by Kathleen Shea Kirstein
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It's a warm summer day in August. I'm sitting on my deck, my morning coffee in hand. I am hoping the deer come to visit. It will be a nice distraction from the anxiety that makes my knee go up and down. The sight of the deer will quiet, at least for the moment, the hypervigilance I feel even alone in my home.

The house has never felt like mine.

When I met my husband, the land had been cleared, the driveway was in process, and the blueprints for the house were already in place. It's always been his house. When we divorced, it automatically became the kids' house—the place where we raised our two sons, now adults and managing their own lives. Honestly, I have never felt like I belonged anywhere. Well, maybe that's not totally correct. I will come back to this thought.

I noticed in my teen years that my problem-solving skills and body type were so different from those of my parents and my sister, who was 5 years my junior. My hair was so much thicker than theirs. We always joked that was my best feature. We said I carried the great hair gene. The two of them carried great metabolism and love for shopping.

In my twenties, my differences seemed to become more apparent, so I found myself asking each of the adults in my family if I was adopted. Each time the family member looked deeply into my eyes and said, “No, why would you even think these crazy thoughts?”.

My son shared the same birth defect as his grandfather, and I looked enough like my mother that I adapted and internalized that thought of my being crazy and never spoke of it again. Also, I never again trusted my own intuition.

At age 49, after winning a free trip to Cancun, Mexico, I applied for a passport. It was denied because I didn't include documentation with the application of why my birth certificate had been filed fourteen months after my actual birth. Searching for the answer to this question, I spent a lunch break combing through my medical records, which were housed two floors under my desk chair, for the many years I had worked in that building as a registered nurse. My employer was also my healthcare provider.

My adoption was outed.

By K E Garland 

To my birth father’s family, 
 
I know I don’t belong. You don’t have to go out of your way to position me as an outsider. I’ve lived on the edges of society’s acceptance since conception. 
 
Fleeing an abusive husband, my mother found herself pregnant with a stranger’s child. For nine months, she silently wept for succumbing to her desires. She whispered self-deprecating statements audible to only herself and me, while the person who impregnated her quietly disappeared.  
 
If her faux pas was made public, the state would name her husband as my father. The government could do that—assign one man’s responsibility to another—and then we’d be stuck. Instead, she hid and fed me morsels of shame in the tight space of her womb. I devoured her fears and learned to hold secrets in my belly, until I ached with regret. 
 
So, the demonstrative way you ignore me is unnecessary. I began life not belonging. ​