I create a world of finite somethings

I'm just gonna sorta type aloud, so to speak, on the Tokiomi-gives-Sakura-to-the-Matou issues. Comments disabled/removed because this is really just my thought process, not an invitation for debate. Also, it's kind of oblique.

I'm adopted. The very limited information we had on my mother we thought implied that she was possibly single, since there was no listed father and her information was woefully inadequate: name, height, city of residence (yeah, I'm fucked when it came to family medical history). Still, like probably the vast majority of adopted kids, I had to question why they would decide they could do without me. Even if it was a young unwed mother without the capacity to care for me.

Only a few years back, I learned a lot more. I learned that I was actually the fourth child in a family. That I was, in fact, a child that my parents decided they could literally do without.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense, and the letter I received from my birth mother enforced it. Korea, at the time of my birth, was going through a huge economic change and the situation was extremely unstable for most low-to-middle class. There's actually a fair number of kids around my age that were adopted out as well, more so than the decade before. Anyway, the economic stress was pretty bad in some places and both maintaining a family as well as the outlook for the kids that would eventually grow up and enter society was fairly bad. My parents, it seems, had to make the choice: have an abortion (bigger taboo than in the West, IMO), raise me themselves, or adoption.

Mind you, Korea was still reeling from the war, and the impending threat of an unstable future has a lot of different connotations there, considering how long it took the country to recover and how bad the conditions were. So they had some expectations of what could have happened. I could have ended up competing in a way with my siblings, economically speaking. Both with the care my parents would give us, and with the job market we would eventually be staring down.

So I was adopted, to the bastion of the West, where people could even afford to go through the adoption process while avoiding the stigma of adoption within Korean society--blood ties being important, most Koreans of the era would go out of their way to avoid a foreign kid being brought into the family. Win-win, right? Except, of course, that contact would be lost, and the parents can't know or gain only limited knowledge on who gets their kids.

Sounds...kinda familiar, eh?

I, of course, ended up in the hands of a great family. They made sure that I retained my citizenship to Korea in the case that I wanted to return as an adult, they encouraged any interest I had in my original heritage, even kept part of my original name as part of my adopted legal name here (though, because of romanization practices at the time...I don't think it matches current trends anymore, and being the second half of a Korean given name, which they thought was more like a middle name, it's like I have half a name...anyway). But there are quite a few stories out there, even particular stories of KAD kids that ended up in really crappy situations, possibly more crappy than they would have had if retained by their original parents.

But yeah, can't really tell in the end. For all I know, I'd even have been happier with my original family even if economically I would have been less secure. From what I understand, my biological father has since died, so they might have even had a bigger struggle than they even accounted for (of course, ironically, my adoptive father also died when I was young, so...)

Yeah, I know, Tokiomi could have investigated the Matou family, but I can see why it would not necessarily be a thought. You're given this great boon--another family wants the child you cannot "economically" handle, but they can. They want the kid. I can't exactly place myself in the parent mindset and go, "Well, of course they would want them only to make their life miserable." Parents have a tendency to view other parents as they do themselves.

Mnyaahgh...I really should've used this time writing.

(looks at writing: it's about Kohaku)

...pghkegh. Must find something happy to write about instead.

(Share Re...nope)

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