Another Voice

Today I attended a meeting that I go to every week. I have been going for a few years now and I have told many stories there. I have told stories about good things and hard things, about being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, about being a redhead, and I have told stories about being adopted. Telling these stories at this meeting, it was not the first time I had spoken the words or told these stories. I have told and re-told them through almost every stage of my life and have no doubt that I will continually tell these stories.

Now, the meeting is over and I sit at my computer writing today's experience, unable to take in a breath and with tears rolling down my face. I have never cried or been sad about being adopted. In fact I have often declared that I have been happy to have been adopted. This is still true. I am happy, but today I heard a similar story to mine told by another person. He spoke calmly and without an excess of emotion, much as I have done in the past. He talked about wondering who he was becoming with new discoveries, what would happen to his relationships, and who was trust worthy of being involved with such personal explorations. I could say nothing to this man, this man who, without knowing it, was speaking much of my story, my thoughts and feelings, back to me. I could only sit with confessing eyes, looking at the others who might know some of my internal struggles.

It is hard, it is always hard to live a life that is only partially known, where the story is only ever partially told, and where the possibility (if that story is ever truly and completely told) might disrupt the very basis of who you understand yourself to be. I sit in my office and only now begin to feel the weight of these stories, told and untold. I weep for the fact that I always must have an answer to the questions because not having an answer would be worse. I weep for the fact that, any time I ask questions, my world quakes a little bit because of the unsurety of what speaking that question might mean. I weep for the unspoken question that I, my family, and my birth family do not dare to speak for fear of what they will do once put into words.

I am also envious. Envious of those for whom it is easy to get some of the answers of which they seek. People have said that I am brave but I am not. I make weak attempts to find my origins. I fear what that discovery might do to the family I love and to who I know myself to be. I make excuses that I am dealing with enough right now and a disruption like that would through my focus. These are true things and will always be a consideration, but I wonder now, will this sudden pain I feel be put back on a shelf waiting for a day when I am not so busy to deal with what it is? Will I make any effort to understand this feeling and what to do with it, or will I once again retreat into other work or just look at my story through academic and phycological eyes so that I might distance myself?

Will I listen to this new voice within me? Will I...