I find Korea fascinating." 

The presenter handles their questions with a great deal of sensitivity and explains that each adoptee's experience is vastly different. Also that adoptees often feel an instant kinship to other adoptees despite their different upbringings, but each adoptees' feeling towards Korea, adoption, and identity are different. 

I really recommend taking a listen to it :)