So I had to head back to my favorite place last night - the grocery store. It was definitely a better trip this time around since I didn’t have any children with me and it was 7pm so there weren’t as many people in the store. I also saved $80 off my bill, paying $142 for $221 worth of food, and that always makes me happy.

If you live in a smaller area chances are when you do your shopping you tend to see the same few people aisle after aisle. You know, like you are shopping at the same pace as them. Well there was a lady like that last night and she kept staring at me whenever we were near one another.

I finished collecting my groceries in a record 35 minutes, got in a fast moving checkout lane and was hurrying out of the store to get home when the same lady I had seen in every aisle was sitting on a bench near the door. She was staring at me again, I smiled as I was walking by and she spoke to me.

“Excuse me, are you Kelly?”

“No, I’m sorry. My name isn’t Kelly.”

“Well you look identical to this girl Kelly I used to work with. I mean really, you could be her twin.”

“That’s funny. I do get that quite a bit - that I look like someone people know. I seem to have one of those faces.” And it does happen to me a lot. I don’t get the name Kelly, per se, but I do have people thinking they recognize me or know me from somewhere a few times a month.

Most people shrug these things off but when you’re adopted, it’s not so easy. It’s hard to resist the urge to start asking questions like “How old is Kelly?” and “What town does she live in?” and “Has she been in the area her whole life?” and “What’s her last name?” all along with the adoption explanation. But that’s not realistic. It’s much more likely that I just have one of those faces. I was born nearly 2 hours north of where I currently live and don’t even know where my birth parents are from. People in the town I was born in are typically transplants from the big city that have moved to VT to get away from it all.

I still haven’t heard anything from the Adoption Registry either. While it still may be a matter of red tape bureaucracy I know that with each passing day the likelihood of a match grows slimmer. Each day seems to solidify the fact that no one is looking for me. And I understand that about as much as I understand giving up a child when you are educated and pursuing a career - I don’t. It makes me angry. It’s wrong to deny adopted children (even when they are 35) the right to know their biological families. I don’t want to suddenly have this family whose house I’m at every day. I don’t want to be a part of their every day life, I just want to know who they are. I want to know if I have any brothers or sisters. I want to know what I get from them, if anything.

By not making themselves available to be found it’s as though they are denying my existence. But it doesn’t make me an less real or important. It hurts - that’s for sure. But I can’t let it define my self-worth anymore. I have felt like the abandoned, unwanted, misfit chid my whole life and I am sick of defining myself by events that took place before I was even born. Events that I rationally know I do not have all the details about. It’s time to create my own sense of self - independent of others actions in the past.