Life, Love & Longing

By Jaesun

What is love, what does it mean? What is it that determines who we love? 

As an adoptee I was never able to grow up with my birth family or to be raised by my birth parents. Instead two strange people were chosen as my new parents and they were the ones who replaced my birth parents. They raised me, comforted me and nurtured me. In time I learned how to love them, as a logical and natural result of my upbringing and childhood. To me they are my real parents, because they were there for me when the ones who should have accepted their responsibility weren’t. Of course I know that the people that I call my mum and dad, are not my parents that brought me into the world. But they feel like my true parents.

 Even so I do confess that my birth family always will have a special place in my heart and that the love I feel for them is everlasting, honestly. Is it the environment that determines or influences who it is that we will come to love? If, so than why do I still feel like I love my birth family despite it all, even though I know that there are no expectations or presumptions of that sort that dictates that I should. Believe me, when I tell you this; even though I’m no longer certain that my feelings and love are reciprocated I can’t help but to feel the why I do. Yes it’s true I love them too.

Why I love my birth family I still don’t know or can explain. I’m certain of course that I do, yet I fail in my attempts to try to identify the reason. Maybe I will never know exactly why I do. I know I don’t have to love them, yet I do.  Could it be because of blood ties whose responsibilities’ has forever been removed? Is it so that it really could be that DNA and blood ties are stronger than environment?

I’m confused, because the love I feel for my birth family might have prevented me from allowing other people getting closer. And maybe in my case it just be as simple as to say that I might just love my birth family more than my mum and dad. Or at least it’s a different kind of love that I feel for the two, the love I had all my life might be stronger because it’s a case of unrequited love.