SURVIVING: a reflection on Woody, Soon-Yi and me

content warning: references to rape, abuse, eating disorders, self injury, mental health, suicide

as a young Korean adoptee, I was horrified when I learned that Woody Allen had married his girlfriend's adopted Korean daughter. in 1997 I was 12 years old. there was seemingly no controversy around it. and I, barely a teenager, had already been asked by a family friend if I was my older brother's wife. I had already learned that my best asset was my exotic Asian sexuality. I had already heard "Asian chicks are so hot" or "I love Asian chicks" or "Asian chicks are better cuz their pussy is slanted" or some variation thereof about a million times. 

I needed someone to tell me that this was wrong. I needed a parent to look me  in the eye and tell me that I was more than that. I didn't know at the time that he had not adopted her (not hat this makes his actions any less heinous): all I knew was that she was like me. she was just like me. and now she was married to her dad and everyone thought that was ok because they weren't blood, because she was young and Asian. and that this was one more way in which my only purpose in life was to be sexually available to white men. this was acceptable to my family, to the world.

a daughter just like me. the first adult adoptee I'd ever even seen or heard about. a life like mine. this is how it ends. this is what you're good for.

for clarification, I'm not sure why it matters that Soon-Yi wasn't *his* adopted daughter? or even that they are not blood related? I think it does matter that she is adopted if only because adoptees come with a special constellation of insecurities! experiences! fears! and vulnerabilities! that can be exploited by abusers and predators. but really, having a sexual relationship with a young person when you have even a semi-parental relationship with them is fucking creepy. as a parental figure, he had a responsibility to not be a creeper. as Mia Farrow's partner, he had a responsibility to not be an asshole. and as a human being in any sort of relationship with adoptee, he had a responsibility to not manipulate and exploit those raw and painful edges.

I can tell you who I was when I was 19. I had graduated top of my high school class and had been accepted at a prestigious liberal arts college. I had a charming, intelligent and athletic boyfriend who everyone loved and thought was wonderful. I weighed 98 pounds, I was conventionally beautiful. 

I had also had an eating disorder since I was 12. I was a self-injurer* and diagnosed bipolar and had been on psychiatric medication since I was 15. I'd been institutionalized. my senior year of high school I was home tutored because of a severe psychotic depressive episode. I dropped out of college mid semester due to a mental breakdown. 

this is about being young and adopted. with a heart, head and body that don't fit together. with no where to put all this pain except down my own throat, swallowed, as guilt and shame. about looking for love in all the wrong places because it was never in the right ones, because the same faces that told me to go back to china on the playground tucked me in at night and my adoptive family never gave me a way to deal, because to them, to admit racism exists would break their entire reality into a million, glaring pieces.

my boyfriend, charming and well-liked - I thought he was my savior. adoptees are always told that we need saviors. my ticket to happiness, to normalcy. he gave me currency with my adoptive family. to be with him was to demonstrate that I was "growing up" and "getting better" from the ungrateful teenager who made trouble for fun. I thought that we would get married and I would no longer be something so terrible.

but let me tell you the truth of that relationship. over the course of 5 years, he abused me physically, sexually and psychologically. emotional abuse, constant shaming, belittling, gaslighting and manipulation, he broke me down, keeping me as mentally unstable as possible, keeping me on the verge of suicide for years. it made me easier to control. easier to break. easier to use.

(but he's another story altogether.)

if had told people who knew him when it was happening, they wouldn't have believed me. he was more trustworthy than me, more believable than me. I didn't believe myself for a long time, either.

I doubt most of our old friends would believe me even now.

seven years later I am still healing the trauma of that relationship. I am finally at the point where I'm no longer afraid of him - no longer fear his ability to break me down - and I am through making excuses for his rape and abuse. but that doesn't mean that there are no traces of his violence left in my body and brain and the memory that connects it all.

as an adoptee, I think it is hard to not have extreme power differentials in relationships. our relationships with our adoptive parents are vastly different than the relationships our adoptive parents have with non adopted siblings, despite everyone saying they are the same. I was already telling myself that my feelings were irrational and wrong. I was already believing others when they told me that things were okay that were not ok. I was already used to being the problem, with an uncanny ability to read the minds of others and perform to meet their desires. this is how I survived.

in high school, I remember talking to a (white, male) friend in the hallway. I hung out with this friend because he had told me I was basically his wet dream come true. 

he never actually wanted to date me, of course. 

but I digress.

we were standing in the hallway when a friend (white, male) of his came up to him. he looked at me, and then back at his friend, and asked "who's the chink?"

I said nothing. I think I laughed. I didn't even think to be offended anymore. to me, being called chink felt like love. being fetishized felt like love. that is how deeply I had been warped by my early experiences as a transracial adoptee.

that white boy and I? after that day, we were good friends.

in my life, this is all compounded by race, gender, size and disability. it was easy for me to feel unlovable, undeserving. it was easy for me to feel that I had to perform worthiness. perform whiteness. perform to meet the needs and desires of white men. outside of being fetishized, I didn't know how to exist. that was all I had ever been given. 

the rest of me, the truth of me, was too much. too ugly, too damaged, too heavy a burden. attaching myself to a white man seemed like the only way to escape the shamefulness of my truth, of my self.

and again, we are back to Soon-Yi. my first mirror to the future. 

where was the outrage then? where was someone, anyone, to tell me that the sickness this gave me in my stomach was deserved? to tell me to listen to my instincts, that the men who felt dangerous probably were? that this is not what love should feel like?

as new controversy stirs around Dylan Farrow, and Woody Allen's legacy and everyone's bullshit defense of him feeling like a stab through my 12-year-old heart, this rage and sadness and terror rises back inside me. 

 

this is the story of a different legacy. 

* I hate all the terms associated with self-injury so that's why I'm using a term I find fucked up.