Letters and Fight Songs

The following evening my friend M and I had decided to get together. She wanted to see how I was doing. We originally were to meet and go out to eat. Instead, I wanted to cook.

I have found that cooking is one of my favorite types of therapy. First, I love good food. Second, I find chopping things very therapeutic, especially onions. Third, I love feeding people good food. To me, food is love.

So, cooking dinner for us was a much better option, since I’m still working on finding a therapist and I’d also be feeding one of my roommates (I worry. The boy needs to eat.).  Win-win.

We talked, caught up on daily life, and I shared what I’d found out over the past few days. About how I’m related to someone named after French royalty and someone else who shares a name with a wildly popular fictional television character. About how my biological father called to check in on me, according to my grandmother. About the fact that I might have a brother in the ether somewhere. About how surreal my life has become.

She wanted proof of the names, so I got the folder out and started going through it. I showed her the comments from the state’s representative wanting to also be adopted by my parents, and how unbelievable the statements were. Then we got to the end. Where the letter from my father was resealed and waiting for me.

We had split a bottle of wine three ways. The wine, teamed with M’s proximity, gave me the pluck to peruse the pages with my people.

So, I began to read my father’s letter out loud.

First, because it would’ve been rude if they were just sitting there as I read silently to myself. I mean, it was five pages. I read quickly, but it's still rude if people are gaping at me as I do so.

Second, I had an inkling that this might not be something I want to keep to myself.

I was right.

To begin with, as an English teacher, I was intrigued at the physical way the letter was laid out. The margins changed, paragraph by paragraph. They indented back and forth, almost like a game of Asteroid had been played on the page. The more I looked at it, the way the words were presented on the page seemed to mimic the back and forth of my father’s struggle with this situation.

I won’t quote the entire letter, but I will state that the short of the long letter was that it was a case for why my father was a good father to me. It had evidence, it pleaded, it even asked questions.

Questions like “Who would you be if not for me?”

That question was not the supportive catalyst I believe my father meant it to be.

So, I did what I’ve done and will continue to do throughout this process. I laughed. It was not quite hysterical laughter, but it was close.

You see, while there was evidence, much of it was either out of date or inaccurate. I’m an English teacher. This stuff matters to me on principle. All specified events were from before I was a teenager. Mainly because this was primarily when my father was most active in my life.  There were dates of activities listed when my father believed I had experienced them, such as choir tours or family vacations or weekly trips to music lessons.

At first glance, it was a kind gesture. These are moments of our shared past which showed a familial connection, where we might have bonded over these events.

Except, many of the dates and ages he specified were incorrect.

A more important realization was triggered in my brain—that just as so many things in my father’s recounting, the events—including factual accuracy—are fluid as they relate to him, because it’s about the outcome (namely, how he is perceived), not the events themselves (which are trivial details, but eventually and ultimately lead back to him).

Except, this time it is not about him. It’s about me.

If he’s playing fast and loose with my history in a letter designed to sway me into talking to him about what he’s going through (yes... what he's going through. Not what I'm going though), ignoring what I need—namely the truth, He ultimately has decided to put his story before mine, which means that I’m secondary to him.

The message of this letter, as I reread it, was that my tale revolved around him—how he found me, and what he’d done for me, because he’s the hero. And not just any hero, but God’s hero.

And I take offense to that.

If there was any doubt I’d be sharing my story in some way publicly, this ended that internal struggle. I was the hero of my own damn origin story, and would continue to be.

My problem with this letter and what it represents centers around this: If the reason I wasn’t told about my origins was that I couldn’t be trusted not to run away, and that wasn’t true or ever going to be true, the story was now being changed to better fit that narrative.

While I’ve already established that I believe that I need my father in my life, I also, at least theoretically, need my mother too. But that doesn’t help the current narrative of my father, because he’s the only one here and as the main person featured in my story, my mother doesn’t really factor in anyway.

But this also introduces another, more important problem—whose story do I allow myself to believe is the truth? A man who bends history to his will to suit his needs, or at least three people (so far…) who have very similar, though more vague, details about my biological parents?

If only I had someone else who also adopted me to give me specific details.

Oh wait… Too bad she’s missing in Ireland.

The narrative I was being told (not asked, or shared with) that I wouldn’t be who I am without my father’s involvement in my life (which apparently and abruptly stops after around age 12, according to the letter’s timeline (which also begs the question how was I able to function as an adult on my own for the past 20 years without direct instruction or involvement, given no seemingly specific knowledge about anything past that point?)). According to the letter he snuck into my adoption paperwork, I clearly needed him in my life, especially since God placed me in my father’s arms, both literally and figuratively.

Putting God’s plan aside for the moment, I’m looking for truth, but am being asked to trust people who have kept truth from me or outright lied to me my entire life. How can I ever believe that they were being honest with me again? And how can I know that it’s the actual truth?

The only way I will know for certain is by researching everything myself in order to find out the truth on my own, in my own way (well, not on my own, exactly. On my own, initially perhaps, with help from some great friends who are family. Good thing I have a few of those!).

I have already worked hard to bring myself to this point in my life. I’ve been working since I was 14 to pay my way through school (private school and college—great combo for your bank account). I played in my college orchestra to receive scholarship money, and worked two jobs while attending undergrad full time and maintaining a high GPA to ensure academic scholarships too. I have paid my own way through graduate school, while teaching full time.

And I have struggled with the need to please my parents in everything I’ve done because I have never felt adequate, because it was expected of me to succeed and never falter. I have strength that I never realized, and I’m not about to falter now.

The struggles I’ve faced have been challenging, and I feel that I’ve done many of these things without much direct support. As I share my story, the obvious support I have has been evident. Because of it, I know I can look into the specifics of who my biological parents are and where they came from on my own too.

I now realize and accept that I may have been granted opportunities thanks to the people in my life, but I am the one who utilized them and authored my own success.

No one else.

I get to choose my own path and my own story from this point on.

I will fight.

I will win.

I will find out the truth.

(Cue the intro to Game of Thrones. Or the theme music to Harry Potter. Or the intro to Hamilton. Or Rachel Platten. Whichever.)

Jon Potter-Hamilton, formerly Snow, at your service.

Just you wait…

Emotional Interlude

I think at this juncture it’s an appropriate moment to break down the fourth wall for a post, as I think I need to explain some of my thoughts and my motivations for what I’ve been doing and hope I continue to do in this blog.

There are three important points to keep in mind in all that I share, and I plan to explain my current understandings of these things.

First, I’m not letting my parents go, even while searching for my biological parents.
Second, I’m entitled to have emotions (every single one), and rant, if I need to, especially given how I have been handling and how I will continue to handle the news about my adoption.
Third, I’m traveling a road in which I’m stuck between the rational and irrational, as well as logical verses emotional.

I point these things out because I’ve been asked by numerous people a variation of the following question:

“After all this, will you ever speak to your parents again?”

I’m shocked by this, first and foremost, because that comment’s basis involves the same reasoning and logic used by my parents in order to not tell me about my origins.

My mother might deserve to never speak to me again for so many reasons. But, as I have previously said, even with a soul as shattered as hers is, the love she offered me was freely and liberally given to me. I regularly tell my students that I will not ask them to do something which they are incapable of doing, so why would I expect less from my own mother? I cannot expect her, in all her limitations, to have ever told me when it was beyond her because I was, and am, her son.

My father does not deserve the full scope of my ire either. He has always attempted to treat me well, in his way. Not only have so many people reached out to tell me that he spoke with regularity about telling me, but he has repeatedly reached out to talk to me in this maelstrom of madness. His choices are not be the choices I would’ve made in terms of what he said in this tumult (I’m well aware that what my father has sent me is not really appropriate, and much more about him), but his heart was, and is, in the right place.

I will offer this: if you have thought that I would wish anything bad to happen to my father you are mistaken. I do not wish or plan to cut him off and never see him again. I might need space now and then, but he’s an inextricable part of my life. Cutting him off would be like attempting to remove a part of what helped make me who I am. It would be akin to the impossibility to remove my love of coffee.

Much like my earlier statements about not changing who I am, my parents are always going to be my parents. No matter what, they raised me. That detail influenced me in ways I can’t begin to imagine, and it will always be through them that I came to view the world. I’m incredibly thankful that they raised me and gave me so much, even if I can, in retrospection, see their many flaws and limitations. Additionally, in how I was raised, the idea that there could be more people in my life, who could potentially add something, is a blessing, not a curse.

But the question of will I maintain a relationship with my parents is also, singlehandedly, the only thing that has caused me to feel the rage that so many apparently seemed to think they would be feeling. Fury like no other builds in me when I am asked this question, for the exact same reason it flared when my father told me he was scared to tell me. It’s not a choice between my parents or a search for my biological ones. That’s a false dichotomy, and unfair to everyone involved.

I repeat: I’m not, nor have I been, mad at the lack of knowledge concerning what was and was not shared with me about my background. I’m hurt by it, but not angry. I’m angry because the question about whether or not I will abandon my parents implies that I’m a petulant child who will run from the people who love me (even if that love is imperfect) and, more importantly, stings that much more because there’s someone who thinks that I am capable of running from my family.

I am horrified that someone could and would think so little of me that I would turn my back on the people who loved me so much that they sought out a child, were lucky enough to find me and adopt me, raised me to be a compassionate adult, and did everything they were capable of to show me they cared.

Ultimately, the main conclusion I’ve had in this month is that I’m still me. Though the ingredients are drastically different than what I thought them to be, the outcome is still the same. My genetics teamed with my experience, thus far, have shaped me into who and what I am. My parents are part of my experience. I would never consider giving up one moment of my experience, because it would change who and what I am.

And I really like who I am.

Finding out I’m adopted doesn’t really change anything. It can’t take away my accomplishments, or dreams, or favorite things. My memories of the places I’ve visited, the movies I’ve watched, the friends I’ve made, all of these things are not impacted by this revelation at all. In fact, I’m even more proud of all I’ve accomplished, though I didn’t know, because, even more so, I made my life happen the way it has. Again, my parents were, and are, a part of that. They will also continue to be a part of that (that is, if my mother was still in the picture. But my father still is, so why wouldn’t he be a part of my life?)

I suppose that I’ve always believed that biology creates the starting formula for everyone’s individual make up, but, in the spirit of the tabula rasa, what you write on your blank slate helps shape the blueprint into a more fully-realized person.  Therefore, my story wouldn’t have been the same without my parents, my friends, the places I went to school, the countries I visited, the things I’ve done. Any number of situations could have equally affected the outcome of who I now am.

I’m an amalgam of both what I am and what I’ve experienced. And my parents are part of that experience. Therefore, being adopted ultimately changes nothing

Yet it changes everything too.

Which brings me to the second point.  I’m allowed to feel. More importantly, I’m allowed to feel each and every emotion, and, just so you know I’m in the throes of many, simultaneously. So far, I’ve been describing all the different emotions I’ve been experiencing, as they happened. I’m acutely aware that over the past week’s posts I’ve gotten increasingly frustrated, annoyed, and angry.

You probably would too if you found out after 33 years you were told a lie repeatedly and numerous people (read: thousands of people) were not only complicit in, but helped to perpetuate, this lie.

Part of my emotional turbulence is centered around the realization that I must now reevaluate many different aspects of my life, beginning with the people who I believe have loved and cared for me throughout my existence. What am I reevaluating? In the topsy-turvy world in which I now live, I have been forced to ask myself the following questions as a result of finding out about my adoption:

Do these people actually care about me, or was it the adoption?
Did they initially pretend to care about me because I was adopted, and are they still pretending they care?
Did they initially pretend to care about me because I was adopted, and have they developed genuine feelings?

Could they really have cared about me, if they knew and didn’t share anything with me?

Could I expect them to have shared anything with me, if they truly do care?

And, most importantly,

How could anyone who actually knows me think I would abandon them, when I would do anything for the people I care about?

These questions are mostly irrational and concern my third point, as it is the intersection of rational and emotional thought where I find myself living these days. I honestly feel as if I’m now only able to look at the world through 3D lenses. You know, the ones where one eye’s lens is red and one lens is blue? Through them, the world’s landscape can now be seen as red through one eye, blue through the other, as well as simultaneously purple together. My rational mind is attempting to make sense of this new way of seeing the world in three colors concurrently, but the only answers are only found through asking (often difficult) questions.

But the problem is, while I understand, rationally, that the above questions are likely not true, because the last one is even being asked (and it is so deeply connected to who I am fundamentally as a person), I must ask all the others. If, through some far-fetched and unlikely possibility that even one of these questions is answered in the affirmative, then all of them could be.

This possibility feeds my struggle in understanding everything, because the mere fact that I have to ask these questions leads me down the path of darker emotions where I am hurt and lonely and confused and betrayed, and those are not emotions with which I wish to live. I know they exist, but I’m working to accept and dismiss them so that I can move forward. Until I do, I can’t repair anything.

And all I want is to heal and grow.

However, that is incredibly, unbelievably, undeniably difficult.

And, what complicates my emotions and my experience is when people suggest to me that I should give my dad a break. You’re asking me to ignore myself, and my needs, my emotions, and my truth, and put one, both, or all of the people who helped to orchestrate this nightmare before myself, so that everything can be normal again.

Except nothing will be truly normal again for me. And it’s far too much to ask me to ignore my pain right now.

You all seem to forget, like my father and mother, so many of you knew my truth. You knew it far before I did. And you have all had time to process this information for 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 33 years.

I have had less than a month.

Allow me the same graciousness I have offered to my parents and to you, in terms of not turning my back on anyone, and sympathize with the frustration and rage and sadness and betrayal and loss for being forced to change my awareness of the world I thought I knew my place in.

I need everyone to accept that I am currently confused and frustrated, especially those who have been in my life since the beginning of this saga. I do not blame anyone for what has unfolded, nor am I furious with anyone for not sharing a secret that was not theirs to share. But I am asking you to please remember that I’m still a person who has been forever altered by this information. A person who now knows the words of the origin story, but not the alphabet in which it was written.

Yet even knowing that, I refuse to see myself as a victim, or the lead role in some sort of Greek tragedy (I suppose we honestly have no idea what kind of tragedy this might be). So I will do my best to continue to focus on the good and pure things in my life, and allow them to help me emphasize the best parts of my experience and my journey. The light and love that has been shared with me by so many has helped me more clearly see my truth.

But remember, after years of living in the shadow of these lies, I’m also allowed to bask in the truth. And more importantly, I’m allowed to relay that truth to the world, because I adamantly refuse to not cast my own light onto this situation.

That light will continue to be reflected and refracted back toward me and those whom I love, and it allows me to know, without question, I am loved and that I am stronger than I ever imagined.

I’ve accepted that everyone has their own limitations; but other people’s limitations don’t define me. In fact, I refuse to be limited by anyone’s expectations anymore. That’s why I’m writing all of this.

My story is different.

I may not write everything correctly, I may make some of you uncomfortable, and I may share things in a way which makes it seem that I’m doing fine.

Let’s be kind, and remember that the truth can hurt. But if we walk in the light, at least we’ll see where we’re going…

Together.

Mommy Issues

As you might imagine, the cookout was a challenging experience. To feel so much at once, from support, to betrayal, to love and acceptance, was all overwhelming.

So, naturally I wanted to experience many extra emotions, all at once. How would I do this, you ask?

I would read an unopened letter from my mother that I’d had in my possession since March.

Why was this letter unopened? Well… mainly because my mother and I are not currently on good terms.

Let’s rewind.

Remember when I said that this email sat unopened in my Facebook messenger inbox for four years? There’s a reason for when it was sent.

Four years ago was when my parents began divorce proceedings. After 41 years of marriage, my mother decided that she wanted to live her remaining years with someone who was more attentive and thoughtful. My father wasn’t devastated, but was more surprised that she wasn’t interested in maintaining the partnership they had developed. As my mother had been a more active and visible force in my life, I wanted her to be happy. I supported this.

What I was unaware of, however, was that the real catalyst for this divorce was that my mother had met someone. From the brief amount of information I was told by my mother, I was pleased that he was someone who cared for her and treated her well. I believed she deserved that.

That is until a private investigator found me at school one day that May to inform me that the man my mother had met was actually not a good person. He had a rap sheet, had been disbarred over twenty years ago. He had hurt children. He had spent time behind bars. He had stolen money from hundreds of people. And he was already living in England near my family for over four months, in order for my mother to marry him (and allow him to become a British citizen, as my mother never changed her citizenship).

To say the least, I was stunned. The relationship I thought I had with my mother started to be called into question at that point. How could a woman who professed to love and care for her son smuggle a man her son has never met into another country, introduce him to her family (but swear them to secrecy), and plan a secret marriage to him before her son ever meets him?

As a fairly trusting person, I began to question some things. Honestly, a great many things. Those questions ultimately led me to an estrangement with my mother, as she has chosen this man over everyone and everything she professed to love, ignoring the facts about what kind of person he is.

After a back and forth between us, and numerous lies, and a myriad of other problems, I requested to not speak to or see my mother for a year. After moving to Ireland with this man, my mother unexpectedly showed up on my father’s doorstep and requested a meeting with me in November of 2015. We did, and hashed out many things, mostly centered around my need for honesty and how essential it was to me in regard to our relationship. That meeting gave me hope that we might start rebuilding our relationship on something real and honest.

And then Christmas morning I got an email from her…with a new last name. His last name.

I’d lost her. I was devastated. Angry. Sad.

Merry Christmas to me.

So, on my birthday, my father gave me a card from my mother. He initially wanted to read it to me. I refused. He then insisted that I read it. I promised I would.

I put it off. I wasn’t ready to read it on my birthday in March. Or over the summer.

At my M’s prodding at the cookout, I got it out of my car.

“What if she told you in the card? What if that’s why your father wanted you to read it?!?”

So, I read the card. At first, to myself. I started to laugh as I read. My family were… concerned.

Then I read the card aloud to my friends. I continued to laugh a bit as I read it.

I could type it, or post a picture. But just know, it said nothing about my adoption.

It did, however, use the word honest about ten times. You know, because she wanted an honest relationship with me. To rebuild on a bedrock of honesty.

But, nothing about my adoption. Which would, now that I know, be the opposite of honesty.

At this point, in the midst of feeling so many things, I realized something. The lies I thought my mother had started to tell me in the recent past had really started 33 years ago. Suddenly, so much more fell in place.

My mother had literally built a wall of lies from the moment I came into her life. Those lies started off small, but coalesced into a reality that ultimately destroyed what could have been. By denying my past, she deprived us of our future. 

She purposely fueled my deception. Throughout my life, she would point out things that she said were similarities between me and her family. The emphasis on multiple members of the family sharing a specific numerical day of birth, though in different months. The importance of British culture in our lives. Statements like “You have the same hair as my father!” or “You have short arms, just like me.”

Oh, look. There’s the anger I hadn’t really felt yet. Huh. It flared inside me like a cataclysmic event horizon.

And just as it reared and I wanted to rage against this person who is separated from me by both a physical ocean and an ocean of lies, I realized just how much displaced love she must have had wanted to share with someone, and she delivered it to me.  But, instead of sharing the depths of that love with me, and explaining where I came from, highlighting just how much she cared, her love ultimately clouded her judgement and broke her.

Betrayal, an emotion that was suddenly more tangible, blossomed within me. I might not be comfortable with the anger I know I harbor, but the realization that this woman who wanted to give me everything she could did so in a way that she also revised my history. That is unforgivable, at least for now. Without thought for my wellbeing, or any sort of realization that I might have a negative reaction to this revelation, the level of hurt I felt was increasing from ignition to inferno.

I stayed a few minutes longer, gave hugs, and then retreated home. It had been an eventful few hours. But, these moments were allowing me to start from scratch with no skeletons, no shadows. As angry as I was, I was using the frustration to fuel the first steps on to authentically living who I am.

So, naturally I texted my father that I wanted to have dinner with him, if he was available, on Wednesday. He excitedly agreed. In less than 36 hours I would be able to confront him about everything I knew. I was simultaneously afraid, but energized.

At this point, everything I knew was different. What else could he tell me that would alter that?

Turns out, quite a bit.