NPE | My Journey

It was 9:30 on a Sunday night. My husband and I were crawling into bed when I got the notification that my Ancestry results were finally in. I excitedly opened it as we settled in and couldn't log in fast enough to see who all I matched with and where it was going to tell me I was from! Once I was in, I started scrolling and reading all of the names aloud to my husband but it only took about three names until I was rattling off names I had never heard before…

Nine names down, I noticed a last name I recognized.

I looked at my husband and began to cry while trying to explain that none of my Dad's side of the family's names were on my results and as I told this to him the reality of the situation was setting in.

This other last name belonged to someone I was familiar with. We were friends on Facebook and I knew of him as he dated my mom when I was younger but outside of that, I didn’t know much.

I grabbed my phone and sent him a private message asking him if he had any relatives by the names "________" or "_________" to which he immediately responded that the first name I asked about was a first cousin of his.

My stomach dropped.

The man on the other end of this conversation had to be my biological father.

My Dad, the man I grew to know as my father, was not actually biologically related to me. My grandparents - his parents - with whom I was extremely close and head-over-heels adored were not my biological grandparents… and they're not even here for all of this…ohmygodmycousinsandalltheweddingsandchristmasesandfamilyreunionsandeverythingwasallnotminetohaveihavenoideawhoiamwhatishappeningthiscantberealthishastobewrongtheymessedupmytestthiscantbereal.

I was spiraling.

And I continued to spiral for two whole months.

I left that message on read for those two months. I'd open it about once a week and look at it while simultaneously combing through my results. Sometimes I'd visit his Facebook page and stare at the photos, analyzing his features to see if I saw myself in them. I spent hours crying, often times spontaneously. There was so much to grieve - my relationships with my family members who had already passed, my relationships with my living family on my Dad's side - would they still love me if they knew? Did they know? - all the time I missed out on with the family I was currently discovering… and so much more.

…Does anyone know?

Am I the first to find out… or the last?

***

As time passed, I found myself aching for the truth. My entire perspective on life and my identity was shattered and I felt completely lost. I couldn't eat properly, I spent a lot of time in bed, and I cried… a lot. In fact, I think it's safe to say that I was not functional for about four weeks. Looking back, I am extremely grateful for my husband because he's the one that got us through all of this.

And here's the thing about a situation like this…

No one knows what to fucking say. No one knows how to support you, no one knows what NOT to say, no one knows how to handle someone crying to the point of hyperventilation over something like this. I had an amazing support group to go through this with but it still felt insanely isolating because while I had support, I didn't have anyone that got it.

After my results came in, given my terrible coping mechanisms, I decided to start back up in therapy. I went through two different therapists before I found one that could actually support me through this. I had one therapist tell me I should write a book before informing me that they didn't have the skillset to support me through this big of a life-altering experience and another whose jaw dropped when I was done talking and was damn near speechless… so that was fun (and expensive).

I also lost my closest friendship at the time immediately after I told them about all of this which tremendously compounded my trauma and grief so badly that I completely lost all sense of care for myself and the will to remain in this life and on this planet. There was a decent chunk of time where I lost ALL trust in people regardless of who they were to me and how they treated me because when this all happened - all at once - I felt like I was in a world where I simply did not belong. In a way, I was right…

So I shut down.

I completely stopped living in my values of kindness, generosity, love, and positivity. I saw no light at the end of the tunnel, no reason to go on working or making plans, no reason to live life.

This entire experience has easily been the hardest thing I've ever dealt with in my entire life so far - more difficult, even, than losing my mom. While losing my mom was the hardest thing I'd been through up until this point, I still had faith in the world. I was distraught but I still felt loved. When I found out that my Dad was not my biological father, however, it broke me and changed me forever. I will NEVER be the same after this heartbreak. There's so much to grieve and to celebrate.