Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Thing About Information

Those first pieces of non-identifying information provoked a watershed moment for me: there were actually REAL people who had loved me and given me up, presumably for reasons that they believed to be in my best interest. Prior to seeing them described on the page, they had been no more real than characters in a well-known children's story or familiar heroes from Greek myths. They were shadowy, illusive, undefined, much imagined and even more--safe. Safe from being identified, safe from being a disappointment, safe from breaking my heart as the people who gave me up...who didn't want me...who opted for a life without me in it.


Once I knew them for who Catholic Charities painted them to be: a young unmarried woman, outspoken, well-loved by her family, with two married sisters and two still-married attentive parents and an older, attractive, dashing golf pro who was married to another woman: they became real. They became adults, just like myself, who were forced to make choices for their own lives and mine. In particular, they became fascinating characters in my own life story. Characters who needed more fleshing out, protagonists who needed additional development. I yearned to know more. I ached to understand their motivation. I dreamed about what might have been for each of them in their lives post-me.

But for nearly five years, my life moved forward. I was relatively content with what I knew. It was only the beginning of the internet--the explosion of investigatory information sites, adoption chat groups, data repositories, and even more that would make searching accessible and addictive was still in the future.

No comments:

Post a Comment