Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Tuesday, May. 18, 2004 - 3:50 a.m.

You don't mind if we take a totally serious bent, do you? If so, skip on. If you're wondering a tad bit sarcastically how that would be all that much different from the usual read, I like the way you think, keep reading. If you don't mind at all, you're a soul after mine own, and I love you dearly.

I've been thinking a lot about being adopted, lately. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's that when other things are going well, I simply must create strife for myself in order to keep functioning smoothly; life without stress is rather a mystery, I suppose. I don't know why; I actually despise stress. Except for the good, exciting kind, and even that I prefer in rather small, measured doses. And it's not like things are flowing effortlessly right now, because believe me, they are not. Maybe it's because certain relationships in my life are going to hell in a handbasket, hitting a little too close to home, and every now and again I wonder why it is I never seem to wholly have all the respect and unconditional love I fantasized about one day having growing up.

I've by and large made it a rule never to talk out loud, as it were, about the abuse my parents (mainly my dad, on the physical side) were so handy at dishing out. And by talking out loud, I mean I talk about it to a few of my friends, mostly when they ask, but sometimes when I need to vent, but I never talk about it "publicly". That is, to anyone who actually knows my parents. Because that would be a violation of their privacy. Which, frankly, I find a little fucked up, but there you have it. I don't want to humiliate my parents. Once they're dead, however, I consider that pact well and truly over and no holds barred. I'm currently considering writing a book of essays on the subject - changing the names, of course. Just as therapy. I can't imagine it's a happy subject many people would like to read, and it's not like scads and scads of unhappy books on the subject haven't already been written.

Still, it's an odd thing to grow up in an abusive household, and odder still, to have been given into that household by a complete stranger and a state that thought "yeah, these people will be good parents." Which kind of makes into a joke that entire screening process, because my god, if the state of California thinks Jack & Mary Doyle were stellar candidates for parenthood, who the fuck won't they give kids to? I mean seriously, who gets turned down?

My mom used to be - still is, actually - really skittish about the whole adoption issue. She hated to talk about it at all, and most people we knew growing up probably had no idea we were all 3 adopted. I wish I had a dollar for every single time in my life someone has said (and will continue to say) to me "Well, I can certainly tell you're your mother's daughter; you look just like her." I just smile, though not for the reasons they think, and say thank you. At this stage in my life, it's just a private little joke, one I share with my mother, but I don't think she's as amused by it as I am. I rarely correct people, for her sake, though there were times in my youth when the statement so incensed me that I made sure to inform people I was adopted. Which I'm kinda sorry about, because I'm sure it hurt my mother and probably made all those people pretty uncomfortable. I don't think my dad's really ever cared much one way or the other. But then my father is an extremely arrogant sort who figures his is the only opinion that matters, and everyone else will have to learn to see things his way or shut the hell up about it. He's still that way, to this day. So I doubt very much he gives a damn what people think about his adopting his kids, and I know for a fact he feels no sense of failure at not having fathered any with my mother. I'm sure he feels it's all her fault, as was everything else the entire 25 years of their thankfully-ended marriage. But I digress. I've never been able to see the resemblance between myself and my mother, but I think she looks an awful lot like Annie Lennox, and other people tell me all the time that I look like Annie Lennox (or did, when I had short hair), so I suppose I can see that people would think I look like my mom, though I can't see the resemblance between me and Annie anymore than I can with me and mom.

I do see the resemblance with Mia Farrow, though, the other person people tell me I look like, and since Mia was born the same year my birthmother was, sometimes I toy with wondering about that whole thing. Not much, though.

I used to want to find my birthparents. I still do, to some degree. But I just want to know what they look like. I want to know what my mother looks like, because that's a pretty fair indication of what I'll look like as I age. Do I look like her or my dad? Do I have siblings? Do we look alike? What are they like, all of them? How much like my parents and siblings am I, because I am nothing like the family I grew up in. At all. Talk about feeling like a stranger, an alien, an outcast. Try growing up an artistic child with number-crunching, business-minded parents. They really aren't all that tolerant of your creative wanderings. They'll go to the school plays and read the little stories you write for class, happily listening to the laurels your teachers heap upon you, but they draw the line at that. The rest of the time you'd better learn to toe the line and recite physics back at your dad on demand mid-lecture (my dad lectured a LOT), and be ready with the answer "a lawyer" or "a veterinarian" when people ask you what you want to be, because "an actor" is a highly unacceptable response which meets with highly unfavorable parental reaction. I learned by 4th grade that when my parents said I could be anything I wanted to be, they meant as long as it was something they approved of and suitable for a girl.

But my fascination with finding my birthparents ends at the surface. Well, and my medical history would be nice to know; it angers me to have to always say "I don't know" when the doctor asks me if there's a history of anything in my family. That's information the rest of you non-adopted people get to take for granted, but I'm not allowed to have it. Which yes, pisses me off royally. But what really angers me is that my fucking birthparents couldn't keep their hands to themselves. They had to have sex, and unprotected sex, and then the way they chose to fix the problem was by giving me away to strangers so that they could remain unencumbered to pursue their own lives of happiness. Which I hope they found and are living, because I paid for it pretty fucking dearly.

And I guess that's really all I've got to say on the subject right now, other than again that I've been thinking about it quite a lot lately, which I can't say I've really been enjoying. Except maybe to say that if you're adopted and good with that, more power to you, I used to be a lot like you. And if you're not all that swell with it, if maybe you sort of wonder what the hell was wrong with you, or you wonder a little (or maybe more than a little) "who" you are, I understand that. Maybe you feel a little like something no one wanted, even though you've spent a great deal of your life telling yourself that isn't so. And if you thought maybe no one really understands you or knows what it's like to be tossed out of the life you could have had and into one full of chaos and a lot of unhappiness, you're wrong. At least one person does.

So you see, all you have to do is stop standing at the window, open the door, and come inside.

Peace out,
Katie

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008