Scandalous

I was watching Joe Wright's "Pride and Prejudice" again, and was thinking about the scandal of Lydia running away with Wickham. About dirtying the family name and redeeming it.

And of course how some of us adoptees are relinquished for the same reason. To avoid family scandals. To rid the family of evidence of improper behavior, i.e., sexual, outside of wedlock. To tidy things up and rewrite narratives.

No matter how pretty we try to make the revisions, however, the truth remains. It burns, it stings. All the more so when it's denied (by denying us, or by treating us as less than, or by insisting that blood doesn't matter).

As physical evidence of something deemed awry, adoptees are convenient scapegoats for all that is wrong with our families, and receptacles for society's pie-in-the-sky imagined stories of redemption. I know this is old news, but it remains true.

In August I saw a Harold Pinter play, "No Man's Land," in Berkeley. It's all about perspective and unreliable narratives and scandals and harming others by secrets and lies. Whom do you believe, and why? Is there one stable narrative? No, of course not. We must take them all, sort them, review them, and decide what works. Usually in playbills, there's a summary of the plot. There was decidedly no plot summary in this playbill. Mark was stymied. "Why was there no guidance?" he asked. Pinter, unlike many writers, did not wish to dictate meaning to the audience (or the actors, for that matter--he hated to be asked to clarify). I understand, how I understand, especially the war metaphor.

It's difficult to live in a world where one's existence is tied exigently to unstable narratives about family, for those tie into one's core, one's innermost self. What is pinned onto us? Thrown away with us? Resurrected with us?

I was thinking about ways in which I courted scandals and created them, when I was younger, and not so young, as well: Is it just me, or is it being adopted? How do I know how to live, unless it is on the edge, challenging people's ideas of the status quo? I push boundaries, break societal rules, and act in ways that make people raise their eyebrows. Always have.

"Why can't you just leave that alone?" My answer: "Because I cannot. I have to know/do/go there." It's about being true to myself, not sacrificing myself on some artificial altar for a purpose dictated to me by others. And truth be told, I have been at my happiest when at the center of some things that society deemed scandalous.

People love hearing about scandals, but they are predictable about judging those living them (sometimes rightly, sometimes less so). Having been thus judged all my life, I don't like the censure, but I am at a point now where often I can shrug it off.

When the world doesn't know what to do with you, one way of coping is to wear masks, to play roles, to behave in ways that don't draw attention to yourself. I have responsibilities now that make me much less likely to act scandalously, but I will always be the product of a scandalous relationship and treated as such, if I out myself to people.

I do have people in my life who don't allow me to wear my masks all the time, and I am relieved that with them I can breathe, and take off my metaphorical corset.

The great thing has been finding my father; no one who sees him can deny our likeness, and people, even ones who insist that I am fortunate not to have ended up aborted, tell me what a pity it is that I missed knowing him. Too true. But again, my knowing him was prevented by scandal, by being unsure of his character, perhaps? I understand, but I mourn what might have been, the conversations we never had.

Yet I appreciate how imperfect the world can be, dirty hems and all.