I am not exactly sure what it is that I am looking for, but I make strides just the same. Last night I came to yet another dead end. Yet this blocked passageway does not impede my progress, quite the contrary it coaxes my travels even farther along its way. So what is it that I want, what is this desire I search ever more for. Maybe it’s nothing at all, maybe I just give up. No that cant be right for I am to restless for my heart to be not left wanting. It wants, I want. But what it is I can’t seem to unearth, not exactly.

I called her somewhat out of the blue, although we had talked months ago and said in the way fleeting friends converse, the conversation ended with, “yeah I’ll call you soon, we will definitely meet up”. Yet I felt the need to call her and get some answers. We dated a few years back, and despite sharing some fun memories, we both knew that we just weren’t what the other was looking for. We were on two different levels, occupying different frames of reference. So we split on mutual terms, the first time I had ever parted a relationship so well. No tears were shed, no love lost, we were just different and that was understood by both parties. But for all our differences we shared one very important fact, we were both KAD’s.

At the time I was just coming out of the shroud of adoption fluff. I was trying to figure out what this burden of emotion and despair was. I was realizing things that swelled within me that I never knew existed. I was angry, I was depressed, I was probably not much fun to be around. So last night one of the first things I said to her was “I’m Sorry”. I felt I needed to apologize to her, and just like everyone else in my life that I am trying to bring up to speed on why I am the way I am, I felt the need to justify my adoption feelings and find some sort of vindication. I apologized for being a bore and for being so drab. She said it didn’t matter and that she thought I wasn’t drab and that she enjoyed our time together. But I knew how I was then and how I am now and I felt bad. She on the other hand was and is one of the most perky, happy go lucky, everything is great people I have ever met.

My reasoning for asking her out to dinner was that I wanted to make sure my suspicions were right. I wanted to hear it from her mouth that she loves being adopted and that she thinks adoption is great. I never brought up any of the adoption stuff when we were dating because I was just discovering what it meant to me to be adopted and to be of a trans racial family in a predominantly white city. I didn’t talk about it with her then because what I was feeling scared the hell out of me and because I was trying to suppress it more than anything. Maybe that was why I felt so boring, so mundane, all my energy was going towards covering up this pain. I was most definitely not comfortable in my skin and with who I was or was becoming, and I feared that if this got out I would be looked upon as some sort of weirdo, maladjusted freak. But now was my time to talk to her about it, now was my time to confirm what I had suspected all along.

We sat there after catching up on the course our lives have taken the past two or so years and I came right out with it. I asked what she thought about being adopted in general, how she felt about being in a TRA family, what her thoughts on growing up in a community much like mine where she was viewed as such an outsider.

WHAMMMMM!!!!!

I don’t know why it stung so much or why I winced, but her words hurt. Even though I had long known the answer to my questions, actually hearing them come from such a familiar, round, tan, almond eyed face cut right thorough me. How could someone who had an identical upbrining to mine fell the way she did about being adopted. “I love that I’m adopted” “It’s great” “I couldn’t ask for a better life style”. Each smile that acompanied such nonchalant, matter of fact statements pierced me, but I was being selfish. Far be it from me to think someone else is weird or wrong for thinking and feeling the way they do. Shame on me for not being understanding to the fact that not everone shares my views. For this is what frustrates me the most when people don’t take head to my voice regarding what I really think of all this adoption stuff. Shame on me indeed.

So what if she thinks being adopted is great and that there are poor kids out there who need homes and that we are provided with so much more than we would have had living in our home countries. I guess on some level she is right and I can not begrudge her for not agreeing with me. Like I said I expected this from her even before we sat down, but what hurts the most is that I wasn’t wrong. I wanted so badly for her to be putting on a face, for there to be some sort of mask she was donning and at my suggestion that I felt negatively about being adopted she would part with said mask and breath a sigh of relief. I imagined her setting aside her happy KAD face and saying “at long last I can be free, someone else who feels what I do inside”. But this didn’t happen and that is what hurt most. She is just one more I will cross off the list, another friendly face, that will keep on smiling, whilst I walk around with this sad smirk.

I am glad we had that dinner, I am happy we talked so candidly. I am glad I reconnected with such a bright soul, I am pleased we might hang out again soon. Most of all I am happy that she is happy and that she can go about so easily in this life without the burden of being adopted.