A day before meeting my brother for the first time, I cancelled.
To understand how wild this is for me to say at 23, I guess we have to rewind. Growing up, I always felt "disconnected" to my rather distant (anyways) "father". I had "half-siblings" but I also never felt close to them, and not just because of our strained relationship due to our "father" (lol should I keep putting that in quotations?). I didn't ever see a striking resemblance, but I blamed that on me looking like my mom. Can you see where this is going?
About a year ago Zach and I were hanging around at my moms house, and, I guess out of nowhere, I asked "Is my father even really my biological Dad?" This caught my mom so off-guard, that she stuttered around answering the question. Especially considering they were married for years before having me, and my mothers fidelity was never something I questioned. When a child asks their parent if the other one is their biological parent, any answer besides a definitive one is one for concern. Not just concern, but the feeling that my veins just turned into cacti and are prickling my skin from the inside out.
Long story short, my question was valid. My mom told the outcome of me being his biological daughter was a 50/50. She explained to me their struggles with infertility and the logistics of IUI treatments in their case. She never wanted to know the answer because it didn’t matter. To her, I was just a miracle and I was her baby. Hense my name. I also never understood the significance of my name, but I guess I do now. So, I lived in limbo for a couple months, until my mom bought me a 23 & Me kit for Christmas. That was her way of saying “go ahead, you deserve to know”. Immediately upon receiving it, I ripped it open, spit in the damn tube, sealed it, and shoved that shit into the mailbox as fast as I could. Commence another anxious 3-4 weeks.
On a snowy, miserable, January day in Rochester, (conveniently as we had company over) I got a notification saying that my results were in. And there popped up a biological, paternal Aunt. An Aunt I had never met before, who was not my estranged "aunt" on my fathers side. At first, relief flooded over me as I felt like I finally stopped having to carry the metaphorical dead horse around of (now we can officially call him my non-biological) father's mental illness struggles. That was not in my DNA, not anymore. It never was. My identity was shaken a little bit when I also realized I was not middle-eastern in fact at all, a fact that I have regurgitated my whole life as the only cool trait I thought I retained from my father. I was just Irish, Croatian, and Italian. Fully European.
Soon after, curiosity creeped in. If this guy wasn't responsible for half of me, then who was? Where is he from? What does he look like? What does he do? Where is he now? My mind ran with this. I came up with 100 narratives of him being this super cool guy who was the real reason for my nomad, creative-like self. I did some research (stalking), and I am fairly confident that I've found him. An author, a musician, and a school psychologist. I spent a couple months obsessively connecting the dots of my family tree. But I decided to give it a rest after some time.
Fast forward to two months ago and I see a notification on 23 & Me that a half-brother had connected with me. Ahh, here we go. There's more of me. We exchanged numbers and he called me. I was fascinated at hearing his voice. It was like a 26-year-old-male version of me was talking back at me. He sounded gentle, and sweet. Just like I always hoped my big brother would be. We stayed up far too late texting back and fourth about everything we liked and disliked, our favorite colors, our favorite foods, favorite Beatles songs. He told me his favorite countries he's visited and I told him mine. He was an only-child too up until this point. My heart felt warm and I felt more connected to somebody halfway across the country than I had ever felt with anybody before. We immediately made plans for him to come to Rochester and meet me and my family. I was so anxious I could hardly wait. It was finally my turn to have a wholesome family. I dreamed about this my whole life. I dreamed about having siblings that I knew and loved, with nieces and nephews galore. A big, tight-knit immediate family that looked like all the other families in my life. Its my turn now.
A couple weeks went by and we got to know each other more. The plans got more real as we talked about what specific restaurants we would go to and all the things we would do. I searched for him on Facebook, nothing. Instagram, nothing. Twitter, nothing. LinkedIn, nothing. I paid for a freakin' background check, nothing besides his name and address. Some feelings creeped in. They weren't quite as rose-colored as they used to be either. Why was he so elusive? Was he hiding something? I don't know one person without some record of themselves on the internet of some sort. This guy had nothing and nothing attached to his name. All I knew was what he told me, and from pictures he sent me. I have no doubt he is who he says he is, but where was the rest of his story?
What if this guy was a creep? A murderer? A weirdo? Why was he planning on making the trip from Illinois to Rochester alone, despite having a girlfriend and parents? I couldn't tell if I was disappointed or judgmental. Would I have felt more comfortable if he was a lawyer with a wife and kids? Yeah, probably. Does that make me an asshole? Or is my intuition to be protective over my baby and family?
Or what about this ... what if he simply wasn't my long-lost brother that I thought was a clone of me in a different body? What if he was just a stranger? And quite frankly, that's the truth. We may share a biological parent, but that parent had no intention of raising us. Truly, he just provided our parents with a service and was compensated for it. A voluntary exchange. He owes me nothing and this "brother" of mine really wasn't ever meant to be more than a stranger. As un-romantic and un-fairytale-like as this was, its the cold, hard truth. So, after coming to this conclusion I finally began to accept that my family as I knew it, will always be my family. And although most families around me look like the nuclear family, there are in fact plenty of non-traditional families out there. I was never alone, and it frankly is arrogant to think my situation was one-of-a kind.
So, although it felt like I was breaking his heart a little, I had to cancel.
Something weird then happened - gratefulness rushed in. I simultaneously let go of the burden of carrying my fathers mental illness and I stopped mourning the loss of what my childhood was not. It was, what it was, and it was everything it was supposed to be. And my story is a bit more complicated than I once thought it was, in a good way. Part of me still feels like a lab experiment that wound up with this family when I could have wound up anywhere in this world, I try not to let those feelings overtake my mind because if I do, I will find myself staring at myself in a mirror with severe imposter syndrome wondering who this person is in this weird vessel of a body.
Then, part of me just understands that this is my family and this is my life. I love my family. I’m very thankful for the family that I was born into with all of their over abundant love and care. I wasn’t just born into something mediocre, although I may be biased, they are an outstanding family. I deleted the 23&Me app entirely, because I just don't care if I share a biological father with 1 or 1,000 other strangers. My family is the ones who raised me. The cousins who I built forts in the woods with, the cousins who I get to mother our kids with at the same time with, the cousins who my grandfather also loved and adored. And I conveniently am marrying into a family of 4 kids, with an abundant amount of nieces and nephews of which I get to be the Aunt to. What it always was, it always will be. And, I love you guys.
- Grace
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