[Continued from HERE.]


I definitely wasn’t given any special treatment because of being adopted. I was, indeed, the black sheep of my family in many ways but being that every family I knew had a black sheep (and none of them were adopted... though they had their suspicions...) it never even occurred to me that it was because I was adopted. I was different because I was me, and everybody’s “me” is different, so of course it should be that way.

Adolescence changed that for a bit as having an excuse as juicy as adoption at hand to fall-back on when feeling the usual parent persecution of the age, when hormones started to wreak havoc and knowing everything made it impossible for anyone else to measure up to my genius. Of COURSE no one understood me... I’m adopted.

So I began singing my “Little Orphan Annie” song in my head again, and created perfectly incredible and fantastically dramatic stories about the situation surrounding my birth and why my biological parents didn’t keep me. The story changed to reflect whatever book I was reading, news story I had heard or movie I saw. I could have written a new “After School Special” for ABC every single day if they had just asked.

At that age, I also vowed to search for my birth parents as soon as I was “old enough,” which I believed to be eighteen, as that seemed to be the magic age at the time for everything else...even drinking! Before I managed to be eighteen, though, I had already gotten used to my hormones and changing body and angst-y reality and so was focused on getting out of my home town and taking on the world. The significance of the search subsided.


[Continued...]