I was lost and found a new me

And so it rains on a late Tuesday morning...

I stared at the rain as it reminds me of how lost I was the last one week.

I am coming to terms with the diminishing chances of finding my biological siblings. Moving forward, I will balance my life as who I have been and who I could have been with who I should be.

People say our future is what we make it to be. I have no intention to remake my past (I couldn't anyway even if I wanted to but that is not the point). I will then take each step cherishing my given world and what is left of it with more love.

This adoption discovery came at the lowest point of my life. As if the seabed wasn't ground deep enough, this experience brought me on a slippery slope into the dark abyss. My wife and 4 children are the only people keeping me together. Not omitting my caring grandmother without which my entire life would have been a continuous lie.

Despite it all, I will not give in and give up. I wasn't build for recall.

My brothers and sisters out there, I will find you even if it takes me a lifetime.

My name is Fahmi Rais and I will shoulder on. Will add my Chinese surname if ever I come to know what it is.

Out.

What Am I Now?

Both my birth certificate and NRIC indicated a Malay/Muslim name. There is even a Jawi version accompanying my name.

My NRIC indicated my race as Malay.

I have filled countless forms, applications, declarations and all putting myself as a Malay.

I was raised by my late Malay adoptive parents whom I love very much and sorely missed.

Except for my primary school second language which my parent chose to be Chinese, my further education and mother tongue is in Malay.

I live as a Malay among the Malay community without doubt.

I have been in positions as a Malay community leader, Malay representative and as a champion of the Malay cause and concerns.

And now at age 48 I discovered that I am a Chinese by birth.

So I ask you, what does that supposed to mean to me now?

Do I continue the rest of my life status quo?

Or do I recognize the new fact and attempt to understand my roots and embrace the socio-cultural characteristics?

My answer aside, the next question that follows is which among the 2 races will see me as one of theirs now?

A very real question for every mature adult of transracial adoption case.

"I used to be one of you, and now you are just them." - Fahmi Rais on who that 'them' should be.

To tell or not to tell, that shouldn't be a question.

After one week, I have begun to accept the fact that most if not all of my uncles and aunties, cousins included, knew about me being an adopted child. Some knew all along. Some knew in recent times.

And I also now know that I am not the only one adopted. On my paternal side, there were no less than 5 cases of my cousins being adopted. But there are 2 key differences. Firstly, they were informed of their adoption and secondly, they grew up with their non-natural siblings.

I on the other hand, had neither of the 2 privileges.

And while I was surprised that I am adopted after 48 years, they were all surprised that I just came to know about it. They have all assumed that I am in the know.

Don't get me wrong. I am not on a witch hunt now. Just simply trying to rationalise how so many people in the name of love, deny you of the very information that is rightly yours to know.

That is past now.

Moving forward, I have received a number of messages from parents who sought my opinion on whether they should disclose the adoption information to their child.

I am no expert in adoption though this experience has taught me a lot. I am no expert in adoption though I am now living on both spectrums of the adoption. As an adopted child and having an adopted child.

But I can say this for sure. Do not make a secret of someone else's life. Simply because we wouldn't want that to happen to us. Love is a free force. It is not based on bloodlines.

I love my late father that I build my public reputation using his family name. I named my 2 sons using his name. I am probably the only person in 3 generations of Rais family that carry the name through new borns. And I am technically now an outsider.

I love my late mom, that I named my first daughter after her. The only other child of mine not bearing my maternal or paternal parents' name is my adopted daughter. If I can have my way, I would renamed her as well. I even have a ready name for my next son if there will be one. Another Rais.

I do not see many others doing what I did.

So whoever you are, if you have an adopted child and the child is of understanding age, please disclose the information, unless you have a very sure way of keeping the secret eternally.

Let your child love you for who you are. Love your child for who he or she is. The 'make-believe' cannot and should not form the basis of the relationship.

Do not fear your child running away or distancing. That will happen when you mistreat them. But if the upbringing is clothed with care and love, your adopted child will love you more than his or her biological parents. That I can put my life as a bet.

Adoption is not secret. If not knowing who you are or where you came from is a lawful thing, then the basic right of living and having an identity have been violated.

Adoption is love. Marriage is also love. They are both common in the sense that you love someone who is not yours in blood. You can't marry someone that you secretly do not know. So why should adoption be any different?

Save your child from the pain that I feel now. My father may have planned to tell me. He died out of heart failure. My mother may have planned to tell me, she died out of heart failure 7 years later. My grandfather may have planned to tell me, he died out of heart failure 7 months later.

My grandmother did the right thing by coming clean when I asked her last week.

I can't imagine if she did not have the opportunity to do so.

I may risk having the rest of my life as a one big 'lie'.

She has discharged her duty to share the truth with me when no one else in the circle would. While it was painful, I have only her to thank now for allowing me to live hereon in world of truth.

The Malaysian Insider
Astro Awani
The Star Online

3 Malaysian media have contacted me with the first having done a full interview.

Lianhe Wanbao
Lianhe Zaobao
The Straits Times

3 Singapore key newspapers have contacted me and interviewed me.

However, The Local Society.com and TNP ran my story online without informing or interviewing me. The content were extracted from my blog entry or FB Roots Seeker page.

I know the media holds the best chance of me finding my biological family and I understand that I have no influence over the editorial choice of headings. Nonetheless, as long as the reporting helps to further my reach for a possible closure, I am thankful.

I hope that more media (radio and TV) included will take an interest too so that with the experience I get, the Adoption Support Group that I will facilitate to help more people like myself will gain from it.

By the way, thank you for all who have visited this blog and taking time to read. I appreciate the comments and am taking them positively.

This blog has grown from 145 page views 4 days ago to more than 10,000 last night.

The pain walks with me.

It has been 5 days since and if there is one thing I've learnt to do well lately in the morning is to cry in the shower.

No leads whatsover even though this blog page and the Facebook page have reached more people rather significantly over the last 72 hours.

I felt like going to the cemetery today. Just to have a conversation with my late mom and dad. Not to question them but to assure them that my love for them is no less than ever before. That my search does not alter my feelings and thoughts about them. By all counts they are my parents in this world and hereafter. They cannot be replaced and I asked all of you to love your parents well.

My search is for my siblings.

In the process, I have found many long lost friends. I take some consolation in that. The media is next. Prayer is always.

I received many encouragement and well wishes. Mostly if not all, from friends and strangers. Most of my extended family and relatives have gone mute.

I could not have been more adopted.

The pain wont go away. It will walk with me and accompany me in this journey. My wife and kids are the reason I can still keep my sanity.

Do not offer me any advise that I have not already done or thought so.

Do not offer me any comfort of you understanding how I feel or knowing what I am going through. You have no idea and at best, can only imagine. Like a badly wounded man on the street, you can never know the agony until the lorry hits you too.

I, however, accept any offer to help spread the word.

Good morning pain and good morning hope. My eyes are so tired. I have never wanted to believe so much that the world is small until now.

I am now a roots seeker.

I choose to write in here instead of FB because I want this to be more of a conversation with myself than with others.

The last 3 days have been a very emotional and turbulent period of my life. I thought the death of my father was my lowest point. But it was not. It was the death of my mother. However that record was surpassed when my grandfather passed away.

Now a new and worst grief took over. 14 November 2015 gave a new meaning to my life. A life that is now without a beginning.

After 48 years, I now discovered that the father and mother who loved me as their only child and whom I dearly loved and sorely missed are not of my own flesh and blood.

After 48 years of living as a Malay and championing the community cause, in one single night, I am now a Chinese.

After 48 years, I now need to find who I really am.

I was adopted. And 2 versions were disclosed to me upon probing. Version 1 tells me of a poor Chinese couple from Segamat, Johor who sold me to my parents who then brought me back to Singapore. Version 2 tells me of a Chinese lady who was pregnant and made a deal with my parents to have her child raised by them. And after birth, I was given to my parents who paid for the necessary expenses. Version 2a tells me that my late father had wanted to also adopt my younger sister after some time later but my late mom decided to give her 100% love to me instead.

I have no clue and inclination. My birth certificate shows my adoptive parents as Father and Mother. I was given the name Mohamad Fahmi Bin Ahmad Rais. In Islamic law, when a child is adopted the father's biological name must be stated and if unknown to use Abdullah instead or if still the preference is to put the adopting father's name then the 'Bin' must be omitted. As such, as I have no reason to suspect anything amiss when looking at my birth certificate. I am my parents 'true and legitimate' son.

My NRIC indicated my name and reflected my race as Malay. So I grew up as a Chinese looking Malay and I comforted myself by believing that I look differently from my parents because I was a 'freak generation'. The result was obvious, every other day, every other week and every other month for each year of my life, I have people coming to me asking if I am Chinese. Some took the shorter route and just assumed I am one and started conversing with me in Chinese. And at times, when I corrected them by saying that I am a Malay, not every person can take it well. Some said that I am not aware of my upline generation who may be Chinese or that I am adopted.

Having people say that I am Chinese and that I am adopted became as common as strangers asking me for the time or direction. I didn't give any weight to such questions. I even made a convenient storyline out of it by saying that I am a politically correct Singapore citizen because I am a Malay who look like a Chinese and married to an Indian.

So the final truth came to light on Saturday night that fateful day when I visited my only living grandmother and in a casual conversation asked her if indeed I am adopted. I was more than half expecting her to dismiss it when her face changed and she took a couple of seconds in silence. The truth finally hit me before she could use any words to affirm it. The rest of the conversation had been nothing but a shock. It shook the very foundation of who I really am.

I left the house in tears. I didn't sleep that night. I cried and I cried. I still cry to this very moment. My emotions were a mix of every feeling except joy and happiness.

I was severely disappointed. The next 48 hours was devastating.

No, it does not change my love for my parents who raised me well. So please stop giving me the lecture on the morality of love by saying "they love you like their own son'. That is not the issue here. My love for them has not changed. To the contrary I love them more because they have raised me like their very own when I am not. They passed away thinking that I will not know the truth and would remain in peace with that hope.

My sadness was that I love them so much that I wanted and had believed all this while that I was the result of their love and marriage. And I love my extended family on both sides. My uncles and aunties, cousins as well. I grew up knowing them as my family.

And now none of them is of the same blood. Spare me the "all bloods are red" punchline. From my younger than me cousins to the oldest living relative, our DNAs are not related.

I was so proud of my dad's family name that I am the only one in the 3 living generations going all over town and village claiming that I am a 'Rais', that I named my 2 sons, 'Rais' and that when I first opened a company, it also has the name 'Rais' in it. And the truth now is I am not a Rais, in the bloodline sense of the word.

In short, I am lost. The last 3 days I stared at myself a little longer when I looked into the mirror. That is because I see a stranger in it.

I have people who obviously are not in my shoes trying to offer comfort using textbook techniques eg "we all love you the same", "it doesn't matter now" etc

Well it does matter. It doesn't matter to you because you are not me. It doesn't matter to you because you are not the one adopted or that if you are but you knew about it all along. It doesn't matter to you because life has not changed. You are still who you are.

But I am no longer who I am. I cannot go on pretending all is well. I cannot live another day with a pack of lies and pretending that I am who I am not.

It is either the world has looked different to me or I am now a different person in the same world. But things cannot be the same.

An alternative parental love is not what I seek. I am seeking lost ties. I am not as excited as meeting my biological parents as much as meeting my siblings. They are not a party to the decision that my biological parents made when they decided to give or sell me away.

What if the person standing next to me while waiting for the traffic light to go green is my own sister? What if a Facebook friend that I have in my list is my own brother?

If my biological family refused to accept me upon a possible reunion, I would have considered the matter having come to a proper closure nonetheless. If they are also in turn wondering where I am all these years, tears will roll when we hug each other for the first time.

I have lived my life as the only child and the prospect that I could share a meal with a brother or sister, I will go to the end of the world for that one chance.

Other than my wife who have been very supportive and tirelessly comforting me, as well as my 4 kids, my biological family is what I have in addition now. And finding them has become more than just a purpose.

I love my current extended family. I love my grandmother and all others. It is not discounting love for them with this roots seeking effort. I just need to make this journey to the beginning and have a million questions answered.

Technically, I have moved from being the only child to an unknown child. No one in the world would want to be in that transformation process.

My father, (and I love you dad) passed away in 1987 out of heart attack. We didn't get to have a final conversation. My mother (and I love you mom) passed away in 1994 out of heart attack too. And again, there were no final exchanges of words between us.

And the next 21 years that follow, everyone with information of who I really am did not share with me that information. It was probably the best kept family secret. Everyone knows about it and the one person who should have known about it live a life in the dark. I presuppose that in a situation like this, it is either I was told as early as possible or that I die without knowing.

A month shy of turning 48 was a tough time to know the truth. 21 years is an ample time to make a disclosure. Knowing it when I was a single 27 year old man then is surely an easier time than now. Even during the solemnization of my marriage such critical need-to-know basis was not shared.

I would do no such thing to someone that I love or care for. My second daughter is adopted. I love her like my own. And though I have taken the liberty to change her birthcert for convenience purposes, I did not hide the truth about who her real parents are. I want her to grow up loving me as her father, like her own real father. I do not want the love to be based on a lie.

My parents have their reasons and that I respect. But for the others who knew and kept it that way and claiming to do so out of love, that I cannot understand. I bear no grudges, just disappointment.

I need to regain my identity. I need to stop crying and wondering for the rest of my life. I cannot care for the feeling of others in my search for who I am.

Still there will be people who will discourage me and will not understand. Its ok. It is not you that I am seeking.

I am seeking for my biological family who may still be out there to just say "hello" to them and take things from there.

Please have feelings for me. You don't need to feel what I feel. Just help me.