I discovered on 12th September 2021 that I am adopted. I was 30 years old, and my discovery via a medical app while waiting for a train was sudden and shocking. I remember clearly focussing on my legs to carry me. 

“Come on legs, left, right, hold on, keep going.”

Kind friends asked how I was feeling. I was never able to answer this question honestly because the answer could not be neatly packaged into one that would satisfy, one that wouldn’t cause panic but would enable them to see me. I was desperate for them to see what I could see.

“How are you feeling?” Did I even know the answer?

How can I answer this question for those living in the old world? I had been yanked into this new one. The rules are different here, the language, the landscape. With great sadness, I felt they would never truly be able to see me again.

The following is my attempt to answer this question if only for myself. If only for other Late Discovery Adoptees who follow. I share it with an open heart, and on the chance that it may ring familiar with my fellow adoptees.

“How are you feeling?”

“I feel all possible feelings at once, until I can’t feel any of them. Like I’m painting with so many big bold colours over and over again until I’m left with only a heavy brown splodge. 

That’s how I feel inside, splodgey, wriggly. I can’t feel any of the individual colours anymore, only a heavy brown that hums with anxiety. The frantic euphoric surge has given way to a fat scrambled tangle.

I feel as if I’m looking at myself through a foggy shower window. 

I feel sick with the burden of knowing and not knowing. Sudden waves of fear wash over me, I just about manage to keep my breath, but I have to fight and focus for it. My lungs feel smaller and my stomach cavernous, but the idea of food doesn’t excite me.

I feel as if standing alone on top of a hill and the wind is hammering so powerfully that it might sweep me away. I’m determined to stand my ground and defy the wind’s will, but after weeks of standing up, I feel withered and humbled, and I just can’t imagine when the wind might stop.

Perhaps, after all, I’m not so strong. I feel so tired. Perhaps I will fall, and everyone will see. I can feel my dreams of a happy ending, a happy life, sifting through my fingers like holiday sand. 

I’m sitting in the nail shop when the lady smiles and says I’ve chosen a pretty pink. I thank her but all the while I’m worried I might have a panic attack there in her shop. Cheap clunky beats of bad pop music fall from the ceiling around us and I wonder if I’ll make it out of there alive.

I feel one minute I’m made of paper, then of glass, then of stone. I can’t believe what has happened, and yet I feel that nothing has ever been more real.

Everything makes sense and nothing makes sense.

I feel desperate for more, and frozen with fear. 

I feel like I’m lying, like I’ve lied to everyone I’ve ever met. “Come back!” I call to ex-boyfriends, friends, colleagues. “Everything I told you was a lie”. 

I feel as though this might kill me. Was I ever truly alive?

I look back, exhausted, and answer simply: “I feel like I’ve been in a car crash.”