From an early stage in life, I learned to adapt myself to my surroundings. This showed for the first time when I was taken by a woman for adoption. When I cried I got punished and learned quickly to suck it up and control emotions. In order to survive, I had to adapt.
Being adopted and taken to a different country is a huge ordeal for every child. You don't have a choice but to learn the national language since no one speaks yours. To me, it felt often like I had a huge language deficiency and I never got rid of this feeling. I am still insecure about my Dutch today and often recall having difficulties with referrals, articles, and structure in sentences. I realized much later that Dutch is not my native language, since I remember only a few words and nursery rhymes of my native language, where I understand the definitions of some of the words. The rest is gone.
As a child, I never fully understood the circumstances of my adoption and had always many questions lingering in the back of my mind. Back then I was able to repeatedly hit the 'suppress button' and because of this, am still able to enjoy all the good that life can bring.
My happiest time was in primary school. I loved my family, had lots of friends and was able to cast aside my roots issues for a moment. At the same time, I was way too responsible, and serious, making sure I never got myself into trouble. The contrast with my formal life on the streets was huge.
In secondary school, I used to be one of the best students in my class. Where most of my fellow students complained about having to read books, I was the one who actually read all the books and not just the summaries. Reading was a wonderful escape from everyday life and made my existing roots issues temporarily disappear from the surface.
This all started to change after a visit to Indonesia in 1991. A fake meeting with my biological mother, set up by members of my formal orphanage, messed me up completely. I was not able to match her with the loving memories of my Indonesian mother in 1979. To me, the person of 1991 seemed to be a gold digger who had given me an, in advance prepared, English written letter and asked me to send her money to an Indonesian bank account. For many years I had doubts if this meeting was genuine and felt guilty for having doubts. I had no proof that the meeting was real and DNA testing was not yet possible. The guilt took a heavy toll. I became insecure and started to overanalyze what had happened day in and day out, which resulted in concentration issues. It influenced my education and I encountered many delays.
When I finished school I went to Leiden University to study Anthropology and Sociology and started to live independently in a student dorm. I loved being a student, but this had more to do with the feeling of freedom and adulthood. Here at University is where my imposter syndrome started. My sense of 'not belonging' is due to a growing lack of concentration and not being able to enjoy life. The questionable circumstances of my adoption kept pounding in my head and nestled themselves for good. It felt like the past questions had been hiding in the back of my mind but this time opened like the box of Pandora. I ended up not being able to read or write and often panicked if I had to study pages of text. My brain felt like mashed potatoes, not able to make sense of anything I was reading. The writing was also an issue. Forming normal sentences seemed like a huge challenge since I was not able to pick out simple spelling mistakes or compile sentences. When I re-read the sentence that I had written, it always seemed like a perfect sentence in my head, though I needed to re-read it 5 times to see that it was often far from perfect.
I was not a stranger to depression. The winters in the Netherlands were cold and I often found it hard to get out of bed and bike to school in the dark. It was labelled as winter depression, but today I wonder if this was the right label. My mind has always driven me crazy with too many lingering questions. It felt like my brain was often unconsciously puzzling to try to understand what had happened. Also, my sense of belonging was reduced to a minimum. I felt like an illegal alien who accidentally got Dutch nationality.
I took on a part-time job at the airport, surrounding myself with airport friends. I earned enough money to be able to backpack for 2-3 months a year. I was searching for a location to call home and took the opportunity to travel to Kenya, Tanzania, and Central America. Guatemala was the first country that felt like home and created a sense of belonging for me. I lost my heart to this beautiful country and travelled back and forth for several years, associating Guatemala with the return of my sense of belonging. In this country, I did not feel like an imposter but felt liberated to finally be able to enjoy life. The Caribbean became my second location in the world which felt like home.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to say this to my native country Indonesia. With every visit, I still feel like a total fraud and imposter, a fake Indonesian, who is not able to speak the language and feels out of touch with its inhabitants, culture, and traditions. I used to hate it when people found out I'm Indonesian and usually want to talk about their wonderful memories of Indonesia. The traumas that I experienced there made me purposely avoid the country for 20 years.
My concentration issues still exist, fortunately, they did get a little better. I turned into a master at hiding my deficiency but I am proud to say that I am finally able to read and write a bit more. It is even a huge victory for me to start this blog and to be able to finish reading a book.
Unfortunately, when I am stressed my brain immediately falls back to my old situation and is not able to register anything. One day, I hope to be rid of my lack of concentration and imposter syndrome and escape to 'home' which would probably be somewhere in the Caribbean or Central America and read & write my ass off.