"I want a family."
I was quiet today maybe because the realization was hitting me like a truck. It was making me sick to think about it, how had I let myself get so far. To start yearning for something I wouldn't get. To start loving them. Enjoying their presence. Never wanting to leave. I had been keeping to myself and a little cold towards the boys and Derrick the last few days but only because I didn't like the feelings rising in me. If I just turned them off I wouldn't have to worry about it. I couldn't just do that though. Even if I tried.
"I can definitely see that in your future. It's a good thing-" I shake my head.
"No. Now. I want a family."
"You want to keep the baby?"
I furiously rub at my forehead. I'm sure I looked crazy and wasn't making sense. It was a stupid thing to say. I was tired of keeping this in it all just echoed in my mind and I think it would drive me crazy if I couldn't let anyone know, but what a better person to tell than someone who was basically sworn to secrecy.
"No, like, now. I want a family. I want to be adopted. I don't know. It sounds stupid now that I say it out loud."
"It's not stupid, Aaron."
"But it is, I'm almost 17, and next year i'll be 18 and age out, and no one wants to adopt teens. Especially black teens and most definitely not black teens with what's in my record. It's stupid. It'll never happen, I know, I should just be glad i'm with Derrick, right? for however long I have left," the end sounded like a question, even to myself I think I was finally starting to wonder what my future had in store.
The baby would be due soon, and next month was my seventeenth birthday, and then i'd be eighteen. That age was like a death sentence. I knew people that once they turned that age, they just got kicked to the curb. Fending for yourself in a whole new way. You couldn't just go back to the homes, or hope to get fostered. That was it. I wondered if i'd be the same.
"I know this is stupid, I know it is, It's all so very dumb and stupid and idiotic and just the piano waiting to fall on my head, but I want to stay with them. Derrick. Carter, Cameron, Rylie. I want to stay and I want to have birthdays and stupid fights and hear stupid jokes and play their stupid video games and hear the drumming for as long as I can. Forever if I could. If I could freeze time I would freeze it in this moment. These days, these months, even with this baby they've been some of the best of my life, the easiest, the most i've ever felt secure, and to think—" I was started to cry. I felt so stupid, crying for over what? the inevitable? "—to think that one day I won't have this, it makes me physically ill. I want to scream and I some days I want to beg him to adopt me. I want to call him dad and I want to call them my brothers and I want to know i'm safe like this for the rest of my life. It's stupid, I know it's stupid and it won't happen but I don't know, I feel like being here, with them, with you, like it all had to happen for a reason right? Like, maybe they could be that forever family for me they always talk about on the pamphlets."
"Have you talked about any of this, with Derrick?"
I shake my head, I could barely tell him thank you without feeling like I would cry. The words always were clawing at my throat. What if you adopted me? Do you ever think about keeping me? What happens after I turn eighteen? Right now, the farthest we've ever talked about the future was me graduating high school. Maybe even going to a real school for my final year.
"It's too embarrassing. How do you even ask that? Hey do you like me enough to want to adopt me? It's just weird. It hasn't even been a year and i'm already attached. The fact that i've even let myself get so comfortable makes my skin crawl. It doesn't make sense to me. Do you think it's because they've been the only people in years that have been kind to me so i'm trying to latch on to that feeling? Maybe i'm blinded by the niceness."
Jane drones about how having these feelings were normal and how I should express my grievances to Derrick so I won't feel blindsided in the long run. The idea made my stomach churn.
"What if he says he doesn't want to adopt me?"
"Then he says no."
"Wow. great."
"But knowing Derrick even if he were to say no, he won't leave you out in the cold."
"I'd rather just sit here and yearn then actually be told no."
"Then don't say anything. Let all this run it's course and see where you end up at the end. Either way I don't see a bad outcome."
"But I want a family. I want to feel what is to belong to something. To people. To share that. I want to be able to say those are brothers. That's my dad. That's my house."
"What's stopping you from doing that now?"
"It would be weird."
"Adoption is just names on paper. You can't feel it. Whose to say they don't think of you as family now?"
"You don't get it."
"Explain it then."
"Its like, I don't know, imagine you and some person had been together for years. Like half your life and basically it's like you're married. Right, it's been so long and you don't doubt they love you or your relationship but then they finally ask, will you marry me? There's something in that, the finality. Like you knew it was gonna be forever but them actually asking–saying those words, It solidifies it. I know I can't feel paper or the signatures but I want finality. I don't want to have to wonder."
"Then you have to ask. Or you wait for them to ask you."
"I feel like we're going in circles here Jane."
Jane sets her pad and paper down, leaning forward in her seat, "The only way to get the finality you want is to put yourself in that position. When people gets asked the question of will you marry me as you so put it it's because even before that perhaps marriage was a conversation they had. That's something they knew in the end they both wanted. It's not about when it was asked, rather the conversations and time that led up to it."
Time. Time was very stupid because in reality this wasn't enough time to want to adopt some depressed, mean spirited, and knocked up teenager. I know some people get married very early but this wasn't that. This was a long term commitment, he would have to be my actual parent. Derrick took care of me but would he actually want to my dad? That would be another kid he'd have to send to college, and worry about something happening to.
"So it'll never happen. Right I gotcha."
"Aaron. That's not what i'm saying."
"I will never willingly put myself in a position where I would have to be crushed so badly. If he were to say no, god, I wouldn't be able to take it. I wouldn't. I wouldn't be able to be here anymore. I would rather be kicked to the curb and keep the memories because that's what i've been trained to do. If tomorrow he said "hey you can't stay here anymore," I would hold my chin up high and just leave. It would hurt but I could take that, but if he actively looked into my eyes and said sorry, Aaron, but I can't be your Dad, I would die. I would literally die on the spot because that means i'm too fucked up."
"What's the difference between you being fostered for five years with them no adoption, and you being adopted five years with them? Would you not consider him your parent? Would you not consider his sons your brothers? Would they not be your family?"
"The longest I was ever in a good home was a over a year. They weren't bad people. It was nice, I liked it there. A whole year plus a few extra months. Fostered. Their children never called me their sister, their parents never called me their child. When people would ask they'd say; "Oh, no, she's not our daughter. We're fostering her." or "Nah. She's our foster sister not our real sister."
"The difference, maybe it was only something I noticed. Maybe it only matters to me, maybe it's stupid and you think i'm not making any sense but it's there. No they won't be my brothers and no, he won't be my dad. They'd be my foster brothers. He'd just be my guardian. The paper matters, because to the world, the state, and nosy people on the street, it's not real without out it. I want it to be real to anyone who asks. I need it to be real for me."
🏃♀️💨
Um. Hi besties?
- C.
