Not really my cringiest because there were so many moments to choose from, but to use a severe one, every year in school, students do a heritage project. It includes things like recording physical traits (eye colour, hair colour, etc.) as well as ancestors and their nationalities and whatnot. Only, to this day, they never, ever, ever factor in that maybe someone was adopted. So imagine insecure me trying to charade the message to a teacher whose mind it never even dawned on without trying to get the classmates to know, all the while having to blindly progress through the assignment. The result? I ended up lying a whole lot on the heritage assignment, which went where else than on display and in the records like all the other work done on the heritage assignment by the classmates. Because it was a showcase.

I should clarify I know my birth parents and “met” them, but nothing beyond that. So, out of fears of getting a failing grade, I ended up creating a family tree that was a mix of stereotypes about myself, historical inaccuracies, and other things that only got worse because my sister was doing a similar assignment and put in a completely different family alternate history. Someone ended up worried and had a talk with my adoptive guardian about her authenticity, and I probably came close to being relocated again, or that’s what the anxiety would’ve made it feel like. Eventually, I was told not to do the assignment, but it was too late, I had made lies that were forever associated with me.