The Boy With No Family

My entire life has been a social shock.

If you ever wondered what it was like to be adopted, allow me to explain my situation in less than 5000 words. If you want to full detail, go read my published story, MY STORY TO TELL. To make this understandable, imagine being a two, almost three-year-old, with a large family, and then one day, out of the blue, being dropped off at a foster home. Spend time moving from foster home to foster home, to one day waking up and going home with a “forever family”. Of course, you don’t quite understand what a forever family is, because you are only three years old.

Thing is, as time passes by, you forget all about your biological family. The family that adopted you is what you consider your biological family. Then, as you get older, you notice things. You see cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and you start to realize, you aren’t like any of them. You don’t look like your father or your mother. You have completely different character traits. You hear snide comments about you not being a “real” Vinsant, which, so you know is the last name I acquired when I was adopted.

You often wonder why you don’t fit in. You wonder what you did, when you were a child, to make your family want to give you away. I don’t know how many adopted children feel this way, but I sure did. My entire life, I have spent more time wondering where I fit in. It was and it is still, very, very hard. Even now, as a 47-year-old man.

As I grew up, after I lost both of my adopted parents to cancer, I reached out to find my biological family. I did this, because I had no family left. Not one time did an aunt, a cousin or even a sibling, ever ask me to come over for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It was so evident that I did not fit in with the family I had come to love. Though there is one cousin, he calls regularly, but that is the extent of it. I hear from him and he talks to all the other cousins, they all talk, everyone. They just don’t talk to me.

I thought, if I could just find my biological family, I would find the family I fit in with. Well, I wish I could say that was the case. I am thankful though, I met my biological mother one time, briefly before she passed away. Even though our meeting was brief, I was able to let my son meet his biological grandmother. It was a good meeting.

I met my younger sister, who I am very close with. We have different biological fathers, our mother raised her, but gave me away for adoption. I may carry a little resentment where that is concerned. I do not hold it against her though.

I then met my biological father; I don’t even know where to start with that. He cried, he apologized. Yet, he had two older boys, he wasn’t much of a father to them from what I gather. I will say that he was married to their mother though. I was the product of a one-night stand. He also has a younger son, again, he was divorced from his mother. The younger son’s name is Thomas. All I heard when I was around him, Thomas this, Thomas that. Thomas was very well taken care of as a child. I was jealous. I am not a jealous person, never have been, but that shit hurt. That was supposed to be my life.

I have met Thomas, good guy. Though we don’t speak anymore, we still follow each other on Facebook. I am close to his older half brother Gary. Gary was a firefighter like me. He lives in south Florida and we talk frequently, like my sister and I do, I cherish those two relationships.

I learned that I had many aunts and uncles on both my biological mother and father’s side. I met several of them on both sides. Though, at times, I may get an occasional message on Facebook, that is the extent of it. I was actually invited once, to Christmas and Thanksgiving to my biological father’s house, and we went. I am not sure what happened, but we just stopped talking. I will take the blame for it. I didn’t know how to fit in. I would have this man call me son and my skin would crawl. Why? Because this man, he never made an attempt to be a father to me. This man let me get put up for adoption. This man, never came to see me when I was born. He had sisters, they came, his mom came, he never did. He didn’t raise me, so how could he call me his son?

Once, I went on a weekend ski trip with Thomas and a couple of my biological cousins. I felt so out of place, because again, I found myself with a family I didn’t fit in with. Yes, I was biologically related, however, I didn’t know any of them. So, what did I do on the trip? I drank and tried hide my insecurities. I could not help but feel jealousy, and I hate to admit it, but I was jealous that I had missed out on having such a large family. A loving family. I had one, at one time, at least I thought I did, that was until I got old enough to realize how I was viewed.

So, in closing, I hate to say it, but my entire life has been spent feeling like I didn't fit in. Adoption is a great thing, please do not get me wrong, but it can definitely be hard on the children, at least it was for me.