A Day To Remember (or perhaps to forget)

There are four pages of a scribbled letter tucked inside my black and white marbled notebook. It was the beginnings of a future blog post for this blog - my annual letter to my birthmother - telling her the struggles and triumphs of my 23rd year of being alive.

For the past week and a half, I, for some reason, kept holding off actually sitting down and typing it out here, not because it was too personal or too gritty...honestly, if you had asked me why I wouldn't have been able to give you a straight answer. Maybe it was because I have been so consumed with the move from Dundalk. (Yes, I have finally LEFT Dumb-dalk for good...and will post pictures of the barren room once I find my camera in one of these boxes that are looming in my room.) Whatever the reason, it just never got done.

And maybe it was a sign that I was meant to read it to her in person...

I don't really know where to begin with the rest of this post. I was trying to think of some clever epithet that might transition into the whole point of the post - but at this point, my brain is too fried with an excess abundance of emotion and utter cluster-fuckery (I just made that word up.) to even be witty or even give a hoot whether I am witty or not.

December 23, 2008 @ around 1 AM will be forever seared in my brain. If and when I have children, and I reflect on this tale to fill bedtime story nights, I will probably still struggle to piece together just exactly what got seared into my brain: a cautionary tale or a Christmas miracle. It is too early yet to decide.

But whatever it will be - what it is right now, at the present, is the exact time that I was trying to get rid of a nasty migraine by sleeping it away... and my 2nd night sleeping on the mattress that is in what will eventually be my bedroom in my Aunt's house. It seems ordinary and simple enough, and started out as any other night ...except that 1 AM will also forever be seared into my brain as the time my mother came into my bedroom to wake me up with the news.

The news that my birthparents have been searching for me and want to meet me.

It is now 11:02 pm of the very same day and I think I must have written the above sentence or said variations of it to myself at least a hundred thousand times. And yet even with saying it a hundred thousand more, I do not think that the sentence's true meaning will ever fully sink itself into my brain and channel signals of acknowledgement to my being.

Even now, there is still detachment from that sentence - as if tomorrow that whole sequence: me sleeping, my mom rushing into my bedroom in her jacket, shaking me awake, her eyes lighting up, and me sleepily opening my eyes to watch her lips move to form the words of that very same sentence....that whole sequence will be nothing but a dream. An afterthought to another dream that I had had.

But a part of me knows that it wasn't. That it was real. But I am not ready to believe that part. All day long I have been trying to figure out how to sum up how I feel and I just can't...it is hard to explain how in one moment - everything has changed with nothing happening. How just words could change my entire world and turn it upside down with no action following.

I am, Blog, scared shitless. Today I have felt happy, annoyed, joyous, angry, resentful, sadness, fear and frustration in succession of each other and even at times, simultaneously.

I have so much to say and yet have no words to say it with.

I have so many questions and yet am not quite sure I want to know the answers.

I want...and yet wish it was easier just to walk away...at the exact same time.

And despite all these crazy feelings - the one thing I keep dwelling on is the revelation that they searched for me.

My Coming to America

When I was around 10 or 11 years old, I used to feel really uncomfortable and uneasy when it came to my friends and the conversation of birthdays. I'm not sure if your peers at that age were anything like mine, but it became some one's novelty idea to state not only their date of birth but the exact time stamp as well. You would be in the middle of 5th grade English class, and it'd be Mary Sue's birthday and when asked if it was, indeed, her birthday, Mary Sue would reply: "Yes! But my Mom says I wasn't born until 1:45 pm exactly!"

At that age, the fact that I couldn't give you the exact time of my birth unsettled me in some way. I don't know if I can dig that far back into my past to precisely explain to you why I felt the way that I did, and I'm not even sure that if you could talk to the 10-year old me that I would be able to explain it any better. I just did.

I felt embarrassed, and overwhelmed with just how embarrassed I felt over some minute detail that in the grand scheme of things, held little to no consequence if not to just be some sentimental value to throw into the pages of a baby book. But God, no matter how lame you might have tried to twist it to be, I would have wanted nothing more than to tell you what time I was born.

When I think back at the significance of my feelings as a kid, I guess I could self-analyze and tell you that this obsession and immense feeling of hurt/embarrassment that came with not knowing the time of day I was brought into this world would probably stem from the deeper-rooted problem of just not knowing anything. It could be, but I can't exactly be sure. Perhaps you could just chalk it up to pure peer pressure and peer anxiety of wanting to fit in. I guess maybe essentially that's all my adoption issues were - this identity confusion and overwhelming sense of wanting to find a place to belong. Who knows. (I sure as hell don't, even after all these years.)

Today, though, today is my redemption. Today would eventually become the counter-attack for my self-esteem during the early years when I would battle with my adoption demons over what made me feel more "whole". And as I grew older, and into my now early twenties, I have been able to remember this day with a tainted bittersweetness. The kind of bittersweetness you feel when speaking of a loved one: can't live with it, can't live without it.

Today is my "Gotcha' Day". The day that I arrived off the plane from South Korea into BWI at around 11:45 pm at night. The flight was long and I was actually part of a group of seven or eight children that were being flown into the airport from Korea with my parents being one of the adoptive couples. I hear stories, and I see pictures - a picture of my tiny, frail premature body being carried off the plane by one of my mother's closest friends - another picture of an anonymous Korean woman standing at the edge of the airflight gate, looking on with tears in her eyes. I had later learned that this woman was one of the young Korean women who volunteer to be "baby escorts" or pseudo-mothers for at least the long journey over to America. This was my "birth", so to speak. This was my coming into my life as an Asian-American. As the person that I am now.

At the peak of my teen angst years, I looked at this day with disdain. In my eyes, I was brought here against my will, I had no say in the matter - and it especially hit me harder whenever my parents would say things like, "We didn't bring you here to screw up your life." or "We adopted you to save you. You wouldn't have survived at all in that orphanage."

Nowadays, it's just a day. A day to remember, of course, but just a day nonetheless. Without it, I probably wouldn't be here writing in this blog, in this chair, thinking about how my Spanish midterm is due by midnight tonight. With it, I have faced a lot of turmoil, identity confusion, frustration and hurt. But I wouldn't be me without all of those things.

So maybe, just maybe, I'll break out the vodka and orange juice tonight to celebrate. And more than likely, I might even throw on "Coming to America" to heighten the celebration festivities. =)

Undecided

I met up with a friend last night that I hadn't seen in a while. I had promised her a long time ago that I would have dinner with her, and see her new apartment but I just had never gotten around to it (partly due to the transportation issues).

So at around 6:40pm I headed out to meet her and a few of her friends at XS on N. Charles Street for dinner.

It was fun finally being able to get to where I wanted to go, and be able to leave the house when I wanted - except when it came time to find a parking spot. I ended up paying $10.00 (yes, 10 whole dollars) to park in a garage over on Cathedral Street and walk the two blocks up Preston to where it met Charles. I conjured up the reasoning that I needed the exercise anyways.

I walked into the familiar sights and sounds of XS. The bustle of the girls and guys dressed in black from head to toe, scrambling down the three flights of long stairs to get to the kitchen in time for the food not to be cold for the patrons. (That part always amazed me.)

I found a seat on the second floor and waited for the others to arrive.

Once they did, I found out that my friend's best friend/roommate was celebrating her early birthday. We ordered, and had pleasant conversation and then decided that we would go back to my friend's apartment where she had baked a cake for the occasion in an attempt to emulate "Ace of Cakes". It was actually an awesome attempt and I am going to have to steal some photos from her later on.

As we dove into the four tiered cake and gathered around her dining room table, the conversation suddenly took a turn towards attending to finding birthparents.

I don't know how we got on it - I think it started out as an arbitrary topic and ended up with the birthday girl telling a story about how she never wanted to ever find her birthfather - that she knew who he was, but that he never gave a damn about her so why should she try to find him? She ended with, "Nothing ever comes good of that - I am totally against the whole search thing, nothing ever comes good so it's not even worth bothering to try."

And it got me thinking - am I, too, against the whole search thing? Is that the subconscious thought in my head that has really stopped me from taking all of the many chances that I have had to go back to Korea and find my birthparents?

I just got another offer last week from a program that helps adoptees take their first journey back home. I could easily take that trip and then head over to the G.O.A'L. office and ask Dae-won to help me find them. Put in the search application.

And even though I kept the email in my inbox, I know that I probably won't take the offer. In fact, I know for a fact that I won't take the offer. And it's starting to bug me as to what my real reasoning behind it is. I keep telling myself that I would never be able to get the time off from work to go on that two week trip like that. I tell myself that I wouldn't want to go alone if I did take that trip - so if I had to go alone, I would skip out.

But jobs come a dime a dozen (if you're not too picky), and I only have one pair of birthparents. Two people that aren't going to be immortal forever and ever. So why am I not rushing?

The answer? I don't know. I think that it is something there that digs a lot deeper into the surface that I am not yet ready to uncover just yet. I thought I had this all figured out - and that I would go back and find them - and we'd live partially a f&cked-up life of twists and turns between my adoptive parents and my birthparents. And I was okay with that. But in recent times, I have found that my answer to that age old question of: "Have you ever thought about looking for your birthparents?" has gone from a "oh yeah, totally. I really want to." to a "Uhhh, I'm not sure, I am kinda taking it easy right now."

It's like asking a person whether they've decided to take the Low Carbs diet or not. And it's killing me that I am still so undecided.

Tonight is THE night....

Ugh, I have a speech to give in Speech class tonight. It's the second one that I have done so far (this class is the accelerated class and is going sooo fast!) and I am not looking forward to it.

1. Because I just came up with the topic two minutes ago on my lunch break.

2. Because I also have a quiz on Ch. 10 in the same class tonight.

3. Because it's the last topic that I wanted to do a speech on but the only thing that could come to my mind.

The topic of the speech was "If I could go back in time for a day where, when would I go? Who would I see? Why? What would I take with me and what would I take back?"

Where would I go? I kept sitting there trying to think of some lame topic that would hopefully take me two minutes to come up with - but it seemed like the lame topics were taking me longer.

My mind kept dwindling back to the same thought and I guess that it was my heart, really, telling me what my topic should be: So... if I could go back in time for a day... I would go back to 1985 in Seoul, South Korea, somewhere in those farmlands, and find my birthparents right before I was born.

I would want to show them that I turned out okay. I would want to tell them that I think about them every day and that I wish that things had turned out differently that both them and my adoptive parents could be in my life.

I would want them to know that I graduated high school, that I have a good job, that I want to be in the medical field. I would want my mother to know that I don't hate her for the letter that she sent to America a few months after I left. I want her to know that I forgive them and that if anything, I thank them for not giving up on me, and letting me live so that I could have the life I have lived so far.

Gosh, I just know I am going to burst into tears in class tonight. Exactly what I didn't want to do.

There was a reason I loved this blog...

Props to Latoya Peterson, correspondent for Racialicious for this awesome article.

Have you ever wondered "where the white women at?" ...Apparently, Details magazine knew all along. Who woulda thought it?

I think my favorite quote is this:

“The fantasy goes both ways,” he explains. “The women get to fuck our guys while their husbands watch, and we get to fuck rich white women, really mutt ‘em out. It works! But people in this lifestyle are affluent—I’m talking judges, CEOs, FBI agents, important people—so before they invite a bunch of black men into their homes, they want to know they’re safe, they’re not going to get robbed, and everyone is discreet. So that’s what I provide—a gentleman in the street and a thug in the bedroom.” - Art Hammer, head of the "Mandingos"

Ahhh...Jeeeesus, could it get any better? Who is this luscious Art Hammer and how did he know that that's what "rich white women" really want? "...a gentleman in the street and a thug in the bedroom"...Langston Hughes in turning in his poetic grave as we speak for Hammer's eloquent statement.

What better way to spend the last few minutes of my work day by reading "Meet the Mandingos"...

This article goes right up there with my Dad's own recent statement addressing the large amount of bi-racial children in Korea's orphanages (mixture of mostly American soldiers and Korean women):

"You know it wasn't the American soldiers' fault...you know those Korean women were standing there with their tits hanging out and their legs spread saying "Me give you boom boom for a dolla!" on the streets"

God Bless America for allowing my parents to adopt me (their Korean daughter) in all their racial ignorant glory.

Another Jolie-Pitt Addition that leaves that "just-puked" taste in my mouth...

Nothing like a I-just-hurled-a-little-in-my-throat feeling to get through the past week or so:

Poor Pax.

Some points where I particularly puked a little:

"One immediate challenge: the language barrier. Pax, who until now has only known life inside the simply appointed Tam Binh Orphan Center on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, speaks only Vietnamese, while Jolie has learned a few phrases in his native tongue. Dr. Jane Aronson, a Manhattan pediatrician and international adoption expert who became a friend of Jolie's following Zahara's adoption, notes that Pax's years in an orphanage may initially slow his language abilities and that learning English will likely take several months."

A smaller irritating point, but a point at which I spit slightly. My response: No shit, Sherlock. You adopt an older child from a foreign country, it's going to take a while for them to adapt linguistically. I guess I am irritated by this always being made into a big deal. As if it is this sudden surprise that this child from a foreign country could actually speak a foreign language. Jolie/Pitt are not the first parents to deal with this issue. *sigh*

"Pax had not been told he was to be adopted until that day, for fear that "we might put pressure on him and make him more frightened," says Bui Thi Thanh Tuyen, his primary caretaker at the orphanage. When an overwhelmed Pax began to cry after meeting Jolie, she quickly showed her maternal instincts: "She told me she understands – that it's normal for all young children to be scared," says the orphanage director, Nguyen Van Trung. Later, after Jolie had taken Pax aside to comfort him, "he was very cheerful and happy," says Trung. "He even played with his new brother Maddox.""

This bothers me. So I guess a point of hatred can be spared and placed upon the orphanage director. Either way, whether you tell the child one week, or the day before, or even an hour before they are to be whisked away, wouldn't you be frightened, too? I think it's wrong to withhold that information, as if a "surprise attack" would make this poor child all the more pliable to be whisked away in sudden shock and taken to another country with some weird ass lady. Kudos for Jolie at least admitting that she understood that all children become afraid - shame on you, Nyugen Van Trung.

"Abandoned as a newborn by his birth mother at a local hospital, Pax – then called Pham Quang Sang – spent his days in the facility's structured environment: Toddlers rise at 6 a.m., when they brush their teeth and wash up before eating a typical breakfast of bread or rice porridge."

Definitely don't like this. The way they worded it, the fact that they put it in writing in an article...everything. It's bad enough that adoptees have to face some truth about their life as an orphan, but how would you like knowing that you could Google your name and get your entire truths on hundreds of damn websites? And, the whole publicizing of the on-goings of the orphanage (which gets better in the next paragraph) is just so...media-whored. It's bare-minimum, of course. And though I can't place full sentences or words together to express my entire feelings, I just know it doesn't feel right to me.

"Contrary to some reports, Pax's adoption was not fast-tracked, nor did Jolie, who requested a healthy boy – many of the children at Tam Binh are HIV positive – donate money to the orphanage in order to curry favor. "Things just fell into place," says Heidi Gonzalez, the Vietnam adoption program coordinator for Adoptions from the Heart, the Pennsylvania-based agency that arranged Pax's placement. "Angelina contacted me [in late fall] as I was looking for a home for Pax." "

In short: bullshit.

21 years ago tonight...

I arrived into BWI Airport as an American citizen. :-)

21 years ago today ...

I was a 3-month old orphan, being wrapped in several layers of overlarged clothes for my long journey to the States by my foster mother. Tucked between layers of pink fleece were whispers of prayers for hope and for good health for this tiny premature 5 lb. baby girl.

21 years ago tonight ...

I was craddled in the arms of my adoptive mother with the name of Emily, the American girl, and discarded Kil, Eun-jung, the Korean girl, until 10 years later.

21 years ago tonight ...

An ahjumma somewhere was either restless or rest assured with the knowledge that her tender offspring of an only daughter was on her way safely to mi-gook.

21 years ago today ...

A family of three became a family of four. I entered a world and a life that although there have been extremely difficult times and awe-inspiring positive ones, I would never change it for all the money you would offer me.

21 years ago today ...

I began my journey to become who I am today, hundreds of thousands of miles away from that tiny farmhouse in Seoul.

*Gasp* You're...Korean?!

Yep, it happened again, folks. Another case of mistaken ethnic identity.

Not that I have ever really cared unless someone said I was Vietnamese (since my cousins through marriage are Vietnamese and have been nothing but trouble for me) to which I would half-smile out of politeness and grit my teeth to reply "no" for them to second guess correctly: Korean.

I think that as most Korean-adoptees there is something distinctly different with how we view ourselves on the racial borderlines. I remember writing my college essay about how my racial identity was like the line that is found in the dollar bill only when you put it up to the light. You can't see it otherwise, and when you do see it, it divides the bill in a most unbalanced way. That was always me.

Perfectly unbalanced in every way. I straddled this line between American and Korean for a long time before becoming who I am now. I used to fight to use the word "Korean" whenever describing myself, as if from right off the bat when any one would ask "Where are you from?" I had to join the defensive lines and wear my Hanbok with a chopstick full of kimchi in order to be heard.

Now, I am content and without hesitation to say, "I am Korean."

And yet, somehow, this news always seems to come as some sort of shock for people. Despite my long and emotional fight with my identity internally, externally - people tended to see what they wanted to see and at first I found it kind of odd, and ironic, and sometimes funny.

But in the past few years it's become one of the most disturbing aspects of the "intro" conversation (you know, the one where you say "Hi, my name is....oh, nice to meet you! Yes, well I was raised in Towson with my parents and I have two dogs and two bunnies. I like take-out Chinese"...etc, etc.). Primarily because it has once again taken a twist on the ethnic boundaries that I had drawn for myself.

Last night, while having a conversation with (yes, none other than a Korean person) a friend, he stopped in mid-thought and paused, "Wait...are you Korean?"

Okay, forget that for the past 20 or so minutes I had fondly referred to close friends of mine as "oppa" or "unni" and forget that I had answered the phone by saying "yoboseyo" and asked "mo he?" and called him "babo" minutes before. All of that didn't seem to matter to him - my Korean linguistic skills could not match with his curiousity to see otherwise.

Me: "Uhh...yes, I'm Korean" ...What I wanted to say is "OF COURSE I AM!" but I figured that might be a bit pretentious.

Him: "Oh...really?" There is shock here, a bit of surprise which in turn, made me surprised myself that I was Korean.

Me: "You didn't think I was Korean?"

Him: "I wasn't so sure. I mean, I didn't know."

Me: "I see."

The conversation drifted onto another subject and for the next five or so minutes we were thralled in the verbal jousting on subjects such as his business, my work, how his parents were, etc. But my own curiousity to see what exactly prompted him to question so suddenly my ethnicity gave way.

Me: "Hey...um, what did you think I was all this time?"

Him: "Wha? You mean your ethnicity?"

Me: "Yeah, you know, what was your first guess?"

Him: "Like, what did I think you were when I first saw you?"

Me: "Sure."

Him: "I thought you were Chinese...but then I said 'no, she can't be Chinese.' So then I thought maybe Laotian...you look sorta Laotian."

Hmmm...Laotian. God, Mee-Bear would have loved to have snuck in on this conversation. (And then in floods memories of me standing there in front of his cousins, and uncle saying "jao mi ken koi?"....What a great first impression!)

The whole mistaking me for something else is acceptable. I have never been seen as Korean for as long as I can remember. I have always been seen as Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipino or Polynesian or Japanese. I guess what's really irking me is what came next in the conversation...and what has ultimately come up in every "intro" conversation I have had lately when talking to another Korean, Korean-American, Asian-American, or anyone for that matter.

Him: "I don't know. You think maybe you're mixed? You never know...what with being adopted and all."

Alright, yep, right there. Stop right there. Did you just say you think maybe I am mixed? Wait, no you didn't even say you thought I was mixed, you said maybe I think I am mixed. And then you try to sway and justify your conclusion on my racial ethnicity by stating that it's (oh my God, gonna use it...it's that word - that...word.... a...a.... a...) ADOPTION that probably left me mixed.

And what's worse is this epidemic has not just been within my recently found acquaintances but into my close friends as well.

"Well, Em, geesh, you do have a darker complexion than us."

"Remember when you were younger you had wavy hair? You still have a little wave naturally. That could be the answer."

I'll admit. When I was younger, and even in the more recent past I have been known to tease MYSELF about possibly being mixed, because in pictures I looked darker than my friends, and in summer while my Korean friends would turn a darker yellow, but still remain sort of light, I'd stand out with my Honduras friend like a sore thumb. But it was all in good fun, and I never blamed my adoption for it (save a few times, but even that was all just in good natured goofiness) but these people are serious!!

Don't get me wrong - there is NOTHING wrong with being hapa. Jeeesus, if anything hapas are the hottest creatures in the world. They are gorgeous babies (I know a few hapas that I could name right now that are, by far, the cutest damn babies I have ever seen) and they make even gorgeous people. But to say that my "unknown" hapa-ness is from my adoption, and to have everyone in my life trying to ethnically draw lines around me is sort of frustrating.

Sure, I don't know where I come from and my skin's a little darker, and my hair is a bit more wavier than the rest, but that doesn't make me 'hapa'. I might never know whether I am or not - but I just wish people would stop trying to answer the question for me - as if my entire happiness depends on it.

Because I was happy irregardless of who people thought I was, or wanted to think of me as - because through and through I knew I was that little yellow girl from Towson who grew to love that little line that unbalanced her perfectly between Korean and American.

Congratulations, Toby Dawson!

2007-03-01
Breaking News: Toby Dawson Finds his Father

Seoul, South Korea (Ski Press)-In the coolest story of the day department, the Associated Press reports that former US freestyle skier and 2006 Olympic bronze medalist Toby Dawson has found his father.Dawson, who retired from professional skiing last spring, was famously asked more questions about his adoption than about his medal after winning Olympic bronze. That news played heavily in South Korea, where Dawson was lost in a South Korean market more than 20 years ago. Later adopted in the US, Dawson has sorted through dozens of false claims of parenthood. It is only now, according to the AP, that through genetic testing and background research into the claims, that Dawson was able to finally meet his family.According to the AP, Dawson and his father, Kim Jae Su, embraced, "and Dawson said a Korean phrase he had learned for the meeting - "I've been waiting a long time, father.""

For more: http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/01/Worldandnation/Olympic_success_helps.shtml

St. Petersburg Times Article:

Olympic success helps skier find dad

By ASSOCIATED PRESSPublished March 1, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea - Far from the mountain where he skied to Olympic fame, Toby Dawson found his family.

More than two decades after he was lost in a South Korean market and eventually adopted in the United States, Dawson was reunited with his father Wednesday.

They embraced, and Dawson said a Korean phrase he had learned for the meeting - "I've been waiting a long time, father."

Hugging his son at a hotel, Kim Jae Su teared up.

"I am glad to meet my son and see that he has grown up so wonderfully," Kim said. "I am thankful that he has come to look for me even after such a long time."

The reunion, which included a brother, was made possible by the bronze freestyle skiing medal Dawson won at the Turin Olympics last year. The victory earned him wide attention in the country of his birth.

After the Olympics, dozens of would-be parents came forward to claim Dawson was their child, including Kim. But after years of dashed hopes, the 28-year-old Dawson put off an earlier planned trip to Korea and waited for confirmation from genetic tests before traveling here this week.

Dawson was 3 when he was lost in a market by his mother in the southern port city of Busan, Kim said. A truck driver at the time, Kim said it was too late when he got home to start searching for his missing child, whose original Korean name was Bong-seok. Over the next few days, he said he scoured local orphanages but was unable to find his son.

"I went to many orphanage houses only to hear that they didn't have anyone like him. They wouldn't let me come inside and look for him," the 53-year-old Kim said, adding he searched orphanages whenever he had time but eventually gave up.

"I'm not here to beat him up for what happened," Dawson said, adding that he had a fortunate life growing up with his adoptive parents, who were ski instructors in Vail, Colo.

Dawson said he plans to use a new foundation he is starting to help avoid cases like his in the future.

"Being caught in limbo between two different countries and not looking like your family is going to be tough," he said. "We need to try to keep our children and work a little bit harder to keep these circumstances from happening."

Dawson noted how he shared his healthy sideburns with his father, who during the news conference reached over several times to touch Dawson's face while they also held hands.
Kim declined to talk publicly about Dawson's biological mother.

[Last modified March 1, 2007, 01:11:48]



There were so many articles written about Toby Dawson reuniting with his biological father this week. And I pretty much have read every single one of them.

There was this huge emotional mix-up while reading all the articles, and hearing what each news article had to say.

One: I was happy for Toby. It's this closure to the biggest chapter in an adoptee's life and he had found the ending of that chapter, and the beginning to a whole new one.

Two: I was sympathetic immediately, and was overjoyed when Toby was quoted as saying that growing up he found it very difficult, like "living in two very different worlds". So many adoption agencies and adoptive parent groups keep saying that the child will get over it, the child will adapt and assimilate. But it's not that easy. It's never going to be. To have someone in the media spotlight state that outright is amazing to me, especially with all this Angelina-Brad Pitt-Madonna crap going on.

Three (and this is the one that is the hardest for me to admit): Jealousy. Just sitting here reading the story, and how Toby hugged his father and spoke to him in Korean - wow, well I don't know what else to say besides the fact that I wish it was me. It's hard for anyone who isn't an adoptee to fully understand - especially my parents - but I just felt this tinge of pain in my heart because there is this huge loss there that I will never be able to fill. I won't even say "until I meet my birthparents" because who knows? What if it isn't as successful as Toby's journey? Not everyone's is. But just the thought that at least he knows something is enough for me to feel jealous - that I don't have anything. As far as I know, my whole life history could be fictitious.

I feel bad that I felt jealous and still do a little. I am not sure how to explain how my feelings about my birth search has changed over the years from when I was a little girl, staring into the mirror and touching the features of my face: my eyes, my mouth, the shape of my jawline and wondering which one was my mother's and was that my father's nose? to being an adult, and not worrying so much about it anymore - and yet being completely and utterly aware of the void that comes with not knowing.

I am still scared of the search process. Not that it is difficult or tedious or anything like that. Moreso for my personal reasons, the emotional journey that it would entail from me. I realize that the journey would strip me completely if I let it, and I am not certain that I am emotionally strong enough for that yet. I do know that it is something I want to pursue, and when the time comes, it'll happen. But for now, I can be happy that a fellow KAD found his truths to end one chapter and begin another.