New family

Old family

I’m having a tough time right now.

It’s been a year now and on the whole my life feels better. I don’t think I’m making it up when I say that I knew something was…not what I thought it was.

So much good has come out of this. A few friendships, which I’ll write more about later, have proven (yet again) to be lifesaving.

I keep replaying the first two episodes of the podcast I mentioned in my last post. I hear things differently each time. I like the way they are sympathetic to all parties. I thought that my parents might appreciate it, even if it made them uncomfortable. It doesn’t demonize donor recipient parents and I shared it with them.

It’s unclear to me what I’m trying to get from them. Do I want them to understand something that I can’t or won’t articulate? Is there some explanation I think may come me, an apology for my misunderstanding of who I am? I don’t know.

I don’t want to say too much about the specifics of their replies here—this goes back to my uncertainty about what to share/where to share/with whom.

My mom said something about how I, like Amber, was happy about having/knowing new family, that I gained something here. And that she (my mom) has lost something (a type of relationship with me—which is true—but has less to do with being DC than about other things. Which brings me back to the privacy vs sharing thing.)

But the truth is that I may never meet any of this new family in real life. I have no claim to them. All I can do—all that is in my control—is to decide I want nothing to do with them. I cannot insist they meet me.

I’m sure I’ve said this one way or another—I would go to [the town where my donor and half brother live] in a heartbeat. I would fly there next weekend. If they invited me, I’d come. If I thought they wanted me to ask to visit, I would. I can read people pretty well and my assessment is that my half brother would enjoy meeting me at some point. I don’t know that he thinks about it much or is necessarily eager.

I am terrified that I will never meet them.

The donor—right now I feel like he wants what he signed up for—knowing he helped a couple make a family. He has his own family. He is happy about how I turned out. If he knew the struggles I was having right now with the family I grew up with I suspect he’d avoid contact with me altogether. I am supposed to be the much-wanted child of a couple in need. There was supposed to be a happy and simple ending.

My parents separated when my brother and I were young, and my mom is struggling with me having…feelings…about being donor conceived. My brother I grew up with isn’t interested in my newly discovered relatives. I don’t understand how my mom is hurt or surprised about my reaction to finding out but she is having a hard time, and there is a great distance. So things didn’t turn out perfectly, whatever that would look like.

From my perspective there is a lot of good. I have better genes than I thought I did, my dad and I are on solid ground, and this experience has brought my husband and me to a better place. I feel appreciative of what I have and our kids are amazing.

So that’s the update.