Being different from the rest

I’m not originally from here, I was adopted when I was about 6 months old from Cambodia.  Me, being only 6 months old, didn’t know what was going on or what happened. I went from living in an orphanage in a small province to living in America with some strangers.  I don’t know anything about my birth parents, I don’t even know why I was put into an orphanage in the first place. I would love to learn more about where I come from and it’s always been a goal of mine to go back and visit when i’m an adult.  I want to go back there because I want to see where I came from for myself. Seeing the place where I came from on tv just isn’t the same as seeing for yourself and that’s the reason I want to go back, I want to experience it.

My mom and I wanted to know if I was 100% Cambodian because I didn’t look like them.  The average height for a Cambodian male is 5’4 and their average weight is around 140.  I am neither of those. I am a lot bigger than that and I am lighter in color. We did a DNA test when I was 14 years old and it turns out I was 47% french so that explained why I was so much different than them.  We both wanted to know who in my family was french, whether it be my birth mom or birth father. My mother says that the French colonized that area and one of the colonizers could have married my birth mother. I will never know the real answer to that question but it’s always fun to think about.  

The family I live with now is my family.  Some people think that just because I was adopted, they are not my real family.  I always knew that I was adopted because my parents never tried to hide it from me.  I really started to understand what adoption meant when I was 4. Just because they aren’t blood doesn’t mean they aren’t my family.  We have some traditions that we have all followed ever since I was 6. Every year on new year’s day, we go to the easternmost point in the United States and we watch the first sunrise of the new year.  Another tradition we have is having a big dinner on all the big holidays with my whole family. My goal is to keep those traditions alive for as long as I can and hopefully pass them down to my kids.

After reading Jose Vargas’ story, I can say that my story and his are somewhat alike because he had to move to america when he was just a kid too.  The difference between his story and mine is that he was an undocumented citizen and he had to live his life in secret. I was also adopted and he went to live with his grandparents.  But looking at it, we both moved to a new country not knowing where we were going and now we both live a “normal” life in America.

I’ve had the normal American life, living in a small town, going to a small school, and just doing what every small town kid does.  Not being from here hasn’t really changed my perspective of being an American. Everything I do seems normal to me because it is what I grew up doing.  Some people think that because I’m not originally from here, things would be different for me. That’s not the case, I am still an American citizen and I live my life as a normal American.

Photo on Foter.com