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Be Grateful You Weren't Aborted

Are you grateful you weren't aborted? Why should I have to be?

There's this thing that people do, all the time. When I say it sucks be adopted, they say, "well, at least you weren't aborted".

Worse are the people who think I should be grateful I wasn't aborted.

"You should be thankful that that you were given the chance to exist."

"You should thank god he spared your life."

"You should be grateful your birth mother decided not to kill you."

And the piéce de resistánce: "It could have been worse, you could have ended up a trash can."

Ok firstly, who thinks it's ok to talk people this way??? Am I not standing in front of you with eyes and a face and feelings? Do I not deserve basic human decency? Because I'm adopted, does make it ok for you to talk to me like second-class citizen?

And secondly, who exactly do you think you are? What makes you think you even have the right to have an opinion about what I should be grateful for? And how would you like to be told, when you discover the crack in your foundation, that your ought to be grateful to even exist?

This part is harsh, and if you love me you don't want to read this. Trust me and skip it.

I'm not grateful I'm alive. I've never once over the whole course of my life been grateful to be alive. In fact I've spent most of my life wishing I dead. Not suicidal, so put the hotline number down. I had a death wish, subconsciously, that caused me do needlessly dangerous things. Like scaling walls of crumbling earth forty feet high or jumping off the tops of silos into the grain below. Riding a four wheeler at breakneck speeds around a field that you built a six foot jump into... well you get picture. Not to say I've not attempted, but I never succeeded, and I'm past it. But the fact of the matter is, given a choice between life I was shoved into and oblivion, I would choose oblivion. Hands down. Oblivion would have been humane.

Don't ever tell what to be grateful for. You have no idea what it's like to live inside my skin or tell my story. And most of all, DO NOT EVER TELL ME HOW LUCKY I AM TO HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO BREATHE. I shouldn't have to be grateful that. The very  suggestion that I should need to is dehumanizing.

I have been dehumanized, objectified, and commoditized enough in my life, without clueless idiot suggesting that I should feel fortunate that my mother decided not to kill me. I am not a sack flour or a kitten in window. I am a human being who was robbed of all connection and dignity. My past and family were stolen, along with my ability to form basic human connections. I have never in my life felt truly safe or properly protected.

I have never been Home. I've never had one.

I'm not grateful to be alive. I've lived, and I've enjoyed living.  I've done best could form connections in constant fear of them being severed. Being rejected again. Because from the time I was four months old, I knew that  everyone will leave you, even your mother.

I'll be grateful what I feel like being grateful for. I don't need any more helpful suggestions on that front.

Comments

  1. You just hit the nail on the head. There isn't a single word in this piece that I don't agree with.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting self reflection. When I met my birth mother I was told concretely that she had NO, nada, zero, zip, interest in motherhood. This was not said out of malice. Just was her truth.

    My birth mother did allude to the fact that in 1960 abortion was not available, if it were I would have not been born.

    I am grateful to be alive.

    These words you wrong I can't identify with nor do I want to be defined only as a legal document.

    I was oddly at peace with this since "I knew."

    Irony is this piece is dehumanizing

    ReplyDelete

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