Anaïs Bordier - So Much, and Enough

 

Growing up, I always felt that my birthday was not the day I was born, but rather the day I arrived in Paris. When I was three months old, my parents came to pick me up at Charles de Gaulle airport. This was the day we became a family. I always knew I was adopted and-- [sighs] [audience cheers and applause] 

 

I always knew I was adopted. My mom told me that I was always in her heart, but that it was another woman who gave birth to me. I grew up in the suburbs of Paris as an only child. I was a happy, balanced kid who could sometimes feel really lonely. This loneliness couldn’t be filled by friends. And in darker moments, I felt abandoned and I was wondering if my birth parents didn’t love me, and if that was the reason why they decided to put me into adoption. 

 

But my parents, whenever I had questions, they would sit me down, they would take my adoption files out of the desk drawer and they would start reading the story to me. Even when I was able to read my adoption records myself, it was always the same. My birth parents were from Busan. They met when they were really young and they started dating. But my birth father had to leave Busan for a job. My birth mother had gotten pregnant with me. And because of social stigma at the time in Korea and as she wasn’t married and she was still studying at university, her and her family decided to put me into adoption.

 

I never felt the need to reach out to them or never really wanted to meet them, because I had my mom and my dad who loved me and they were my real parents, so it didn’t matter. But one day, I had just turned 25 and I was studying fashion at Central St Martin’s in London. My friend had just sent me a screenshot of a YouTube video featuring me, except I had never made such a video and no one filmed me. So, I clicked on the link and discovered a short, humoristic video entitled High School Virgin. 

 

It was made by a kid called Kev Jamba in Los Angeles. It was also starring a girl who looked very much like me, except maybe she had an American accent. I was startled. I was trying to look for her name or a lot of information about her, but there was nothing. And so, I thought it was just a coincidence and I just dropped it. Then, a few months later, my friend tells me that he saw that look alike girl again in a trailer for the film, 21 & Over. I find her credit in the cast list, she was listed as Asian girl. [audience chuckle] Her name was Samantha Futerman. 

 

She was an American actress who had been in films such as Memoirs of a Geisha. She was born in South Korea on the 19th of November 1987. I stopped right there and thought I read it wrong, because it said that she was born the same day as me. So, we had the same birth date, we looked really similar, except I knew my adoption records by heart and I knew it was just a coincidence after all. I immediately called my parents and really wanted to talk to them. As my mom got on the phone, she said, “Do you think she could be your twin sister?” 

 

All of a sudden, I was relieved, because I thought that I wasn’t totally insane, because that’s what I was thinking. But also, I knew that I was allowed to think something that was supposed to be impossible. I got my dad on the phone right after. As I told him the same thing, he was googling her and found another website with a different birth date. He told me that I must have got it wrong, but it was indeed quite a funny coincidence, except that to me it wasn’t just a coincidence.

 

As I couldn’t really focus that day, I was just being a zombie wandering around, I thought I would spend the rest of it just casually stalking her on social media. [audience laughter] So, I discovered that she was an American actress living in Los Angeles, that we were indeed born the same day, that she was also adopted from South Korea and she recently had discovered that she wasn’t born in Seoul but in Busan and I was also born in Busan. 

 

So, I decided I should try and reach out to her. But how do I do it? I didn’t have her email address. I could tweet her, “Hi, seems we might be related, so private message me.” [audience laughter] Didn’t seem quite appropriate. So, I decided I would send her a friend request on Facebook, as well as a message, where I introduced myself quickly. I told her about the video, about the common birth date and birthplace. I made a joke about The Parent Trap film and asked her not to freak out. 

 

As I was waiting for her answer for three days, I started feeling really down and thought I was crazy. And all of a sudden, I received a notification on my phone saying that she accepted my friend request. My heart was beating. I was jumping all around waiting for what she might say. She wasn’t typing anything to me. She just sent me a picture of her adoption records. She also said that she didn’t have much time to talk to me, but we would chat more the coming days.

 

I had made first contact. As I was reading through her file, it confirmed that we were born the same day, the same year. We were both adopted from South Korea, both born in Busan. And apart from this, none of our background stories matched. So, I started thinking that maybe my dad was right and maybe it was all just a coincidence. 

 

For the next week, I was looking at all her pictures, trying to discover what her life might be. As we got to know each other a little more chatting on Facebook, we decided it was about time to Skype. That was the weirdest experience. When both our faces appeared on the screen, I didn’t know where to look at. I was like, “Oh, no, that’s her.” [audience chuckle] We looked identical. And where did you start? 

 

I didn’t know what to ask and I wanted to say so many things at the same time that it lasted about three hours in the middle of the night. When it was time to hang up, I didn’t really want to. Then, as we were chatting more, she started feeling that kind of long-lost friend or friend that you hadn’t seen in a while that you miss, except we hadn’t met. We decided it might be time to meet in person, but my dad, who was quite protective, said that we might want to take a DNA test before everyone got too emotionally involved. 

 

We found that doctor that specializes in twins. She would help us with the DNA test results, but she also warned us that there was a great chance we might be just doppelgangers, and it would take a few weeks to get the test results. But you know, it was so intense that regardless of what the outcome might be, we really wanted to meet. So, we set up to meet in London to get the test results together, so Samantha, her two older brothers, her parents flew from America and my parents came from Paris. 

 

I remember the day we’re about to meet her. I woke up, I got dressed. I was looking up at the sky, walking towards the Airbnb in Shoreditch, where we’re supposed to meet and I was thinking, oh, my God, she might be in this plane right now. She’s getting really closer. So, me and my parents, we get to in front of the flats. As I stand in front of the door, I can hear loud voices behind it. I knew it was about to happen. 

 

So, I step into the room. It felt like two parallel universes had suddenly merged together. She was sitting right in front of me. It looked like a mirror image of myself, except she wasn’t moving as I was moving, and so I had to readjust for a little while. She then started laughing hysterically. I did too. We really felt like two magnets that were attracted to each other, but also having this very special fault that would repel us from each other. And my mom, who was standing behind me the whole time, said, “Oh, my God, I have another daughter.” And my dad, who was from the beginning very protective and he was always trying to warn us that we might be just doppelgangers, he said, “Okay, I don’t think you need a DNA test.” [audience chuckle] 

 

We then went for lunch, and we’re just observing each other. We were just staring at each other. Everyone was just chatting. We’re amazed by our resemblance. We had the similar loud laughter and our mannerisms were the same. After all this in motion, I really needed to rest and so did she, so we decided to take a nap together in the same bed. That might seem quite strange right now, but at the time, it felt really natural. It was really natural, because we were just chatting, got tired and fell asleep next to each other. When I woke up, I felt this incredible sense of relief, because it felt we were being born again, but in the same world this time. 

 

Later that evening, we sat down in front of our laptop and we waited for Dr. Segal to call us on Skype. She was quite serious. She looked at us and asked us to turn towards each other, and hug and kiss our identical twin sister. She said, “DNA doesn’t lie.” She suddenly had given us the final proof that this was all true. We were really twins, separated at birth, both adopted on two different continents, who had found each other through social media at 25 years old. Today, we still don’t know what happened to our birth parents, or why we were given up separately or which of our stories is true.

 

But I do know that I’m not that young girl anymore who felt abandoned. I suddenly went from being an only child to having a twin sister, two older brothers and even more parents living in America. Sam and I both have a big extended family, and this is so much and enough to be happy about. The fact that we met is a miracle. But the most important thing is that from now on we have so much to live together and that’s now we know that our lives are intertwined forever. Thank you.