I AM NOT A BURDEN

I AM NOT A BURDEN
'The Weight I Never Chose'
Personal Story by Kam Redlawsk

I am NOT A BURDEN.
I am NOT A BURDEN.
I am NOT A BURDEN.

Disabled people are NOT A BURDEN.

Feeling like a burden can create everlasting shadows of worthlessness & shame. As an adoptee, I’ve felt the relics of being a burden since I was abandoned. I was frequently reminded I was unwanted, bought & paid for, which required sacrifices I should only feel lucky for. This is where adoptee stories typically end. Our lives & stories are reduced to an unwanted burdensome child, and our story finishes with how amazing the adopters must be. The conversation about the system orphans have had to endure, the trauma, pre-and post-adoption, and the many kinds of abuses potentially inflicted is never acknowledged by society & adoptive families. The shimmering romanticism of adoption is preferred, nobody wants to hear our side.

As a disabled person, I’ve felt the familiarity of being seen as a burden through the consistent responses to my disability. I’m considered useless, incapable, with sadness forever fixated over my head like a pitiful halo, accompanied by the amazement of what a saint my partner must be for “sacrificing his life”. Society feels the need to remind me of how inferior & undesirable I am, and that it’s exceptional that someone took on such a broken person. “You’re lucky!” is the glint in people’s eyes when they see us, not, “You’re looked upon inhumanly & limited access by society. I’m sorry.”

These labels have unjustly deemed me as the paltry one; as if this is the only redeeming thing about me after 46 years of life—the unwanted with “too many problems” to include or love. Meanwhile, much of who I am is sidelined without a blip of curiosity beyond identities I never asked for.

As an orphan and a disabled person, I’ve felt I’ve had to constantly prove my worthiness in order to be, and continue to be, loved & to deflect the burden I am. These feelings infiltrated me since the beginning, creating a ruthlessly self-critical person. But after 46 years, this has become tiring. I am not a burden. And neither are you. ∎

Find & follow Kam on Instagram:
​@kamredlawsk