Letter to Adoptee Youth

by Jonti, adopted from Sri Lanka to Australia

Thoughts and suggestions penned whilst incarcerated

Hey all, my name is Jonti and I wanted to share a few thoughts that might help others based off my lived experience.

I’m a 32 year old Sri Lankan adoptee. I’ve been in Australia since the age of 3 months old. I was adopted by the most loving parents whom I call mum and dad. They gave me everything – unconditional love, happiness, care and warmth. They still do and I’m so lucky and privileged to have this. They went out of their way to help me feel loved and happy but I’ve realised as I’ve gotten older that there have been feelings of deep displacement which I didn’t quite understand at the time.

We lived in rural Australia so you can imagine the schoolyards were pretty confronting. I tried desperately and so hard to fit in with the popular kids. I played footy on weekends with some of them, I did things through peer pressure, and put up with nit picking and bullying from them – just to fit into the group. This added to my snowballing emotions surrounding being an adoptee and for which I’m now beginning to understand as feelings of alienation, embarrassment, humiliation and belittlement. At the time, I thought I was okay but looking back, I realise I might have been welcome in other social circles of friends where I would not be terrorised, but most importantly I wouldn’t have some of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that I have today.

I was never the kid to lash out when dealing with these emotions. I was the kid that bottled it up, buried it and went home to cry, away from my parents.

Looking back, I feel terrible that my parents didn’t know any of what was happening at the time. I realise now that they would have probably wanted to know and perhaps they might have figured out what to do. I think it must hurt them to realise today that I was experiencing alienation and rejection issues from kids at school.

At that time, not only did I have these issues at school but as I matured into a young adult, I also really struggled when my intimate love relationships broke up because I experienced rejection and abandonment all over again. There were other instances of spearation, neglect, alienation, rejection and displacement that triggered my emotional wounds. At the time, I didn’t understand that these emotions were related to me being adopted, I just bottled everything up and swept it under the carpet.

So unfortunately I’m writing this to you from behind bars, in prison. I’m only going to share a tiny bit about my crime out of respect for the family I have impacted but I feel there is a need to raise awareness in regards to how bad things can potentially get for adoptees and the consequences of these emotions if we fail to understand what’s driving them.

I’m not condoning what I’ve done. I’m not proud, it’s been the biggest mistake of my life. But most of all I’m sorry that I’ve hurt the people who mean the most to me in my life and that I’ve let them down.

The year of my crime was 2018. I was out having a night of celebration from a successful cricket grand final. I had been drinking and taken an MDMA tablet. It was 3am in the morning and I drove to a service station to pick up a few items on the way to a friend’s place. When I walked across the road there was a group of men standing around. One of them was on his pushbike talking to the others. I didn’t know any of them except that person. We were not friends nor enemies and because I’m a social person and after being a little intoxicated, I walked over to say hello and shake their hands. I was ignored for shaking my hand and verbally abused by the one on the bike, being told, “No-one in this town likes you nor wants you here? Can’t you see no-one wants to talk to you?” I turned and said, “This is the only place open at this hour and I just came to get some supplies”. I apologised to the other 3 for the awkwardness of the conversation at this stage and went into the shop to grab my items.

On the way out, as I was walking to my car, I heard the person on the bike yell out, “Wait till you’re out of the light and in the shadows, that’s when I’ll come for you and your family”. I turned to him and asked, “What have I ever done to you? Why are you saying this?” His response was to verbally continue abusing me and saying, “No-one here likes you and no-one in this town wants you here”.

I ignored him and started walking to the end of the street where my car was. My friend was on my mind and I was upset but didn’t visibly feel angry. Whilst in the process of getting on with driving to my friend’s house, 10 minutes into my journey, I saw the same person riding on his bike in the distance and that’s when I had a really serious brain explosion and that’s why I am in here today.

Until that moment, I had a good reputation, I enjoyed a lot of travel and sport, I ran a local business. This has affected me and my parents for which I am so sorry to them. They didn’t deserve this, they just wanted a son from Sri Lanka to love, love them back, and experience life with. It’s not fair what I did to them, not fair at all.

Being an adoptee and a family type man, I also feel deeply remorseful for my actions to the victim’s family. I understand he was a son to a mother and father, a brother and uncle. So the thought of me being the reason to break up and impact this family is a terrible thing and something that I have to live with forever.

I still have 10.5 years to serve in here after serving 7 years so far.

Things I wish I knew as a younger adoptee

I now realise that even though I thought I fitted in and looked like everyone else in Australia the way my adoptive family treated me, I actually didn’t when I walked outside my adoptive home. Unfortunately the perspective that others have is to see us intercountry adoptees and treat us with exclusion and difference. It absolutely sucks. I wish I had understood that people who judged and treated me so badly are the ones with the issues. The world today is full of people with different backgrounds and cultures.

I wish I had learned to take pride in what I looked like as well as having a mentality of “if people can’t see me for who I am and what’s inside of me, treating me only on how I look and what my background is, then they are not worth having in my life”. If I’d understood this, I might have enjoyed life when I was younger a lot more. It’s so important to surround oneself with people who treat us with acceptance and care for who we are, not what our background is, or the colour of our skin.

I wish I’d known to see trained adoption professionals, preferably one who is adopted themselves, to give me support. This support needs to be available for young adoptees who are still children, for teen and adult intercountry adoptees and it needs to be possibly face to face, as well as via the internet or phone.

I wish schools and teachers had adequate training on how to teach kids not to bully or alienate others, to accept difference and to understand the consequences of bullying and abuse to the victim.

I wish adopted kids were taught to have pride in their background of being an adoptee so that we are confident to communicate with our families and support network about how to avoid situations that lead to triggering our deep underlying emotions of rejection, alienation and separation. Having someone to speak to about why and what makes these emotions would have been really helpful for me.

Having a big brother or big sister mentoring system would have been amazing. As kids, we don’t always feel comfortable speaking to a professional or a parent. Having someone to communicate and interact with as older adoptees who have lived similar experiences, can help us understand better how to respond to these situations and talk about our concerns and fears.

I wish I had some sort of group of adoptees around me who offered education, support and guidance. It would have been helpful to know the types of challenges adoptees face during their lifetime, how to understand our emotions of rejection and abandonment and why we are having these. Having situations happen like breakups in relationships, getting bullied, being attention seeking, it would have been nice to understand what was driving all of this. I would have loved a space where I could read about other adoptee’s experiences and write and share about my own. I would also have liked to know about search services, attend meetings and gatherings organised by adult intercountry adoptees, and seek support and guidance from others who could relate to me.

It would have been so helpful to have access to adoptee and trauma knowledgeable lawyers, adoption trained counsellors / psychologists / support workers in my recent challenges navigating the justice system. Lastly, it would have been great to connect to more adoptees around Australia and understand what work is being done by adoptees in the adoption arena at government level.