From That Day Forward

Being told I was adopted at fifteen turned my life around. My thoughts, my attitude, and my feelings changed toward everyone around me. Til this day, I do not know if it was the fact that I was told I was adopted or how I was told I was adopted. Probably a combination of the two.

The day after being told, I was numb, I felt nothing, I heard no one, it was like I was alone in a strange place around strange people in a cold environment no matter the temperature inside and outside. Do I still call them mom and dad? Is he still my brother? Is she still my sister? Where are my real parents? Do I have real brothers and sisters? Am I from this state? So confused, so many thoughts, too many questions, I WAS ONLY FIFTEEN.

I remember it was a vacation week from school, so I had know choice but to be in that now strange place with those now strange people. Dinnertime my adopted mother came to get me out of my room to come and eat dinner. If she said anything other than that, I do not remember. I picked up the one close thing to knowing who I was anymore and brought it with me downstairs. I remember quietness and the absence of my adopted father. I did not know where he was and did not care. I ate, then sat back in my chair and studied my Certificate of Adoption paper, which by the way was the close thing that I mentioned. I had looked at the paper all day, I had cried with that paper all day, I had conversed with that paper all day. So you can say I bonded with a piece of paper. I figured from That Day Forward, that piece of paper was my true identity, my representation, and my family history.