Maybe not a goat

just a cloudy sorta orphan

I’m not going to pretend I’m being anything but self-pitying and needy and slightly pathetic.

When this all started, I told my husband that I wanted to know my health history, but that was it. I made a joke with my bff AS that I was totally going to show up at their family reunion, ha ha.

My husband, in his annoyingly prescient way, said “that’s all you want for NOW” and I was so sure he was wrong.

Well, now I want to be more than a goat. Or at least a goat, still.

I was so excited by my half-brother’s daughter’s desire to connect with me that I responded to her chatty email in kind. She’s a good twenty years younger than me—adult in some ways, married, etc, but younger. And I forget how unfiltered I am, and how surrounded I am by people whose politics are like mine. (EO and I joked about how diverse our group of friends was since some of us listened to NPR and others to community radio! And some had green Prius sedans and others had silver! Or something like that.)

So I may have said something about how relieved I was that her family weren’t MAGA people. By which I mean they weren’t horribly racist, anti-science, homophobic, etc. I know they are more religious than I am (Christian) so I fear that I made sweeping statements about more than I meant to.

On the other hand—and I would LOVE to hear from any donor conceived people about this—I found myself refraining from posting on social media what I wanted to on the day it became illegal to have an abortion in Arizona unless the mother was actively dying. I hesitated—well, no—I actually didn’t just hesitate—I didn’t post it. I was afraid that if the niece or donor saw, they’d not want to have anything to do with me.

But this is who I am. I don’t want to curate myself to be appealing. Isn’t this what has damaged people—particularly women—for so long?

I have no claim to this family, as I’ve said. And yet I crave connection so much. At some point I want to have a pint with my half brother at the local brewery he told me I’d like. And I want to see the face of this man with my eyes, ears, and nose.

Or maybe I should say—I want my eyes, ears, and nose to be seen. I am trying to be honest, but I just feel so unsure. I hate that my sense of myself shifts based on when/how/if I get a reply. I KNOW that I have to be okay with who I am, and that if I never know more about these people, if I never meet them, that has to be okay. I do not have a right to any of them, any of this. I truly am grateful that he is a good guy, and I have good genes.

And I wouldn’t want some…interloper…jumping into my family. I don’t want to interlope. So maybe I need to focus on that. Not because it is Noble and Admirable, but because it’s maybe something to consider.

Trying to be appealing (or to avoid being “offensive”) in order for someone to like me is exactly what I’ve been trying to undo for a long time now. First of all, it’s some type of voodoo made up thing—who knows what someone actually wants/needs/responds to. But even if I did know, why would I want to contort to fit that? It’s a bad message to send to myself.