Confession of an Adoptee: Grandma's Smile
Bittersweet thoughts
I am incredibly proud to be adopted. I love my parents and I am grateful for my family, there’s a lot to be thankful for, and yadda yadda...
I know I am coming off as unserious about the topic but truly, trust me, I am happy and grateful. If you want to read more about my pride in being adopted, then go read my college essay.
This blog post isn’t about that. Instead, it’s about how when I opened Instagram tonight, and saw a photo of my [beautiful] cousin (biologically related to my mother’s side of the family) I felt these feelings in the following order:
Admiration [because she is beautiful, duh!]
Contemplative as I wrote out “Omg beautiful” in her comment section [as she is a young lady who is at the age that I was when I didn’t want to be perceived, and she deserves to hear that she is beautiful as she is becoming who she is!]
Jealousy
I didn’t feel jealousy because of any sort of typical reason you’d feel jealousy when you open up Instagram
“xyz girl is prettier than me”
“I want to buy ABC product because influencer #23 on my timeline displayed it and made it look fantastic”
“Wow I wish I had that amount of space in my apartment”
I am talking about the kind of jealousy that stems from a bittersweet emotion between loving that you have been adopted, but also the vanity of wishing that you looked like your family. I wish sometimes that I looked like the people I hold closest to my heart in the whole world.
Now I understand that some people out there don’t like that they look like their family because they may hate their family. Sometimes I wish that was even maybe the case for me because, in a similar vein, I know damn well that if I hated my dad, I wouldn’t grieve him so much.
I wish I looked like my beautiful grandma and my gorgeous mom because one day, when all of the amazing people that I love so much and hold so dear are gone gone, I will [hopefully] be old, and be at an age where when I am looking in the mirror at each little smile line, each little wrinkle, I see them.
I take a lot of photos of my family at family gatherings, and I always say it’s because I want to remember the moment. Some of my family will fight me on it a little going “Oh I didn’t know we were going to have a photoshoot today” or “No no I am not ready for photos” etc, I still try to make sure we get photos as much as possible.
It's not because I want to post it later, it’s because much later in my life, when I no longer can harass them to take family photos with me, I can look back at the pictures and share them with new people I meet and show them how proud I am of where I come from—the people who made me, me.
While I may not be able to look in the mirror when I am old and see my grandma’s smile or my mom’s kind eyes, I know that they helped me become me, and that is good enough for me. <3