I'm adopted and I have trust issues. Here's why:

I grew up knowing that I was adopted. I’m a fair-skinned freckled brunette who never grew past 4’10” so I fit in photographs just fine with my brunette mother and blonde father who adopted me at birth. When I was little, they told me stories about how God had sent me to their arms, how they had chosen me, how special I was because I was adopted. The story of Moses was especially prominent, as was Tarzan. I grew up in middle America where everybody still goes to church on Sundays and Wednesdays like clockwork and trusts Disney to raise their children during TV time.

My mother was (and still is with my daughter now) a firm believer in keeping children innocent as long as possible. She adores small children and works with them exclusively at the church where she directs the children’s choir and runs the after-school program. My father always had a nonchalant attitude towards these things. He wouldn’t go out of his way to introduce us to things that might be a tad inappropriate, but he also wouldn’t stop us from watching Power Rangers if it was on when our mother was gone.

Because of this sheltering, I grew up pretty behind the curve when it came to pop culture. I remember two nineties songs from the actual nineties (Blue Da Ba Dee and the Macarena, respectively), and I completely missed all the cartoons that weren’t on PBS. I’ve been catching up ever since. The worst “bad word” I knew in sixth grade was “damn.” I still thought “crap” was a bad word back then. So I really doubt you’ll be surprised when I tell you what happened when I was twelve years old.

            I don’t remember the season or the day of the week, but I remember the twenty minutes like it happened yesterday. I was in the garage digging through my mom’s filing cabinet looking for more sheet music to play on the piano. She plays piano and organ at our church still, so there was always something to be found. That’s when I saw a manilla folder with my name on the tab. Obviously curious, I pulled it out. To my surprise, there were no pictures of me inside or honor roll certificates, no reading award ribbons or little league basketball photos. Instead, there was a map of San Antonio, handwritten letters, photographs of a woman holding a baby, paperwork detailing physical attributes of people I’d never heard of before. I started rifling through it, slowly coming to the realization. This was the file folder of all my adoption paperwork. Home study sheets, the case worker checking in on how things were going, letters from Carole, my birthmother, that I’d never seen before in my life, and the one they’d read to me when I was ten and I didn’t understand who the letter was from.

            The garage door started to open behind me, and I could hear the engine of a white suburban rumbling outside. Quickly, I shoved the paperwork back into the folder and pulled the whole thing out. My mother saw me as the garage door came up, and I looked at her like a deer in the headlights. She immediately realized what had happened and ran after me when I bolted back inside and into my room. Back against the door to hold it shut, I ignored her screams of, “Shannon, that’s not for you to see! Just give it back!” Like a cornered animal, I took the paperwork that looked relevant to me and shoved it down my shirt. All the pictures, all the letters, all the identifying paperwork. Crumpled in a panic, down my sports bra it went. When I finally came out to give her back the folder, she was in violent tears, unable to speak anything more than, “your dad.. gets home.. we’ll talk.”

            But the talk that I needed never came. They repeated the same narrative to me. I was chosen. I was special. I was a gift from God. I didn’t need to know. Not until I was eighteen. They didn’t listen to my questions, they didn’t listen to what I thought about this arrangement. They had held back my story from me and refused to give me more information now that I’d seen even a glimmer of the real truth.

            What was the real truth? My birthmother is a working-class (when she is employed) paranoid schizophrenic woman who has struggled off and on before and after giving birth to me with an array of drugs. She didn’t know anything about my birthfather. Suddenly the word “bastard” was the worst word I knew, and it applied to me. As my gifted and talented teacher can attest to, I made a huge scene with the dictionary during class on the day I discovered this new identifying word for myself. I quit making the honor roll. I started yelling at teachers and my parents. I thought maybe if I yelled they would hear me clearer. I didn’t really see the point in anything anymore. I began breaking out of my sheltered cocoon and I did so violently. Eminem and Linkin Park were my gateway drugs into the monster I became. No matter how many times my mother smashed my CD’s, I just got more burned copies from my friends. I ran away from home several times. Once, my parents called the police to find me and escort me home. I snuck out to my first school dance which resulted in my father screwing my windows shut and stripping the screws. I slammed my bedroom door so many times, my mother took it off its hinges so I began to sleep on the floor of my closet. My closet became the place where I slashed walls with knives and learned to cut myself.

The school counselor gave me a VHS copy of “A Beautiful Mind,” and considered her work done after I’d been sent (it was mandatory) to her to talk about my recent emotional and violent outbursts. The next counselor after her told me that schizophrenia can’t be cured, and it runs down the mother’s side genetically so all she was in charge of, really, was preventative counseling for me. I had to manually unlock her car door to get out when I fired her because she was so upset with me. The counselor after that told me that if I just prayed to Jesus, I would find that my angst would be healed. The principal of my junior high told me, after I’d made a drug joke (I was selling my Zoloft because I didn’t want to feel numb) in my student council speech, that he couldn’t understand why such a good girl from a good family could turn so bad. My grandmother speculated that sometimes adopted children just turn out bad.

            With so many adults trying to “make me all better,” somehow they all made it worse. Nobody answered when I asked what PCP was and why my birthmother had listed it in her drug use. I didn’t have access to a google machine back then so I was left clueless. I didn’t even know what marijuana was back then. Nobody answered when I asked who I was supposed to be like. I didn’t want to be like my mother and father who knowingly kept secrets about my life from me. I also didn’t want to be like my birthmother who, from what I could tell at the time, couldn’t get her life together. I didn’t want to be like any adults around me at all. Not a single one. At some point, I figured out what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to shut up and quit asking questions. And you know, I sort of did. I never quit rebelling, though, as is evident even now. I don’t bother lying about the opinions I have or the places I’m going. I told my mother on prom night not to expect me home because I was going out drinking afterwards. I realized pretty soon that, especially in a small town and with lots of friends, I could do whatever I wanted and my parents couldn’t do a thing about it.

            This has translated in a deep distrust in authority that still lingers with me to this day. At an age when authority should be trusted or at least respected, the authority figures in my life failed me. And when I learned that I wasn’t beholden to their rules, when I learned that I could walk all over them, authority just seemed pointless to me. It still does, sometimes. I strongly distrust heavy-handed authority because I believe everybody has a right to know what they want to know especially if it’s about themselves. According to Zen Buddhism, a little skepticism about authority is healthy, but it’s also important to recognize that some authority can be good. I don’t know if I’ve made it there yet. The adults that surrounded me during this huge crisis of my life didn’t have any of the answers or the counseling techniques that I needed. I needed somebody to listen to my questions and answer them straight, but it’s too late for that now.