Abandonment, an act of love?

Abandonment is a barbaric act.

Type “animal abandonment cruel” on Google search and see the results: animal abandonment is considered to be a barbaric and cruel act.

In the adoption industry, child abandonment is considered to be an act of love.

It was so obvious that I was not the real child of my parents, people often made comments that reminded me I was adopted. I never spoke of my adoption and I never told anyone (except my parents) that my first mother was killed in a bus accident when I was six, so most people assumed I was abandoned at birth. One of their comments was: “Your (birth) mother abandoned you because she loved you”, while others would tell me “Your (adoptive) mother must love you very much.”

My adoptive parents told me: “Your father abandoned you because he loved you.” – “We love you.”

I knew my first mother loved me until her death. I knew my first father loved me, I have lived more than 8 years with him, I knew it until he abandoned me. So when they told me he abandoned me because he loved me, I understood he loved me until I did something bad that deserved the greatest punishment in the world (so I’ll better behave well to be loved by my adoptive parents). Getting older, I couldn’t find any childhood act deserving such punishment, so I made the logical equation love equals abandonment. People who loves me could abandoned me anytime…

Christians told me: “God is your heavenly Father. Your Father will never forsake you because  because He loves you.” Some of them also told me my father abandoned me because he loved me. I believed my heavenly Father who loved me so much He already abandoned me.

I belived for long time the message “abandonment is an act of love – abandonment is a gift – abandonment is a selfless act” conveyed by the adoption industry, particularly PAPs and APs. And my life was a complete mess.

I don’t believe such lie anymore.
What I believe now is that parents abandon their children for one the the two reasons:
– because they don’t love them.
– because they love them AND they are given no other choice by the society.

If you believe abandonment is an act of love, I don’t want to be loved by you.

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Satire of my adoption

I’ll began my blog with an adoption satire.

The first time I watched this video a year ago, I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants. I  wondered what would be my mother’s reaction if she was still alive, because this video made me think of my parents (particularly my mother) during my six first months with them (add four more months for my mother).

I was 9 years old, clean and well trained, from Korea when I was sent to them by a baby selling business known as Holt Children’s Service. Here are some of laughable moments (laughable now but it really wasn’t funny at that time).

• They introduced themselves as “daddy” and “mommy”. So I called them daddy and mommy but I thought these words meant Mr and Mrs. They didn’t know that I called them Mr and Mrs when I talked to them in Korean.
• There was a ton of toys waiting for me in my room when I arrived. I never had a toy to play with before (except some paper dolls) but I didn’t need a toy to play with; in Korea, I had always made them myself when I wanted and I liked better playing outside, jumping or running. I hated playing with barbies but I was fascinated by their complete wardrobe. My mother was sure that I liked playing with them when I was only admiring them and thinking that some poor kids out there had no such cloth.
• A few weeks passed, she put me a doll (wearing a diapar!) in my arms, a doll that could eat/drink and shit/pee. Gross!!! She wanted me to play with it, to pretend to be its mother. I hated to play with that stuff. I started to spank the doll and looked at my mother: she had a big smile on her face. I understood she wanted me to act like a baby. I spanked it more and she seemed very happy. I felt cute and adorable!
  (She told me later that she was sure I was only six years old. Poor woman, she didn’t know that Holt agency actually changed my age to make me younger in order to sell me to her.)
• She made me wear pretty panties for babies. The kind of panties that if the baby falls down, you can see the laces at her buttock. Almost like a tutu, adorable!
• I found a blade, the same blade than that I used in Korea to sharp my pencils. I was so happy to finally see something familiar, but my mother started yelling and took my blade. I took it back and I tried to explain her that I knew how to use it since I was 5 but she didn’t understand. “….Bad girl!” she said.
• When I was at St. Paul’s orphanage, I had noticed Americans visitors were always taking photos of everyone and everything. My parents were not different. They were always taking photos of me. I loved to pose for them but there was no limit. They even took photo of me while I was crying! I was crying because I missed home (Korea) and friends of orphanage. They thought baby was crying because baby was too tired.They said later that I was adorable.
• Each time my mother washed my hair, I yelled non stop that she was hurting me. She didn’t know how to wash a child’s hair. My mother couldn’t understand a word, she thought that I was used to be “dirty” when I was in Korea.
• On  the evenings I often laid on the floor to think about Korea and my family. While I was silently crying and praying my dead grandmother to bring me back to Korea, my parents were thinking that I was scared of my bed (because it was written in their booklet that Koreans kids slept on the floor).
• The day I realized that I was in America forever, I went out. I was yelling and crying, saying in Korean: ” I want to go back” and “I’m going to tell them [that USA is not a country of fairy tale]”. My parents thought that I was a spoiled little girl crying for nothing. They told me later that I was funny and cute. Even after I told them the reason that made me cry, they continued to hold on to their interpretation of a spoiled, cute and funny little girl.
• My mother received many cards congratulating her for her newborn baby (that was me). She proudly displayed them on a thread in the corridor of the house. I found the baby pictures so cute that I started cutting them in order to keep them. My mother scolded me and took them back. I didn’t know why she was so disappointed.
• My mother bought a baby boook where she had to put or write, the baby’s foothprint, the baby’s date of birth, the baby’s weight at birth, the name of hospital the baby was born, the first pictures of the baby, etc. She left many pages blank, but she put the first tooth I lost (of course, not the first I lost in my life, but the the first I lost after my arrival), and a hair in the envelop where she was supposed to put the baby’s first tooth and the baby’s hair. She also kept my first drawing and photos (after my arrival), a drawing of the outline of my hand (instead of the baby’s foothprint) and the baby cards she received. I opened it few years after my arrival and felt sad without reason, and threw it after tearing all the pages into pieces.

The list can go on. I like satires because I like laughing. Satire allows me to laugh at something that would make me cry otherwise. When someone feels attacked by a satire, I think that it is well done.

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