When you look into the eyes of a stranger, you see something. Some people see hurt, love, and passion, and some people see their forever family. Living with strangers has always been a scary part of my life. I was adopted in 2019, by the people I now call my mom and dad. Before I was adopted I floated around in foster homes. Being adopted is one of the best things you can wish for, especially when you come from never having anyone who cared before. When I finally got placed in my forever home I was so excited to finally be somewhere, in one place, for the rest of my life. Then I learned how hard you have to fight for what you want.
My brothers and I had a problem with our birth mother; she wouldn’t sign the adoption papers without us telling her we wanted to be adopted. This made me mad; she came into our lives out of nowhere and suddenly acted like she cared. We all knew she didn’t care about us enough to be there when we needed her, so why would she cause more problems for the people who actually wanted something to do with us? Her condition on signing the papers was that my two brothers and I had to write a letter to her telling her that this was what we wanted. When I first learned that this is what she wanted us to do I wouldn’t do it. There was no part of me that wanted any contact with “the woman” who never cared. She didn’t deserve to have a part of me even if it was just my writing. My brothers wrote the letters immediately, but I just couldn’t do it. Weeks passed as my brothers’ letters got mailed and I thought that maybe she would sign the papers without my letter. I was so relieved that I didn’t have to write to her but then my parents said that my birth mother wouldn’t sign the papers without my letter. So I wrote her a short letter, maybe four or five sentences saying that I wanted to be adopted. It was short and very detached from how I usually act, I didn’t have much to say to her except what I had to. She didn’t deserve anything more than that. Eventually, she listened to what I had to say and signed the papers with the request to see us one last time.
Having to see her in person for the first time in years was hard. A lot of things were going through my mind. Why did she have to put us through this? Why did she not care and then all of a sudden want back in my life? I didn’t deserve to go through what I did, but she got what she wanted, to see us one last time. We met at a restaurant. She was already inside when we got there; our case worker picked us up and brought us to meet her. To this day I do not remember what restaurant we met at but it was a short meeting. She tried to hug my brothers and me, but I pulled away. I had no words to say to her, while I sat quietly she tried to act like we weren’t going through this and that everything was normal, but it wasn’t. There is nothing normal about not caring for your children and them telling you that there are other people who can and will give them a better life. When the meeting was finally over, all she could do with tears in her eyes was apologize. We left her there and have not looked back since.
Being adopted can be hard; it was never an easy thing to have gone through. Living with people you don’t know is even harder. Going through the foster care system is something that I would never wish on anyone. Even though we went through so much, we were one of the few cases that eventually worked out for the better. I would go through this repeatedly if it meant that I would have the people I call my family today.