Being Human

I have been watching a BBC television programme called "Being Human." It chronicles the "lives" of a werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost who wish to be human and exist without the baggage of their supernatural natures.

In the episode I watched today, George, the werewolf, was mourning the ordinariness he will never have: a home, a partner, children. He says, "This isn't the life I get now. It's something that happens to other people." He wants a mundane existence so badly he can taste it, but every time he tries to build one, he hurts other people by denying who he is. You can't take the werewolf out of the boy.

I can empathize greatly with these unmoored characters. Being adopted has made me feel, in many ways, less than human. I *am* human, of course, and I function as a human. And yet I cannot take things for granted that non-adopted people can. My skin is thin, I walk alone, and I feel most comfortable in the company of my fellow adoptees. There are days I wish I were a vampire who could take out some people who try to "fix" me or trivialize what I live, every day.

I am sick of being told that I experienced nothing amiss, that any family is as good as any other, that biological kids suffer, too. Of course they do. But they know who they are and can choose to be other than that. Adoptees had no choice. Our entire existence is based on erasure, of being changelings.

No, I don't make my own pain; it came with the package. Sorry, "scientists," you can fuck off. For those people who say that adoption is an event, not a life: you're fortunate. I wish I could take the adoptee out of me, but without it, who *would* I be? I will never know.