Mirrors Work Two Ways

"She looks like her mother," one said.

"Oh, I think she looks like Dave," the other countered.

I don't look like either of my adoptive parents. I don't now, and I didn't then, when I was 10. My parents' friends were, evidently, seeing what they expected to see.

I stood there chagrined and anxious, knowing that, rightfully, clarification was order. I was adopted. Yet I knew clarification wouldn't come and that I didn't want it to anyway, not there in that moment. I looked to my dad in solidarity. I got something else. He was beaming with pride and, to my account, effectively participating in the collective lie. Eerily, he clearly, sincerely believed it!

We had all looked to the mirrors of one another and corroborated our own realities. The ladies perceived their own presuppositions. My dad saw his pure, sheer love for his daughter. I saw the secrecy of my own origins.

I stood there "safe" in an awkward social situation, yet my own truth had been abandoned. This must be the very definition of the emotion we call "loneliness".