079 – There Are Wins And Losses

Paul grew up in a family where he didn’t look like his parents, his father was Mexican and his mother was Japanese. In his childhood, his mother turned incredibly harsh and abusive, especially toward his sister. Searching for his birth mother, Paul made a misstep when he didn’t follow the advice of his search angel, and it cost him a valued relationship. Luckily he was able to connect with his half-siblings on both sides, but one relationship ended abruptly when a spouse fired his gun at Paul! All told, Paul found links to his personal history, and that’s given him the identity he was seeking.

Read Full TranscriptPaul: 00:02 But the one thing that would happen, my aunt told me and one of my older cousins had told me, when I was little, the only person that could get me to stop crying was my dad’s sister. As soon as I was in her arms I would shut up. I would stop and the reason, and here’s, here’s the reason why, this is why I’ve always known that voice. My, my birth mom’s voice is exactly identical to, at least to my ears, as my dad’s sister.

Voices: 00:35 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon: 00:47 This is Who Am I Really? A podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis and on today’s show is Paul. He called me from Tucson, Arizona. Paul grew up in a family where he didn’t look like his parents and eventually his mother turned incredibly harsh and abusive. Searching for his birth mother, he made a misstep when he didn’t follow the advice of his search angel and it cost him a valued relationship. Luckily, he was able to connect with his half siblings on both sides. But one relationship ended abruptly when a spouse fired his gun at Paul. All told Paul found links to his personal history and that’s given him the identity he was seeking. This is Paul’s journey. Paul figures, he was with Catholic social services for about three to four months before he was adopted. His father was Mexican and his mother was Japanese. He met her in Japan during the Korean War and they got married in the United States.

Paul: 01:50 So right there, when I was old enough to look in the mirror and everything, I was like, well, you know, one of these things is not like the other. I don’t Look anything like either person and I, you know, I was little so I didn’t know

Damon: 02:04 but either. The two of them don’t look alike. So how do you not look alike?

Paul: 02:11 Well you know, my mom was, you know, she’s Japanese and she was small and she really had extreme Japanese features. So I’m like, I’d look in the mirror and I’m like, well, I don’t have those features. And then, um, my dad, I, you know, I like can’t say I really didn’t, you know, I really couldn’t make the total comparison, but I’m like, something’s not right here. And then as I got older, not much older, but the differences kept getting more pronounced. And I remember one of my earliest memory, Geez, I probably was four, maybe five, I was out in the backyard crying I wanted to go home. And you know, um, my dad comes home from work and sees me out in the backyard and asking me, asked me what’s going on, I’m in the backyard bawling my eyes that I want to go home. And then that’s when I got, this is your home. You know, I was like, no, this can’t be my home. I don’t look like you.

Damon: 03:08 Paul told me that he had recently read the book, The Primal Wound, where he learned that his experience as a child of wanting to go home is not uncommon for adoptees. He had one sibling, a younger sister who was adopted about a year and a half after himself. He said the older he got, the more he picked up on his differences with his parents. He noticed something about his adopted mother. She was always overly excitable about everything. He was young, so he didn’t recognize what was going on, but things were changing.

Paul: 03:40 Somewhere around when I was nine or 10, something clicked in her or something and she just became the most abusive, horrible person you could ever want to meet and more so toward my sister then to me, and then as I get older and learn about Japanese culture, they, they favor the son and so that’s why I kind of figured that a lot of her stuff wasn’t, I avoided a lot of it, but the thing is I had to sit there and witness what was going on with my sister and the thing was with my mom, this is what made the whole younger years really difficult, is the abuse she had rake on her, but also with me, it started to become a point where I was, I could never do anything good enough. And then she always had a focal point of another family that was like best friends with my dad.

Paul: 04:31 And actually the couple were my godparents when I got adopted. They had a son, a natural born son, but my mom all of a sudden started making this kid their son, like the example point. So why can’t I do what he does? Why can’t I do what he does? So as time goes on and she just gets worse and worse, that just happened more and more. And then the other thing that was really weird and then as I got older, I found out, cause I was too young to remember it. Supposedly I was a very sickly, sickly, sickly child practically on my deathbed but the problem was is I never felt sick, never thought I was sick. Um, apparently she was doing the Munchausen’s by proxy thing with other folks so she could garner attention or more attention.

Damon: