Back

here now

I took a break for a bit from reading and writing about donor/DNA surprise stuff. I hurt my back quite badly and couldn’t really move much for more than a week, so I took it as a reason to shift my attention. I’m a terribly somatic person so being unable to bear something heavy seemed a reasonable explanation. The pause was good for me. I got to spend time with old friends and watch my kids play in the ocean.

For now I’m focusing on staying healthy, grounded, being present for my family of four and my friends. I am trying to avoid getting into discussions with my mom, even in my head. I’m trying to accept that she feels the way she does, and she is handling this as she is able to.

To continue from the previous (post? email? stack? what do I call this???)—I do understand that my mom being a therapist really has no bearing on the way she navigates this situation. Just because we grasp something in theory doesn’t mean we can practice it. My mom’s ability to support her clients in their exploration of their families and experiences doesn’t mean she was/is/will be able to do a good job with me, to mitigate the damage.

This has been, I have been, a secret for so long that I don’t know if it’s possible for her to accommodate the fact that I know the truth. Can she integrate what is brand new and very real to me with what may be to her almost a myth by now, no longer even a creation story?

I text and email my parents stuff like I used to. Photos of the kids, updates about their lives, news about friends and whatever might be interesting about my work or my husband’s . (The latter is far more interesting these days.) My dad and I are in a good place. I don’t feel edgy with him and he seems to understand that this is a really weird and hard thing. He’s also said a couple of things that felt really tender and authentic, and he has been honest even when it would clearly be easier to lie.

My mom says she feels like our relationship is currently “superficial” and I don’t know what to say to that. I imagine this is how it will be, how it should be. I’ve told her so many things about my life and she always wanted to know more, to know everything. The whole time she knew this truth about me that she never planned to disclose, as if it were no matter.

I have felt blindsided, numb, ambushed. It’s been five months. I’m coming out of it a bit. But she meets me with a coolness when I engage as the person I am now, knowing what I know. I sent my mom and brother info about my ancestry that surprised me, and neither replied. They have both said in different ways that it’s awkward to talk about this. Okay, yes, I understand. It’s also totally fucking awkward to find out that I’m genetically half of some family I’d never knew imagined. I have a half-brother who doesn’t know I exist, one who has died, and half my genes come from a man I may never meet. A man whose eyes and ears and nose are mine. Or, I guess, mine his. I resemble my mom in many ways, and my brother even more (which is odd, since he’s nearly a foot taller than me, and blond—but somehow our faces are alike—or maybe I just wanted to notice that?)

But seeing a specific feature of mine so exactly and entirely replicated on the face of someone I’ve never met is indescribably eerie. This particular diagonal line at the tip of my nose that I assumed was from an accident I had—the donor has it, too.

I didn’t ask for any of this, but I feel like I’m being punished sometimes. People feel awkward and uncomfortable. We’ve all heard that when people get sick/end marriages/go through something traumatic, others distance themselves out of discomfort. It seems to bear out in my friends who’ve gone through these things, and I have a little taste of it now. It’s probably more fitting than ironic that most of the discomfort is within the family I grew up with.