*a note: I am aware of the antagonism of and in the word bastard. I am using it intentionally. In my writing it is part reclamation and part injured angry abandoned child. I am sorry if the use of the word bastard keeps you from reading the work. Please know I use it a lot in this article.
As I watch Texas intentionally skirt, derail, suppress and ultimately avoid if not abort the Public Health Bill HB2725 - the legislation that would allow all Texas born (or Texas adopted) adoptees to have access to their vital records - their real vital records - their original birth certificates - their time of birth - the location of their birth - and perhaps, and, potentially least important, the person who birthed them ... I realize this legislation is about me and about people like me. I appreciate that this legislation directly impacts me. But, I have no ability to mentally or emotionally access this moment. The feeling of it evades me. There is no hope. There is no dread. There is no loss or recovery. There is no joy. There is no sorrow. There is only heaviness and disassociative affect. That is all I have access to. The liminality of being a bastard, a bastard from Texas, is the place I exist and have my whole life.. When the Texans squash HB2725, and they will, it will have no direct bearing on my life and immediate reality. It is pure evil. But to be a bastard, a bastard from Texas, is to have always known pure evil. The adoptees here sit beside that evil every day. The only way we know we exist is that we also sit with ourselves, with each other. We have long and complicated histories with ourselves. We have walked every step with ourselves. We are because we continue to be despite the intervention of a State, Texas, that says we should not have ever been.
In January 2019 I had no desire, actually a life formed around not wanting, to find anything out about my genealogical realities, inheritances nor the genetic others who made up those realities and inheritances. I have never understood my genealogical relatives as "family". I am a genealogical isolate - connected to no specific set of inheritances or histories. I never felt like genetic family were people that were missing from my life. My articulation of my ambivalence was that, if anyone were to ever seek me out, I would be open and welcome them. I swore I would never look. I had declared for 48 years that my adoptive family, in particular my mother, were MORE than enough. I used to say things like "if this is the woman the state thought was COMPETENT to raise me, I don't want to see the woman they thought was not". I am sorry that I ever said that. I am deeply ashamed that I KEPT saying that.
What I have learned in the four months ... it has only been four months, that is crazy ... since receiving my DNA results and entering reunion is that I was socialized to think and say those things about my genetic mother. This is NOT a feel good ending where I found my genetic mother and she always loved me and was coerced to give me away. This is an acknowledgement that I have no idea what happened around my adoption and that the state of Texas is working to intentionally make sure it stays that way. The push back against HB2725 and bills like it ... that is what has compelled me to start looking. Until I entered reunion and joined adoptee support groups, I didn't even understand what sealed and suppressed vital records meant. I didn't know that I was being denied, by law predicated on the illegitimacy of my birth, what every other person born in the United States has access to. I never questioned the birth certificate I had. Not even after I was denied a passport because of missing information on said birth certificate. I think people believe that the days of divergent statuses between legitimate and illegitimate birth and the "bastard" designation are traditions past. Some may think they are ghost stories at this point. I implore you to examine, research and engage the realities that these are not only current practices ... THEY ARE LAW.
It is important for folks who are paying attention or are new to the restrictions placed around adoption/adoptees regarding access to unaltered vital information to understand that this is a social justice issue. This is a humanity issue. This is a person-hood and autonomy issue. This is a continuation in a long line of abuse and trauma that adoptees face over their lifetimes. It never goes away. It never stops. And because of the illegitimacy of our birth, we are restricted from full participation in our democracy and governmental processes. I vote under a fake name that was given to me. All of my state and federal issued identifications have a fake name on them. They also potentially have a fake birth date and other information. But, because I am a bastard - a Texas bastard in particular - I have no way to compel the state or anyone else to give me back my identity. I am involuntarily enrolled in something like witness protection, except I am the person that is being protected against. I want to actively engage others in a critical examination of the role of the State and the Nation State - many states and nation states - in not only creating but perpetuating genealogical disruption for adoptees - arbitrarily and at will. State to state the rules and restrictions very. The narrative remains the same.
There is certainly a continuum of ways in which a genetic mother is separated, severed, from her newborn. I was born in 1970. My vital records, which are every kind of fiction, say I was born in El Paso, Texas in April. My original birth records are sealed for the protection of the identity of the person who gave birth to me. This anonymity is also the prevailing "reason" opponents of HB2725 are giving in favor of the bill failing. Opponents say that women will stop putting their children up for adoption and turn to abortion if their anonymity is not secured. They are using my disruption, my complete loss of genealogical reality, inheritance and connection, as an anti-abortion campaign. Fuck these people.
I was 45 before I found out what time of day I was born. I was 48 when I found out the time of birth recorded was probably fake. I have no idea how much I weighed or how long I was. I do not know the recorded race of my genetic parents. Hell, i cannot even do an astrological chart. It sounds like such a little thing to those who have always had these privileges... but it is huge. I cannot live my life like other people because I do not even know the day, month, time, location I was born. The only person sealed out of sealed adoption records are the adoptee themselves.
THIS IS INHUMANE...
I have been blessed to connect with two adoption angels who reached out to me after seeing my bleating online. Both have shared with me that Texas has two sets of records. Birth Books. One "book" has every birth in Texas (1970) and the other "book" has the recorded births in Texas (1970). One might assume, should they be privileged to have never been metaphorically buried by the state for the crime of being a bastard, that those records should match. In the case of adoptees (1970) we live in the gaps between those two books.
MY REALITY IS IN THE SPACE BETWEEN TWO BOOKS...
The search angels, other adoptees who have traveled this road of discovery - when one must discover themselves - who help people like me find their original vital information,,,
AND IT IS, IN FACT, VITAL.
...tell me that the information that occurs in book one and not in book two, and vice versa, are the adoptees. We exist in a slippage of information. So, a person could be born on 9/8/1970 in book one and show up in book two as 8/9/1970. My adoptive name shows up in book two. There is no record of a baby girl on that day in that county in book one.
MY BIRTHDAY IS FAKE. I AM A LIE.
There is a baby girl the day before in book one... and since my record in book two is at 2am it is possible THEY JUST DIDN'T RECORD IT UNTIL THE NEXT DAY or they recorded the information incorrectly on purpose to protect SOMEONE ELSE. And those are the truths that unmake you. Imagine what it is like to find out you are not who you think you are. That you are a different person who had a different name with a different family and a different culture ... it is the stuff of movies. And it is the stuff of adoptees.
This protection of someone else... This suppression of my entire existence to protect someone else. That I, at my birth, was such a life long threat to someone else I had to not only be removed from their life but hidden from myself forever. How do I look at this stranger's face, my own, every day and know that I am such a threat to others that I cannot be allowed access to my own birth date. Murders, rapists, serial killers, serial rapists, dictators, eugenicists, perpetrators of genocide and war criminals who are born and remain in their genetic families all have access to their own birth date. What does that make me. A bastard.
Bastards, especially Texas bastards born in the 70s and 80s are the greatest threat in our country to the end that we must suppress their birth records so that they cannot find themselves.
I don't even know if I want to find my genetic mother. I don't even know if I want to know her name. I have never had any yearning for my birth story. I do not think I would necessarily benefit from knowing I am a child of rape or incest. I do want to know that if I and others like me wish, we CAN know these things. I do want to know that I can KNOW.
Things that I ponder ... If you lied on a federal or state document requiring identification, would you not go to jail? It is a crime. People cannot get food - food stamps - health care - drive a car - nor register to vote without proof of identity that has been UNALTERED. I have no such proof. My identity has been fabricated by the State of Texas. Legally.
If you created a fake birth certificate and social security card, have you not committed a felony? Unless, of course, you are a bastard from the State of Texas. There, it is legal to fabricate birth records, birth certificates and social security cards. And by omission, suppression, law or lie ... you can erase a person forever. If HB2725 fails, I am at risk of never getting my identity back. I could be lost ... forever.
Erased people cannot inherit. The principal concern that generated these practices were directly related to capital. What we were, and I would argue are still, concerned with are what one could inherit, whether your daughter was virginal chattel, and whether adultery could be verified in the body of a child. The concern about a genetic mother's identity is about the worth of a woman being located in her virginity - and whether a bastard child could return to claim inheritance and/or undo the matrimonial contract for fraud (proving the claim of virginity untrue). This is what the advocates of HB2725 are fighting for - not the good of the mother or child - capital. I am not looking to inherit money or property or even a surname at this point. I only want to inherit myself. I want to be genealogically reconnected. I want the pain of disruption to end.
If you are a #texasresident #callyourlegislators #voteyes #HB2725 #mustpass
More soon...
Bastard Baby Girl
