Unwanted

My life has literally been a shit show from the moment of conception. Of course the show didn't open the curtains until I was about 10 years old. Up to that point I thrived in a broken middle class family. Groomed to be an athlete and scholar. But the blood running through my veins was not the blood of the family I lived amongst. The word adopted was one I didn't even question. I was adopted. I can't even remember a time when they sat me down and explained that to me. I just always knew it. And by the time I was 10 years old, I was acting like it. I was the child that went through the rooms at family get togethers, Thanksgiving and Christmas, going through the pockets and pocketbooks of the ones downstairs. Looking for money that I just knew they wouldn't miss. I would my aunt and uncles house looking for their honey holes of new bills and old coins. Looking back, they must have known, yet no one ever came to accuse me of stealing their money.

Puberty brought about more evidence of my "adoption". I hated authority. Although I excelled in sports and kept my grades above average, I became the first freshman to attend school while pregnant. Pregnant at 15, a disgrace to my family, but kept on display for all to see. I was so big with my pregnant belly, I had to sit at the teachers desk by the end of my freshman year.

My mother had a second husband by now and he was some years younger and childless. The obvious solution to my teen pregnancy for them, was to adopt my child. Until the day he was born I went along with it. The word adoption just a part of my life. I was adopted, my brother was adopted, why shouldn't my child be adopted. OH, how that changed the day he was born. I changed my mind. Told them I wouldn't he signing any papers and I would be keeping my child. I was still under their rule. They made too much money for me to qualify for assistance. Although in 1986, a 16 year old girl didn't just go get an apartment and get welfare. I was still carried on their insurance. My son was carried on their insurance, I had given them guardianship so his medical bills would be covered. They were in charge and it became apparent that I would do things their way. It took them almost 6 months of grueling arguments and threats of jail because I was "incorrigible" until I finally gave in. I just remember one day my mother picked me up before lunch period and we went to the courthouse. I signed some paper work and all the sudden he was theirs. No more middle of the night feedings for me. No more arguments about where I was going. I had signed my son over to them and I was suddenly free. Free to run the streets with my friends drinking and smoking pot. Free to not go to school if I didn't want to. I had given them my child and helped them fix whatever was wrong in their marriage.

That freedom costs me more than I ever expected. The freedom of not being a teen mom led to my freedom, literally, being taken away time after time. The youth shelter, girls school, a private school and finally prison. Little did I know my prison experience would led me to where it all started for me. To the building I was born in. To the building that housed an unwed mothers home in 1970. To a counselor that never forgot my story and eventually helped me locate the mother that gave me up for adoption.