Note: this essay is written from the perspective of the fictional character Malia Blu.
I like to imagine a boat. A single boat just waiting for me out in the stars. If I close my eyes, I can feel the tranquility of the night washing over my body and hear the rippling of the waves tremble against the wood. There is a nothingness and everythingness in my imagination. A chaos and a calm. When I open my eyes, I’m stuck. Breaths linger in my chest and my feet fasten to the dirt. Fog swarms my body and moisture clings to my skin. I can reach forward, but cannot see what I grasp until it's already in my hands. I’m lost from a life I never knew. A family I never had the chance to know. I am sinking through the earth and all that can catch me is myself. Does this make sense? Am I making any sense? Probably not. I barely make sense to myself. Yet this image of the boat makes more sense to me than the reality that consumes me every day. It's exhausting. The questions. My own, others’. They dig at me, at the unknowns, and sometimes I wish everyone could stop caring. That I could stop caring. And that’s why I need this boat. So I find this boat, even if only for a few seconds, waiting for me among the stars of my imagination.
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Note: This essay is written from the perspective of the fictional character Ticklytudy Bolding, a Chinese adoptee.
I hate swimming in the ocean. And the ocean hates me back. The salty liquid itches my skin and the sand digs itself between my toes. And it’s relentless. No matter how much you try to run away from the water, another wave will crash over and leave you stranded. I hate the ocean. But maybe the water, the sand isn’t the reason. Maybe there is more to the ocean that stirs something within me that makes me hate its tendrils that plaster my black hair to my cheeks and keeps me from escaping its grasp. Maybe my hate comes from a feeling I get as I stand on the boardwalk, staring beyond Buchtton, at the ocean, and farther along is where a place exists that I’ve been from, but not been to. A place that left me and so now I’m stranded. Ticklytudy, my sister says to me as we sit upstairs in my bedroom. Safe, from the ocean, the reminders. Do you ever think about the ocean? And the waves shatter through the window and the anger settles in. But there is something beyond the hate, the anger, too. There is another feeling rattling inside of me as the ocean throws me back and forth. Confusion. This side of the ocean is the only home I know, but I do not belong. Not because my name is something that my classmates laugh at. I don’t care about that. It’s my missing or unknown name that is. A name on its way to being slurped up by the feral waves and lost forever. So I stay confused, my past a mystery and I move on. I hate swimming in the ocean. It just drags you down and chains you to its currents. If I can never escape it, is there any hope for me left? This fictional essay is written from the perspective of Lacey Vest, a fifteen-year-old adoptee living in the year 2330. Lacey and her adoptive sister Moria were both introduced in my 2015 short story “The Walk” where they separated ways with Moria running off to a city and Lacey returning to their town (Buchtton).
For years, I wondered where my sister ran off to. At night, I would lay in our bedroom staring up at the ceiling and paint stories in my mind. She found a new family with a dog. She was adopted by astronauts and now explores space. She is in school and every time a teacher asks her about her family, she thinks of me. Of course, none of those fantasies could be true. If Moria had been adopted or enrolled in a school, our adoptive mothers would have been notified by now and she would be back here with me. We would be curled up under the covers with a flashlight as Moria told me yet another ghost story as I clutched her hand. In the past, when we walked home from school together, I would listen to her rant about her teachers and how they just didn’t understand her. Moria was only a grade above me, but I felt so grateful to have such a confident, brave older sister who knew where she belonged in this world. Because I didn’t and still don’t know where I belong. Not because I am an adoptee. My sister and I used to joke that half the kids in our school were adoptees or children of adoptees. Nor is it because my mothers descend from Southeast Asia and I was born in Northern Africa in a time when transracial and intercountry adoption is rare. Okay, maybe I do struggle with that sometimes even though I am connected to people from my birth culture. No, I don’t know where I belong because I can only see myself through my sister. She was the strong one, the fearless one. The one who made a plan to run away and then did. I was the one who listened. The one who followed. Until I didn’t. Moria left and I am still here in Buchtton not knowing who I am. But, maybe, I’m beginning to realize, that’s okay. I am Moria’s sister. I am my mothers’ daughter. Defining myself through other people doesn’t automatically make me a weaker person. The confusion I sometimes encounter about being a transracial intercountry adoptee isn’t something I should ignore. The misery I feel from losing Moria is real. Maybe if Moria had just thought of herself through me more, there would have been less anguish for everyone. This fictional essay from the perspective of the character Malia Blu is written for a friend. The relationship between the characters Maya Hong and Malia Blu symbolizes the warmth that this friend described to me when expressing her own friendship with another person.
If you asked me to count the raindrops, I would. I would stand there in the street with water dripping down my cheeks and my eyes squinted at the sky. I wouldn’t care about the little droplets that would thud against my glasses and create tiny bubbles to peek through. I wouldn’t notice the lightning painting the world golden while a sea churns inside of me. At least that’s what I thought. You see, my friend, you are so much more than that. You are more than the laughs sparking through a sunny day as we sit in the park. You are more than the smiles I share, though nervously, on one end of a camera. You are more than a girl named Maya who is my friend. You are you and you allow me to be me. An emptiness used to tug at my heart when I was alone. I’ve been abandoned before, so who can say it won’t happen again? I used to (and sometimes still do) collapse into myself, my mind whirling with thoughts. Is it okay to look like this? Am I a burden? Do I truly belong here? On and on...And you would listen. To everything. And I would listen to you. “Did you hear that new song?” “It’s going to rain tonight.” “I need a break.” “Can we talk?” “No.” “Yes.” “I’m here for you.” “Me, too.” As I sit here alone at my computer, typing out my thanks, I realize something. I’m alone, but I don’t feel lonely, isolated, or lost. I have everything I need right before me and beyond. Your kindness, patience, and determination will forever be with me and I hope mine will forever be with you. Maya, I can count the raindrops all I want, but there would never be enough to express my gratitude for you. Author’s Note: This essay is written from the perspective of the character Ashton Santiago. I hate waking up in the morning. I detest the stiff feeling in my stomach and how my legs are pasted to the mattress. It always makes me feel itchy, like I don’t belong and maybe that’s because I don’t. How do I belong in the crazy family I call home? As I sit and watch the sun creep up along the treeline, I can’t help thinking that I belong elsewhere, not in this house in Buchtton, Massachusetts with five older sisters and four moms and so much to be grateful for. Maybe I belong out there.
At night, I can close my eyes and imagine. Imagine myself in another world. Maybe I’m a princess sitting by the window gazing out at a moon shining down on a kingdom. Maybe I’m a scientist exploring the ocean in a submarine and being reminded of my small size. Maybe I’m just a girl leaning against a mysterious woman, but one who I love and know. Maybe in one of those places, I belong. There is no time during the day for me to wrestle with my identity. It’s always, Ashton, have you done this? Ashton, can you do this? Ashton, you didn’t do this the right way. With a big family, there is always someone to help and someone who needs help. I get so absorbed into everyone else’s struggles and hurdles that I forget my own until I’m sitting on my bed with darkness beginning to close in and I start to wonder just who the heck I am. How did I even end up here? I was born in Colombia, just like my sister Aleah, but now I am here. What decisions were made? What pressures existed that led to my abandonment? I wish I knew the truth. No matter how long I spend on Wikipedia and Britannica looking up the history of my birth country, I can never know with certainty. I can make guesses and imagine situations--so many situations--but I can’t grasp the truth. And so, in the morning as I wake up, I find myself lost. I’m just a sixteen-year-old sophomore who exists in a world so complicated that I don’t even know for sure why I am here. Maybe that’s the beauty in your story, I know my sister Louise would say. She would smile, her dark eyes bright as her warm brown hand clutches my own. She would laugh and tell me not to worry because not all things in life need to and should have answers. But still, I wake up, my body cramping, my eyes burning, and my head buzzing. I can’t let go of my past. I don’t understand how Louise can. How does she not wonder if there is a family in Ethiopia wondering about her right now? How can she not feel confused about how she has ended up here in this exact house with this exact family and not anywhere else? All these questions race through my mind in the early morning as the sun rises and I just want to shout, to cry, to cackle. I crave to leap out of my bed and run and keep running until all of my anxieties roll right out of me. I can’t do that because I am locked in. I am barricaded by so much going on around me. By my sisters Chloe and Christie sleeping in the bunk bed across from me. By my mothers getting their coffee ready downstairs. By the friends waiting for me at school. It’s too much and none of them know the answers. Maybe that’s okay. Yes, maybe it is okay that I and everyone else around me doesn’t know the truth, but is it okay for me to wonder? Author’s Note: This essay is written from the perspective of the character Mei Blu.
I don’t know what to do when it rains. I feel the droplets collide with my oily skin. I can taste the tang of the wind. I can feel the sogginess creeping up my socks to my knees. Yet, I don’t know what to do about it. What do you do when you can’t control what’s around you? Like your little sister Carrie, who is crying in the next room and you want to embrace her, tell her everything will be fine, but you can’t promise that. You feel her pain, too. What do you do when you see your mother smiling, but you know she’s hurting underneath. That there are daggers buried under her skin and pricking her heart. She has to be strong for you, for your sisters, for her wife, but she is drowning underneath. I don’t understand the rain no matter how many high school science classes I attend. I don’t understand how so much emotion can be bottled up into a teardrop that hurtles from the sky. I don’t understand how it sweeps over an entire landscape and dampens the soil, the pavement, the wood and then just leaves. It doesn’t make any sense to me how these things can just come and go. I wish I knew how to be there for Carrie. I wish I knew how to tell my mother to be honest. I wish I didn’t always stand there in silence, fearful of what will happen next. The rain always comes with no warning. I remember a time it was raining, but it wasn’t. We were standing outside. The five of us. My older sister Malia played with her hair, twisting a strand around and around her finger. Carrie stared at the ground. Our mothers were chatting. Quietly. Softly. Secretively. The sky was bright above us, but inside, the rain was pounding our skin. I wonder what it would take to allow the rain we collected inside of us to flood out. To let it wash over those around us. Would it be debilitating or cleansing? I have so much inside of me that I yearn to free. My pain of having a family I will never know. My sadness for my sister and my mother. I want to let it free, but I don’t want to drown out anyone else. I don’t understand the rain. The thing is, I don’t think I will ever truly be honest. There are some things that I don’t want to share. There are some things that aren’t mine to share. Still, I have a hurt inside me that craves to crash out from my body and drench the world. I feel it when I’m sitting at the dinner table with my mother and she is about to say something--I know it’s about her--but she stops. The pain is too much. Other times, it’s me. I want to say something, to ask something. Do you think they think about me? Do you think they ever cared about me? Still, we both keep it inside and the rain continues to pound down in droplets. Maybe now, while I am here, it is a good time to get it all out. Maybe by allowing myself to be honest, I leave room for my sister and my mother to be, too. The truth is, I’m sad that my aunt died and I want to talk about how she embraced Carrie when no one else did. I do think about my birth family and I worry they never cared about me. Is it alright for me to tell the truth or is the rain too much? Written from the perspective of the character Youngvia Lee.
I am one of many. I have accepted that my feathers, although gray and filthy, still match those that are white and pristine. I may have the gift, they say, but I am still one of billions. I am a musician, they proclaim. Music sweeps into my ears and out of my fingertips. The piano? The cello? The violin? The flute? All my servants, or so they argue. In truth, the instruments and I are one. What they neglect is the pain that implores me to play. They forget I have been deserted in the cold, neglected the touch of security. They disregard that I am from both nowhere and somewhere. All they desire is for me to play. And play, I do. I let music pour around me. I bathe in the treble clef and soak in the bass clef. Grace notes rinse my hands and glissandos splash my feet. My wings are drenched by the deluge, but still I soar. There are others gliding with me. We chirp in tune with one another and cackle at the memorized beings who listen below. They can never comprehend what is occurring. We attend to one another, but we also jockey for the best worms. Our elegance conceals our hideousness. I am one of many. Music releases me from individuality. I am part of a song that is bigger than myself. My notes can transform hearts and demolish barriers. I am not playing for one person, or even for myself. I am playing for all those who can hear me. When I play, I, like my audience, can forget that I was abandoned. That I was unwanted by two sets of parents. That I was left on the sidewalk as a baby in China. That I was rejected again at ten-years-old in the United States. Those histories can be erased. I am one of many. Yet, I am still eighteen-year-old Youngvia. The pain I feel can never be eradicated. My wings will always be dirty and tired. Music can only do so much. I can’t change the past. I can’t force the world to be kind. I can’t even make myself forget. Nevertheless, acknowledging that I am one of many can sneak a glimpse of hope into my fingertips as I play. I am part of a larger song. I am a bird that soars through the rain. I belong with those around me. I am still one of many. Written from the perspective of the character Youngvia Lee. This essay is written from the point of view of the fictional character Malia Blu.
Tell me a story that doesn’t end and I will tell you one that does. Sing me a song in all the languages in the world and I will reply with a word. A conclusion, a happily-ever-after, a period. Aren’t those what we desire? My name is Malia Blu. Concrete, simple, true. My adoptive mothers named me after a friend who died before I was born. My surname, my mothers chose when they married. I was born in China and I live in the United States. I am twenty-years-old. This is who I am. I am a person who is depressed, anorexic, extroverted. I am a sister, an adoptee, a writer. I love visiting the beach down the road. I appreciate the rain dripping down my roof. I take pleasure in laughing with my friends on Zoom. I know who I am. Except when I don’t. Ask me to tell a story about myself and I will tell you one that doesn’t end. Beg me to speak English and I will shout in Bulgarian or Cantonese. A continuation, a hodgepodge, a question mark. Those are what we hate. I don’t know my birth name. Do I even have one? I don’t know where I was born or how my biological parents met. I don’t even know what region of Zhejiang Province I’m truly from. Maybe I’m not even from Zhejiang. Is this who I am? Please. Just give me all the answers. Shove confidence down my soul. I crave to breath in and out with hope. I’m tired of day-after-day not knowing who I am. I am exhausted by the pain that has always existed and still thrives in this world. I want to smile at a friend without feeling like a fraud. Make me brave. Make me kind. Make me, me. Except, that is not how the world works. Share your story with the world and it will give you both answers that end and answers that don’t. Let words drip from your fingertips and mouth and only some will comprehend. A conundrum, a head-scratcher, an ellipsis. Maybe those are all that we are. It’s hard to believe things will get better. There is so much pain drifting around us. The anti-Blackness, the hunger, the warfare. Protests demanding justice for lives cruelly lost are met with swarming hate. Our short attention spans translate to some treating advocacy work like a trend. I feel hopeless.
When I think about the history of the world, my immediate thoughts are of pain. The threads of wounds made long ago wind themselves around me. America prospered thanks to the greediness of colonists and the exertion of slaves. Famines in Europe and Asia in the 1900s caused my Irish and Chinese adoptive grandparents to emigrate. I reside in the US most likely because my biological parents were poor in China and could not afford a girl. If I really let my brain analyze, almost every good thing that has happened to me is the result of others’ struggles. The food I eat? The clothes I like? The chromebook I use to write? All the work of underpaid laborers. I have taken numerous mindfulness and wellbeing courses and the guidance I am provided over and over is to be grateful. Gratitude is what will make me happy. I hunger for gratefulness. It’s a simple solution to a complex world. Yet, something snags me. How can gratitude make me happy when, inherently, suffering is the reason for my pleasure? At times, I have trouble comprehending the good in the world, in other people, and especially in myself when there has always been and still exists pain. I know I can’t solve Earth’s problems on my own and I admire all the people who are stronger than me who encourage me to continue. I crave the hope that carries these remarkable people like Angela Davis, Malala Yousafzai, Ceyenne Dorsohow, Crystal Echo Hawk, and so many more. Compared to them, I feel like I am a child lost in a forest with a dark canopy bearing down on me. Ghosts flit around me crying for love and affection and the stars glimmering above me are hidden. Yet, when I take the moment to breathe, I can feel the chilled, but soothing air. I can smell the crisp flowers and hear the little crickets. The ghosts are still there, but my senses empower me to listen to them. As I keep walking, I may not be able to see the stars-- maybe they are unattainable-- but I can see the beauty drifting around me that inspires me to continue moving. The ghosts simply needed someone to listen, to care, to act. Their stories are sad and painful as well as full of love and strength. I wish they lived in a world where they did not have to be so strong. I can only control myself and what I do and by allowing the little sparks of hope to invigorate me, I can keep listening and I can keep moving. Getting eternally lost in my desperation helps no one. I am grateful for the air, the flowers, the crickets. I am grateful for this moment of spirit. Even when I fall back into despair, I can remember that hope, like pain, drifts and it will come back. The sky paints itself gold and notes reverberate from the dark wooden belly of my piano. I am nine again. Life trickles simply around me and the metronome ticks steadily along beside me. Yet, discord still seeps into this haven. I have lost the tempo. My heart thumps and my fingers tingle as I try to regain the beat. Little do I realize that this imbalance is a beauty of its own. I often think back to that brief period of time I played piano. As my world widens beyond that instrument and I struggle to find tranquility in a world rife with conflict, I have come to recognize the importance of the discord that I had abhorred. In order to have true civil discourse, a time of bonding that results in learning for all involved parties, acceptance of disagreement is essential. In my family, stubbornness and oversensitivity made civil discourse a rare occurrence. As a Chinese adoptee, I struggled to admit the loss I felt about not knowing my birth parents. Believing voicing my concerns with my adoptive parents would be fruitless, I resorted to Twitter. So at sixteen-years-old, I published a strand of tweets condemning the system named adoption. Minutes after I pressed “post,” my mother, furious about what she just read, stomped over to my father’s study. The rest of the night consisted of one-sided arguments and tears. The next evening, my mother and I watched a pro-adoption movie. Neither my mother nor I had made space for civil discourse those two nights. My mother had been locked in her belief that she was right. How could adoption ever be bad? After all, she had opened her life to two strangers. By showing me that pro-adoption video, she created little room for disagreement. Meanwhile, I had never spoken up. I hid behind my computer and Twitter and did not argue against watching that movie. Just as I stressed over not keeping the beat while playing the piano, I had been intimidated by discord. Life ticked on after those nights and I learned that the stubbornness and oversensitivity that plagued my family afflicted others, too. Always finding safety in books, I became involved in the extreme progressive Twitter-sphere that surrounds young adult fiction. In December 2019, J. K. Rowling tweeted support for a woman who made the transphobic claim that “people cannot change their biological sex” (Coleman, Clive). In the next couple of days, I watched on Twitter as many showered transgender creators with love while others tweeted things along the lines of “J. K. Rowling should die in a hole.” The latter response conveys just as little empathy as J. K. Rowling’s tweet did and provides no opening for conversation and growth. Although bigotry is difficult to have civil discourse about due to its deeply personal nature and marginalized people should not feel beholden to educate others, if all parties, especially the prejudiced and privileged, are willing to listen and learn even if they do not agree, then acceptance can flourish. The inability to listen to those who are different can have drastic impacts on a global scale. Japan’s conflict between Korean Japanese and ethnic Japanese highlights this fact. In Tokyo and Osaka, small communities of Koreans regularly face discrimination. Korean children who were born in Japan cannot wear their traditional clothes outside of school in fear of ridicule. Not finding a home in Japan, the Koreans look for aid and sympathy in North Korea. It’s a “cycle,” Vox Borders explains. Japanese discriminate against Koreans in Japan. The Koreans in Japan support North Korea. As a result of this alliance, Japanese further discriminate against Koreans (Harris, Johnny). Similar to the J. K. Rowling situation, in this case, with no one, particularly the Japanese with privilege, exhibiting a willingness to pause and listen in spite of cultural differences, civil discourse cannot take place and the cycle cannot end. When the existence of discord is accepted and disagreeing parties are able to speak and listen, true bonding and education transpire. In January 2020, I discovered unsettling truths about my adoption. My orphanage had engaged in “baby trafficking” and many adoption papers, possibly mine, were falsified. Sitting in the car with my fingers trembling, I was not sure if I could voice what I unearthed to my mom. I took the chance. As the sun set outside the window, my mother and I were truthful to one another. I admitted how disturbed I was and my mother did not invalidate me. While we disagreed on the probability of my own abandonment being a result of unethical means, we still were able to listen and accept our differences. My mother learned more about my personal feelings and I recognized how discord, when welcomed, can be beautiful. Works Cited
Coleman, Clive. “Maya Forstater: Woman Loses Tribunal over Transgender Tweets.” BBC News, BBC, 19 Dec. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/uk-50858919. Harris, Johnny, director. Inside North Korea's Bubble in Japan. YouTube, Vox, 31 Oct. 2017, youtu.be/qBfyIQbxXPs |
AboutI'm Darcy Aisling, just a Chinese adoptee living in a big world. They/them This blog serves as place for me to share my thoughts and stories surrounding adoption. To read more of my reviews and fanfiction, head off to Goodreads and Archive of Our Own. To view more of my stories, visit Wattpad.
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