Why do I feel like a spook?

Question

I was adopted at birth. It's taken a lifetime to 'integrate' into my adoptive family, despite the fact that I was supposedly always 'part of the family'.

Why do I still feel like a Spy in the House of Middle Class America?

Answer 1

Boo!

I felt like a spook for a while in my life too!! I am just now starting to feel like I fit in, sort of.

sorry.

Answer 2

Oh now surely you have heard the old phrase "children should be seen and not heard"! Maybe adoptees shouldn't be seen or heard, after all we are here to see to the needs and wants of our adults... aren't we?

Answer 3

Not fitting in...  Every teenager goes through this kind of identity crisis.

And yet...  teenagers usually come to grips with it and come out the other side with some questions settled.

For the adoptee, the questions are more concrete, more basic, in some sense.  How can we feel at home in our own skin, when we don't know where that skin came from?  We look at our parents, and we don't see ourselves in twenty or thirty years.  We look at faces and pictures of relatives, and don't see anything familiar reflected there.  We don't know what we will look like when we're older.  We don't have those threads that tie us firmly to humanity.  We cannot settle the most basic questions of identity because there is no one who can give us the answers.  

Even when we are loved and accepted for who we are, we still have these gaping holes in our identity.  Those aren't filled by love and care.

Thus your analogy makes perfect sense to me.  Not knowing who we are, or how we fit, how could we not feel like a spy or an alien?

Answer 4

You know, I could never put my finger on it - for 36 years of my life - something just didn't feel right.

Now I've found a bio sister - that is SO like me - in so many many ways.

That's what I missed - that's what I yearned for - that's what felt wrong.

I just wanted to know another that was biologically the same as me - to know that I wasn't a freak .

Reunion is amazing.

A rollercoaster - but just - amazing!

Answer 5

I hear ya.  There's no guarantee how someone moved from their family to another family is going to feel as far as how s/he fits in.  It took until I was in my late 20's to start feeling "a part of."  Up until that point, I always knew in my head I was a member of the family.  I didn't think they were going to "send me back."  That fear went away fairly early.  But, I also knew that there were such core differences that I didn't quite fit.  My adoptive parents knew it, too.  It wasn't always easy for them, either.  They learned pretty quickly that the blank slate theory is b.s.  

So, I always knew that I belonged but didn't "belong."

ETA:

By my late 20's I was married and now the concept of family had a different focal point for me.  It wasn't so important anymore for me to feel integrated into my adoptive family.  It's not that any of us felt that I ever started to become more like the family, it's just that it wasn't as important anymore as to whether I did or not.

Answer 6

Aw, I dunno.  Why, at 42, do I still feel like a feral child?

Answer 7

i tried for a while to intergrate. but it wasnt for me. now i revel in my oddity. they dont know what i will say or do next, and i like that.

i think my way of thinking is a little odd, many spend their life trying to be a part of something, i could care less. it would be nice once in a while to just 'fit in' but those moments are fleeting for me. i would rather be considered the spook, as you call it, then to be the square peg trying my whole life fitting into a round hole. i dont have the patience for that.

they either accept me or they dont. either way i will go on. i know they love me, and thats all i really care about.