Orphaning

My story, okay. It was never easy for me. I was born a rich white child. I remember days sitting in my rich person house with all my toys, big TV, the video camera recorder the pole in the back and launching big fireworks that all the neighbors could see all from the backyard. In my home in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. So I was always taught that I was adopted, and that I was born probably of a Vietnamese woman and an American soldier in Vietnam during the war, and that there are no records left my birth parents. So I was flown to America and adopted by this white couple. And that was the fairy tale. I was told that I was loved and that I was no different. And I think I grew up definitely not feeling that I was any different.

We lived in, you know, in the 1980s. We lived in a big house in a rural community called Dillsburg in Pennsylvania. My friends would always told me we had a big house we had a mansion that we were rich. I never saw it that way. I went to their houses and their houses were like small ranch houses or trailers. But I always just like being with with those people. And then I would invite them over for big parties and stuff like that. And my sister always had big parties, their biological kid, and I never saw as rich but apparently the house was like 100 $120,000 in the 90 days my parents built it or had it built anyway. I went back to look at it. When my mom died and I realized we weren’t rich. We did have a big house. We did outclass everybody, you know we had like two or three cars. We always had the video camera, the big TV. All of that stuff. We really were upper class in the 1980s but I never saw it that way.

You know, I understood that I wasn’t that I was adopted. But what I didn’t understand. Really, I think until Donald Trump took office was that I wasn’t white. That’s when he took office. That’s when I realized I was a person of color with the China virus and how Asians were looked at during that time period, whether you say it was the media or the presidency or whatever. That’s when I began to feel different. And when I saw how other people of color, especially Hispanics were treated and the George Floyd stuff I realized I was a person of color and I wasn’t white. Those were some of the most difficult conversations to have with my adoptive mother before she passed away. Just I realized I was different.

So no I wasn’t even cognizant of being orphaned. It was just I was adopted from Vietnam. That was kind of the deal. When I was 12, or 13 or 14, my my parents sat us down at the table me and my sister their biological and said that my father and my mother were getting a divorce. We would no longer all live together. My father had been taking trips overseas for a while to Vietnam. He was a Marine during the Vietnam War. And he was just taking these business trips to help people so to speak. Apparently he had found somebody over there met them and, you know, eventually he married over there. I processed divorce especially with my father. As he said he was basically on borrowed time, as it was a good thing because he was getting to do what he wants to do in life. He moved overseas I only see him maybe once or twice a year. I live with my mom. They sold that big house and she bought another big house in a different place and we’ve all moved. My sister went to boarding school in Delaware. So I never saw her anyway think facts the life she was away all the time. She moved out first opportunity she got Yeah, I know. This isn’t like in a complete cohesive order here. But yeah, that was being read where you’re from the second time but I didn’t process it. This way. That way I see it now.

Because when when something happens like that, the world becomes an unsafe place. There’s a difference between kids of divorce and not kids a divorce because not kids are divorced. Typically. They still feel safe. The parents help them with things. Their parents pay for college, they go on family vacations until they’re in their 30s and their parents pay their way. When your child is divorce, you don’t feel safe anymore. I mean, that sense of safety and security is gone. And because there’s a split household, there’s no longer that two person income thing going on. As a kid, you’re paying for your own car, you’re paying for your own education, you’re taking out student loans. Whereas when you’re a family unit, mom and dad work hard they pay for your college they pay for your first car they pay for your first system if you pay for your first that because my sister got all of that stuff. And I see kids today where they get all of that stuff. And when it was my turn single family household Nika in a car, you go get a job. Oh, student loans. Yeah, you need to get those.

So that was kind of the secondary orphaning my mother was dating so she didn’t seem to care when I came home. The later the better. It seemed which okay. That was a time in my life where I really felt I was raising myself. I got a job at the mall at a french fry place in the food court, and a friend and we went on all kinds of misadventures together, took the car to Ocean City. slapped my mom’s plates on it, it got impounded. I kind of forget somebody had to come and get us all of that, but I was basically that was the second time that I was really orphaned. And I look back on it now I’m realized that was when my world went to hell. That was literally the moment when I realized I was on my own.

I went to homecoming dance and had to get changed at somebody else’s house. I remember when I look back on it. There’s a friend of mine named Dave Reddick and he came over. For some reason he taught me how to dance but he also sat me down and he said, Your mission is to boldly go where you haven’t gone before. And I think he understood with my parents divorce that I was basically about to start exploring the world on my own. I had a friend in Ohio that I met through the Star Trek fan club. He introduced me to Dr. Who he came over a couple of times drove from Columbus, Ohio to Pennsylvania. Got me, you know, I started dialoguing with him. Basically, during the launch of the pilot of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987. But yeah, introduce me to Doctor Who. And Doctor Who is a very independent type of science fiction. It’s not a whole crew traveling like on the Starship Enterprise. It’s one traveler in a time machine, going through space and time and that appealed to me because I was one person by himself going to all these different places.

I went to a Transformers convention on my own, went to a brand new concert on my own, went to a Monica concert on my own. All of that stuff I really did everything on my own. Because I had been reoffend a second time I remember I met the lady that evacuated me from Vietnam. And she was so sorry that that had happened. That That wasn’t the intent. The intent was that I would have adoptive parents for the rest of my life in a stable home and she was just so sorry. That That could happen. And when I look back on it, I’ve realized that everybody saw what I didn’t see at the time that I was by myself. And I’m beginning to see, like the weight of that. And then, you know, my mother died about two years ago. Today. And that’s hard.

And then so that was reoffending yet again. And a pastor that was close to that I thought I had the best time in my life serving with he died back in September. So it’s just, it’s funny because it catches up to me.

I had a situation where my home needs a major repair. And indeed every level it’s a mobile home. And when you re level mobile home, things break tile, tiles, crack doors, so fit in the doorways the way they’re framed anymore. Drywall splits, granite counter slit all of that, and when I had it done a few days ago, I came home late at night and I saw all the damage. And I realized, you know other people have other people that they can call you know, you call your brother you call your you know, you call your family they come over you have beer pizza and you make a day and you fix everything. No one ever comes and helps me I’m moving day when I moved into the trailer, one person came, I invited a whole bunch of people. Pastors at my church even tried to get help. Only one person came. Granted they were from the church. One person it was one person who rented a truck he and I worked for over 12 hours just moving me nobody else would come. And it was another moment where I realized I am by myself.

And again, I look at other people other people have people. Every time something happens, it is just me. It is just me and I have those dark moments where I’m just I want to step in front of a truck and say God just take me now because no one’s going to notice anyway. Right? You know, I did an accent I love my church. And I did an exit message. Most people didn’t care. Most people didn’t reply. You know, the pastor of my church, the executive Pastor Dave Ward. I texted him and I said, you know the way I was treated at Bethel, no one should be treated. And it affected among other things, my will to live. No response. I seriously wondered if I just needed to bring a loaded gun to the stage and pull the trigger and blow my brains out and see if anybody actually cared as I went off to heaven. I thought they would probably just keep going with the service.

You know, it’s just it’s challenging because I know that other people have other people. For me, we’re all dead. Gone. So when something happens to me, I’m just like, yeah, I go to a dark place for a little bit because there’s nowhere else to go. I don’t drink I don’t smoke. I don’t do drugs. Having that dark moment while I’m going in my own self pity for a good couple hours. That’s pretty much what I got. And then I put my thinking cap on I grabbed my sandpaper I find my tools I you know, I figure out what tiles cracked I find the epoxy and I get to work because no one else is coming. No one’s gonna come and help. I’ve been through so much of it. I mean an entire move by myself. Yeah, it’s just it’s just, it’s just the way it’s always been. I stand and I stand apart and I stand alone. And there seems to be nothing that I can do about it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai