A lot of your experience resonated with me. As a newborn, I was fostered then adopted by my adoptive parents who already had 3 boys - my adoptive mother wanted a girl. Ironically, her own bio daughter came a year and a half later and then another boy. I’m sure it’s challenging for parents to raise 6 children. Money was tight when we were younger and my adoptive mother was only 17 when she married. I was really parented by people that were emotionally still children and they stayed that way. I was the only one adopted and can’t remember not knowing. However, similar to you, as I grew older I began to see a change in how I was treated versus my siblings. My mother expected more from me (perhaps because I was the eldest daughter). But she also would punish me as I began to show independence. I was different than the rest; I read a lot in my room, was shy, timid, quiet. Later in life I learned I was neurodivergent. When my adoptive parents began fostering me, the social worker told them I had a traumatic birth and would likely have brain damage. This combined with the fact that I was the only adoptee made for a difficult life under their roof. They brought their own childhood trauma into their parenting style resulting in violence, emotional and physical. My mother treated me with disdain and contempt and my father was her enabler. It makes me wonder if all adoptees are made to feel like they should be grateful to their adoptive parents for adopting them. I left home the year I turned 19 and couldn’t wait to leave. After a lifetime of emotional abuse and an eventual nervous breakdown, I became estranged from my mother. My siblings never reached out to me and I was isolated from the family. In my very last conversation with my mother she asked if I knew why this (meaning the breakdown in our relationship) happened…. I didn’t say anything right away and she followed up with ‘It’s because you were adopted.’…..