Snakes. Adoption. Birthdays.

I hate my birthday. Luckily this past birthday was spent dealing with a bed bug infestation and attending a memorial service for a murdered uncle. It was perfect. There was nothing celebratory about it. One of my best birthdays ever.

We all know that birthdays are hard for adoptees, but I'm here to explain a little bit about why.

I'm adopted. Adopted Lite is what it's called (though I've yet to see what's so 'lite' about it). That means that I wasn't adopted when I was a little baby. I think I was 15 or 16 when I was adopted (I always block out what year it was. I could check my adoption papers to verify what year it was but I'm too lazy.) Take a serious dose of listening to The Cure, wearing all black, covering one of my eyes with my hair, obsessively drawing dead people hanging from tree branches, and add to that being given up for adoption by my father and you had the perfect mix to create someone who questions reality. That was me.

Birthdays are a celebration of life. The problem is that when you're adopted your entry into the world wasn't necessarily a happy occasion. Thinking about your birthday is hard to do without thinking of your parents. Let's face it: if you were adopted your existence was the epicenter of some pretty serious shit. Maybe you were "relinquished" (that's the adoption language we're all supposed to call it now, by the way) because your family was starving to death. Maybe you were relinquished because your mother died in childbirth. Maybe you were relinquished because your mother was raped. Maybe you were relinquished because your mother wanted to finish graduate school. Maybe you were relinquished because one parent wanted to get the child dependency credit on their taxes. Maybe you were relinquished because one parent didn't think it was fair to have to pay child support on you.

When I became adopted it cast a grim cloud my existence. It's weird because if I look at my life I can remember exactly what my birthday felt like before I was adopted. And I know what it's like now as an adoptee. So I've known both ways. After my adoption my birthday became this tremendously phoney affair. It's like a whole veil was lifted off of reality and I could finally see life for what it is. I don't think I've ever once made it through a birthday since then without crying. When I wake up in the morning of my birthday I give myself a pep talk first thing. I can't explain it. Everything becomes so raw. Everything becomes so hard to believe in on my birthday.

I admit that I'm someone who flirts with existential angst anyway. I'm an artist for crying out loud. But still.

I don't want to put this feeling onto my children. I don't want to, yet I won't be surprised if they don't feel it too. The adoption text books describe it so it must be a real thing, right? I had no idea that there was a reason for me to hate my birthday until our first homestudy classes about adoption. I thought it was just me being crazy.

We have a lot of black snakes in our garden this time of year. They come to eat the eggs in the chicken house. Babba physically removes them- they're often longer than 6 feet! I have a serious phobia of snakes. I've tried to hide this from Dew Drop. I try to discreetly run into the house until the snake has been taken away. But she's on to me. She's created a song for me telling me not to be afraid of snakes. The other day Babba encouraged her to touch a snake that he'd caught. She was fearless- maybe too fearless (must teach her how to identify who's poisonous and who's not) I want to protect her fearlessness. I don't want her to be preoccupied about snakes like me. I don't want her to hate her birthday like I hate mine. As an adoptee, though, I think it's kind of unavoidable. We'll commiserate.