here we are, there they are I lie sometimes and I don’t even know it. When people bring up my birthmother, that’s when lies unravel from my tongue. I shake things off, emphasize the fact that it’s water under the bridge, and try to sound extremely mature and in control of the situation. Some days, I truly feel like I have things under control –that I have myself under control. Others, I pat myself on the shoulder and offer consolation: you have a right to be angry. She’s the woman who gave birth to you and not only did she turned her back on you when you were infant, but now she has turn her back on you as a twenty-year-old girl. Here lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about her. I’ve been thinking about all of my Korean American adoptee friends. Whenever I am out with fellow Korean American adoptees, I always look around the table and think the same thing. It’s strange to think that we were each born in the same country –the same far away country. It’s odd to think that each of us was brought into this world by people we may never meet. It’s interesting to think that a decision basically had a domino effect on our lives –there are thousands of us out there, but here we are, a handful of us –sitting together in a restaurant miles away from our first lives and yet intertwined in our second. This sort of thing makes me wonder if any of our biological parents were friends or acquaintances. Do they wonder about their children that they never knew –and dream up these fantastical lives? Or are they like my birthmother –not even a shadow of a decent human being and in denial that their unwanted children ever existed. It could be when I’m sitting in class or driving or even having a conversation with someone, but sometimes I think about these things –how my generation of Korean American adoptees are becoming adults and nearing the point in our lives where we are able to make decisions that are just as serious and drastic as the ones in which our biological families made. We are just like anyone else our age. We are shuffling cards –picking through our choices indecisively with constant fear that our lives are in our own hands. This is when I get sad. If I had a child that I gave away twenty-something years ago who popped up in the middle of life and showed interest in me, I would want to reciprocate that curiosity. I would think that he/she is old enough to understand things, compelling me to simply tell the truth. I would know how important it is to know who you are, so I wouldn’t keep that from them. I would reminisce, remembering how significant the early twenties are. I would want to know the prospective roads that stand before them –and all that they entail. I would want to take a momentary miniature responsibility for something that I’ve not had to deal with. I feel like I don’t have a lot of people that I can talk to about this. With the Korean American adoptees, unless they have received results in their search for their biological parents, it’s hard to discuss the emotional weight of such a thing. I can’t talk to the white people who are around me. They don’t understand anything, why should they understand this? Besides, one ignorant white person said, “I think it’s really weird how you go out with a bunch of other Korean adoptees. It’s like me going out with random people simply because like me, their parents are their biological parents. It’s sort of stupid.” It’s such a shame that they don’t have the capacity to understand something outside their little huts built in the middle of a cornfield. I grow frustrated with keeping all of this to myself. I feel like a “Debbie Downer” when I bring up such a serious discussion with some adoptees, especially the ones who have never even thought about searching. Besides, the first step in telling someone something like this is finding someone who actually cares. I attract a lot of fair-weather friends or people who like to take and not give. I attract people who, after six months of “knowing me” or hanging out with me, know nothing but the obvious about me. I am tired of it all. | 
