A film called "Desperately Seeking Susan" was produced in 1984 with Rosanna Arquette and Madonna. I don't remember ever seeing the movie but I do recall it was about mistaken identity. There have been times when I have felt like this should be the title of my own life. I seem to have trouble with my identity at times. There are moments when I want to completely reinvent it, but it is hard changing who you are, especially when you are always questioning yourself. In my life fate made me who I am, I could have just as easily been someone altogether different.
No matter what type of family a child is adopted into, they are always different because they are adopted. Being adopted is a wonderful thing, it is much better than being aborted or abandoned, but it still leaves many feeling like a changeling or an unfortunate mistake. I was the product of a sordid affair between an older television mechanic and a lonely young woman who had already given birth to four children out of wedlock. I am thankful that she didn't learn her lesson on contraceptives. One mistake happens, two is conceivable(pardon the pun), but five is pretty much unheard of. That is me though, mistake number five. I sometimes wonder if I was conceived in the backroom of a cluttered television repair shop in downtown Vancouver. It is likely, but I will never ask and maybe I don't really want to know.
Another thing I will never know is where I was and what choices were made regarding my future during the first twelve days of my life. I do know that I was called Susan. The Children's Home Society of Washington did not want the babies they were looking after to be just numbers on a spreadsheet. Someone had the fascinating job of giving each child a name. I wonder about this job. It sounds like one that I would have enjoyed. Did they use the same system that weathermen use to name hurricanes and tropical storms? Was it just a roll of the dice that I was a female born in the "S" position in 1965? Maybe they had a fishbowl of possible names that they drew out of. Was there a pink bowl and a blue bowl that held little slips of paper with names on them? I always enjoyed the baby name books. It was fun to open to a random page and plant your finger down. You had to hope that you landed on something decent and not Bertha, Henrietta or Edna. These may be perfectly good names, but not ones that I have ever hoped for. It was the 60's so I suppose I could have ended up with Peace, Hope or Charity. Susan was a popular and common name, did they have a Susan each year and I just happened to be the 1965 model as opposed to the 1961 Susan? However they chose it, Susan was my legal name until I was 11 months old.
I wonder about the people who brought me home from the hospital. The kind souls who fed me and changed my diapers while it was decided who would raise me. Were they tempted to keep me? Was I offered to others who chose not to take me because perhaps they wanted a boy, a blond or one with a better pedigree? Would I have been that much different if I had been raised in a different environment? How much is nature and how much is nurture? A lot of people don't give a whole lot of thought to that question, but for me it could have been life changing.
My personality has always been at war with itself. I don't know if this is because I feel not quite up to par since I was given away by the woman who birthed me or if it is just who I would have been regardless. I am easy going but worry too much; extroverted one day and introverted the next; adventurous but cautious; full of ideas but not motivated--the list goes on. I am capable of being so positive and optimistic one day and completely sure that all is hopeless the next. I am not bipolar. Maybe it is just a self-esteem issue and has nothing to do with being adopted. As a teen I always felt that I had two distinct personalities--I still wonder at times ( I think my husband does too!).
I believe that many adoptees let the fact that they were adopted shape them. Some in big ways and others in small. Like most adoptees I felt that if I could find my birth family it would answer so many questions and make me feel part of something that I had felt was missing my whole life. This was not the case. I did need to find out where I came from so that I wouldn't always wonder. The imagination is a powerful thing. I imagined a whole different scenario than what was real. I could never have envisioned being number 5; weren't most adopted babies the product of teenage love affairs? I pictured star crossed teens who couldn't keep me; or at the very least a teen mom who made a mistake and was sent to live with an aunt while she waited for me to come. Of course she would have secretly wanted to keep me though she knew she couldn't. My 24 year old mother didn't have to sneak anywhere to have me, she had already had four others. She delivered number three herself in a bathroom. No, I couldn't have come up with that no matter how big my imagination is. She is a sweet woman who did seem genuinely happy to meet me. I just couldn't find a whole lot of common ground. My biological father was a grandfather when I was born. He passed away in 1973 when I was not quite eight years old. I need to take time to find out more about them both. To get answers from my biological mother I just have to cross the bridge into Washington. She is less than thirty minutes away. I need to make an effort to see her soon since it has been over five years since our last visit. There are no good excuses; I just have never found a way to incorporate her into my life which makes me feel both guilty and broken. I have room in my life for so many others, why not her?
I think I expected too much. I expected a bright light to come on when I found where it was that I came from. I expected to feel some fulfillment of a journey or a connection. Instead I found more confusion. We see "Happily Ever After" stories on television all of the time about adoptees who have found their birth families. Maybe these stories should come with the little asterisk that says "results not typical". You know the ones you see in very small print under the miracle weight loss ads. Some people do get fairy tale endings. Some of us just learn that what we were desperately seeking was really inside of us the whole time. I probably would have liked Susan whoever she was. I'm sure she would have been a lot like me......I think I will rent that 1984 movie and see how it turns out.
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