Adoptee Victim of the Holidays

by Corey Goldwaves
(Chaotic rhyme scheme to match my emotional state)
​


As I enter the home to over-salted deviled eggs, loud dogs, and poisonous side conversations,
the adoptive family quickly unleashes their shallow holiday greetings and stale smiles.
The black sheep of the family has entered the home with the people-pleaser persona ready to please,
and the scoffing house owners' covert resentment that you can see for miles.


I go straight to the TV gathering because sports takes precedence over discussing the oddities of the human soul.
Any emotional releasing of truth from an adoptee to a narcissistic narrative holder, to their image, may take a serious toll. Along with football being the shield to any true connection, the subject of jobs is always a safe bet.
Employment talk is a sanitary substitution to life's passions, the path to which an adoptee's heart is truly set.


I mention my joy of a piano gig to an adoptive sister's husband, who quickly changes the subject.
God knows how many complaints they have shared about me as I stay in their minds, they're abundant.
It's an unspoken rule that I am not to share my success unless it is theirs that is confirmed to be greater.
Their ego is fragile, their understanding is short, and their comfort mindsets are baselined at haters.


I pretend to be ok as I walk in circles, hitting the appetizers and surface-level relations.
Only dreaming to myself of real connections and completely conscious of the apparent negative vibrations.
It's time to eat and I sit at their kid's table with another outcast who is an overt racist.
But not outcasted for his racism, it's his word against mine if I'd ever complain, and their distaste for bigotry is forever in stasis.


It's time to go home, and alone, my depression hits, for I long for the compassion of another.
I long for a family that knows me well, my pains, my yearning to uncover.
I declare Thanksgiving is the last holiday with the adoptives; I refuse to bear them for Christmas.
The adoptee chat is my new family now, my allies, my companions, my witness.

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About the Author:
Corey Goldwaves is a Black, transracially adopted artist who expresses his emotions and heals through music. Listen to his music here: https://coreygoldwaves.bandcamp.com/

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