Adoption, a weapon that takes lives without killing.

When you expelled me from our country,

I lost my life without dying.

You took my life from me without killing me,

with the weapon called adoption.

Why didn’t you take my life with a gun or a knife instead?

“Adoption is Love”, you say.

The truth is that 

A child corpse had no monetary value and couldn’t be exchanged for cash.

Alive, I was a product worth $2,O00.

“To give you a new family”, you say.

Away from my family,

I prayed God and my late grandmother to bring me back to my father.

“To give you a new home”, you say.

Far away from Home,

In a foreign country,

I begged God to bring me back to Korea.

I begged my late grandmother to forgive me for being bad and to end my punishment.

I lost my life without dying.

I begged God to let me die, to deliver me from this hell you sent me to

Why didn’t you kill me instead of exporting me ? 

Adoption is love?

The truth is:

A child corpse had no monetary value.

Alive, I was a product to export worth $2,000.

You sent me to a foreign country with 

a Bible, 

a dictionary 

and a Korean children’s songs book.

The Bible? I lost Faith.

The dictionary? I lost our language. All my words flew away while I was forcefully penetrated by foreign words.

The book of Korean Children’s songs? 

고향의 봄 / Spring in my hometown” is the title of the first song. A popular song about

nostalgia, longing for one’s hometown.

How cruel of you to send a child when you knew she would be homesick forever.

In the first two years of my banishment from my country,

I sang it a hundred times trying to hold my tears.

I missed you (my native country, friends and family). I missed our foods and our way of living. I missed everything. I missed you so much I would rather have died in my homeland than being expelled from it.

I’m homesick wherever I am.

I’m longing for Home, but It is nowhere to be found.

I’m homesick and it hurts so much I feel I’d go crazy.

It hurts like if my heart is going to explode into thousand pieces.

I feel like awake while sleeping; starving while eating; thirsty while drinking; suffocating while breathing: sad while laughing; homesick while at home.

Why didn‘t you kill me instead of taking my life by adoption?

I have no fear of death.

But i’m scared to die in this foreign country.

Dying far away from my homeland would mean I’ve failed in keeping a promise made to myself as a child to go back home some day.

You (Family, Friends, Hometown, Country, Korean society which include the evil persons who sold me for adoption) are all part of the Home I’m missing.

I hate you one day

I love you and miss you the other day.

I hate you hundreds of times.

I love you thousands of times.

I hate you because I loved you.

I hate you because it hurts.

I miss you a thousand times because I love you.

By hating you one day and loving you the other day, I’m confusing hate and love.

Why didn’t you also take my memories with my life?

The memory of our childhood songs make me melancholic.

I want to forget them

But I can’t help humming their beautiful melodies.

The happy songs make me sad.

The sad songs make me sadder.

I lost their lyrics with the loss of our language.

Despite myself, my mind desperately tries to remember the words  I once said, sang or heard like a drowning person desperately tries to breathe.

When you sent me away to a foreign land,

You sent me to an island of loneliness.

A country where I belong nowhere.

I’m an outsider everywhere.

I’m excluded from the “we/us” everywhere.

And I’m nostalgic for the time I belonged somewhere.

My memories, 

I wish to forget.

Yet I cannot abandon them.

The memories of us together 

The memories of the time when I was part of the “우리 / we/us”.

They can’t be forgotten 

They just pop up

And they keep replaying. 

The memories of the time when I was me, before losing my life without dying.

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You never checked on me

I trusted you like a fool.
I waited for you to come and take me home like a fool.
I waited for you to come rescue me like a fool.
I missed you like a fool.
I clung to the hope of our reunion like a fool.
I loved you like a fool.
I kept you in my heart like a fool.
I erased you and then I drew you again like a fool.
I hated you and then I loved you again like a fool.
I wanted to forget you, but I always thought of you like a fool.
I’m loving you like a fool.
I’m missing you like a fool.
I hate you because I miss you.
I hate you because it hurts.

**********

You weren’t there when I was sad.
You weren’t there when I was homesick.
You weren’t there when I wanted to return home.
You weren’t there when I was having a hard time.
You weren’t there when I was losing my words.
You weren’t there when I was losing my manners.
You weren’t there when I was losing my way of thinking and creating.
You weren’t there when I realized I lost our language and felt rape in my soul.
You weren’t there when I needed your protection.
You weren’t there when my life became hell.
You weren’t there when I was alone in my despair.

You sent me away.
You never checked on me.
You forgot me.
You erased me.

**********

You weren’t there to protect me when they were removing my Korean manners from me while teaching me their manners as being the right manners.

You weren’t there to protect me when they were draining me of my ways of thinking and creating while injecting their ways into me.

You weren’t there to protect me when they were emptying me of all my words while penetrating me forcefully with their foreign words.

I lost our language because
You sent me to a foreign country where nobody called me by my name and nobody spoke our language.

I lost our language and culture because
You sent me away.
You never checked on me.
You forgot me.
You erased me.

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There was a Korean girl who didn’t matter to anyone

Her family was removed from her
Her country was removed from her
Because she didn’t matter.

She was exported to a foreign land
She was sold to a new family she didn’t look like at all
Because she didn’t matter.

Her birth date was removed from her
Her name was removed from her
Her manners were removed from her
Her words were removed from her
Her ways of thinking were removed from her
Because she didn’t matter.

She was given a new birth date that has nothing to do with her birth
She was given a new name that didn’t match her face
She was taught new manners as being the right manners
She was forcefully penetrated with new words to become her new mother tongue and new ways of thinking
Because she didn’t matter.

She was killed when I was created
She is not because I am
I am not me I’m her.
Don’t tell me I matter when she didn’t

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Hiraeth*

Her given name is Myung-Sook. Her surname is Kim.

This body I call mine belongs to her.
I grew stronger while she became weaker.
I began to talk when she began to lose her talk.
I was given a name when she lost her name.
I was born when she was buried.

I am because she is.
I live with her memories in her body.
I remember her past life in Korea when I didn’t exist yet.
She was proud of being a Korean.
She thought she was pretty with her beautiful big eyes.
She loved her name and was proud of it.

She’s not because I am.
Her life began to end when I learned to say and write my name.
My name is Kim Goudreau. I’m a Quebecoise de souche (“old stock Quebecker”).
I’m ashamed of Korea and being a Korean.
I wish I was entirely White.
I hate my ugly slanted eyes and my flat nose that make me a foreigner here.
I loathe my middle name, Myung-Sook. It sounds too Chinese and it’s irritating to my ears, just like fingernails being scratched on a blackboard.

Myung-Sook and I are totally different but we were one at the beginning of my life/at the end of her life.
This hand I call my hand wrote her name everywhere while she was dying.

She’s buried deep within me.
She’s my departed true self.
I am not me, I am her.

Every cell of my body yearns for her.
I’m homesick with grief when she yearns for her home country.
I’m wistful when she yearns for her lost language.
I’m nostalgic when she yearns her lost name.
I want to die when she yearns for her departed true self.
I want to die so that I can be reborn as her, my true self.

*hiraeth: a homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed; a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, or an earnest desire for the past.

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I lost my true self

I’m Quebecoise. She’s Korean.
I’m a Scorpio. She’s an Aries.
I was conceived when she was made a paper orphan.
I was bought, she was sold.
I was being born while she was dying.
I grew stronger while she became weaker.
I began to talk when she began to lose her talk.
I was given a name, she lost her name.
I was born when she was buried.

I’m not me. I’m her.
I live in her body with her memories and her ghost.
I lost my true self when I lost her.

I’m Quebecoise.
You snatched away everything but my memories.
You penetrated me forcefully with your mother tongue, your thought and your culture
while emptying me of my mother tongue, my thought and my culture.
I speak like you.
I do things like you.
I think like you.
I have a French Canadian name.
But you reject me because I’m Korean.

She’s Quebecoise. I’m Korean.
She’s a Scorpio. I’m an Aries.
She was created when I became a paper orphan.
She was imported to this country, I was exported from my country
She was being born while I was agonizing.
She grew stronger while I became weaker.
She began to talk when I began to lose my talk.
She was given a name, I lost my name.
She was born when I was buried.

She lost her true self when I lost my self.
She is because I am.
She’s not her. She’s me.

I’m Korean
I lost our talk.
I lost our culture.
I lost my self.
I lost my identity.
I lost everything but my memories of our life together,
because you rejected me, sold me, kicked me out from our land, exported me to a foreign land when I was a little girl.

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