Adoption blues (Adapted from email to my adopted parents)

The wanting and yearning to learn more about myself is getting stronger and stronger within me each passing year. I don't want to live my life not knowing about my biological parents and it frustrates me that all the online "Help" sites are specifically for people adopted on this continent! I feel that i can't fully understand myself or even close the gap on my own internal mystery and i feel that i can't truly know myself and know who i am if i don't know of how i came to be. it all just feels like a one sided chapter without any real meat and potatoes in the story, and i want a better understanding of what makes me Korean aside from the physical traits and a long forgotten name. Even if the reasoning for me being adopted is a bad one i don't care, i want some clarity and closure on this. I don't think i can do this alone either, but i don't know how you can help either because you know just as much as i do. It just pains me to think that i may never know the full story even if we were to tap our resources. I don't want my life to necessarily start with you guys, i want it to have a prequel too (Hollywood does it too, so why not?). With all the tensions of NOrth Korea and South Korea and my recent research into the Sinchon massacre and No Gun Ri village massacre really leaves me yearning to put these bitter feelings into perspective. Do i have a right and good reason to want the North Korean country to be peacefully reunited with the south. Is the South really the good guys with all the anit-communist "Purifications" they did? Didn't the South and certain US divisions commit wartime atrocities during the war just like the North? Why did US soldiers gun down 300 of my countryman?! What if the south and north go back to war, how is that going to make me feel personally? I have a feeling that i'd want to re-enlist to suppor the South, but then i feel the North really isn't that much different from teh south, only borders and the government make the difference. Could i really shoot down the enemy who is jsut a bunch of confused naive gullible idiots? What was once hatred towards the North has now melted into sympathy and pity for their sad state of the state. At times i can't tell what is propaganda and what is truth.

I feel that i can not only identify with my American heritage but also my Korean, i feel i can have some inner peace. I'm not interested in learning the language or customs right now, i want to be selfish about it for once and learn about me. People can go online and find out all about their lives and family history with the click of a button, but if you're an adopted Korean from Korea, that won't apply and you have to take extra measures just to see if your family name is even real.

I can't help but feel like a fake and phony asian, and even though i pride myself in being Americanized and able to speak and read without an annoying accent, i feel like i have no right to call msyelf an asian just because i look like one. By all accounts i'm white, i sound it, act it, my name, everything is white and american, even in my dreams i have white skin, brown hair and brown eyes, even in my own dreams i'm white! And i can never be white, no mater what, and i feel if that's the way it has to be, so be it, but let me know what part of me i'm not. It's one thing to choose to be american, it's another when you're raised in it and don't even have your orignal culture to fall back on. They call me a Twinkie which suits me fine i guess and i find it funny how so many Asians want the American dream, to live in a house with a family and married, with a job and a car and healthcare and benefits and here i am bitching about it! I just feel there is so much i want to tell them *(My real parents) and let them know how well i've done, my daughter, my wife, my military service, my trials and tribulations, tragedies and triumphs, and i want to know the real reason why i was put up for adoption, what traits i have of theirs, what they looked like, what they were like, blah blah blah. And each day, week, month, and year i grow no closer. I dream of one day going to Korea and seeing the place, maybe when Ava is older(like 16) we go on a trip together to see where we are from. Its silly that when i tell Ava she's part white and part asian/Korean, she says "No i'm not, I Ava" and i love her so much for saying somehting so cute, but i worry that she may not idenitfy with her asian side, or instead of seeing it as a cultural thing she'll see it as merely an ingrediant in her hereditary makeup. I know she'll one day identify with it and maybe even flaunt and be proud of it (Ava comes down to school one day wearing the traditional Korean garb) but i want to be able to tell her and others more than just " I don't know" when the questions come about my real parents. At times i feel there isn't any good reason why i don't know or shouldn't know, i've gone 28 years of my life wondering.

So basically, i guess what i'm trying to say is I think i'm really ready to know who my real parents are, i just don't know where to start.
ALl the websites give stupid advise for those born and adopted here, screw everyone else outside of the country.
I guess the first step is contacting the adoption agency and going from there.

If you guys are wililng to help in any way at all, i'd greatly appreciate it.
I"m just tired of being a stranger to myself and not knowing just who i'm looking at in the mirror, My dad or my mom, or a little of both.