My year of delusion - the delusion that I was donor conceived - was not completely wasted.
It allowed me to remember things about my family that I had repressed.
It allowed me to unblock some of my feelings and create a fictional father who might be just like me and who might just like me. This is slowly leading me towards grieving for the parents I didn't have. And potentially healing.
It has ensured I will always know deep in my gut what it feels like to not know your biological origin. Just today, I had to buy a local paper which lamented the lack of a sperm bank in my country and featured a sob story by a 39-year-old woman who couldn't find a known donor (this is possible in my country) so she went to another country for treatment. A psychiatrist explained to the general public that the child will be fine not knowing who the father is as long as (s)he's properly raised and prepared or something.
And everything inside me screamed You Ignorant Fools!
You can't just expect everything will be unicorns and rainbows if you're nice and tell early. Many, if not most, people just need to know who their biological parents are and no amount of love in the world will fill that hole for a person who can never know.
Advocating will be easier, actually, if there's nothing personal about it.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
The origin of the family rumor
I wonder where the family rumor that I was donor conceived originated.
Perhaps they used IUI or IVF and then I was born, looking nothing like my father or his family. Could people have thought I wasn't his? Could it have occurred to him too?
Could he spent my entire life wondering if the doctors perhaps used someone else's sperm?
Some things are still just too bizarre to be explained in any other way.
Perhaps they used IUI or IVF and then I was born, looking nothing like my father or his family. Could people have thought I wasn't his? Could it have occurred to him too?
Could he spent my entire life wondering if the doctors perhaps used someone else's sperm?
Some things are still just too bizarre to be explained in any other way.
I'm NOT donor conceived
I finally did a DNA test - my father is my father. I have no other fathers but him.
The family story my aunt told me must have taken a wrong turn somewhere - I'm sure they did use ART to conceive me and that the "donor" bit got attached to the rumor somehow.
I spent a year on an emotional rollercoaster for no good reason. I made an absolute idiot of myself.
But there was something good about it: the idea of a possibly sane father out there who might be like me and who might like me enabled me to feel. I gave myself permission to love this non-existent man and grieve for him. I had never grieved the father I couldn't have. I hadn't felt any real emotions towards my father (or mother) for decades. I had blocked all emotions.
Now they came back - for a person who doesn't exist. It proved how vulnerable and, really, pathetic I am. I longed for one man in particular to be my real father - because he was nice and enjoyed my company and liked me and shared my interests and gave me books of poetry and short stories. Which was much more than I ever had with my father.
It was so easy to let myself believe this. To have a tangible reason why he couldn't love me. Why he resented me. Why I had to be sooo grateful just for being allowed to exist (I'm sure they had to use IUI or IVF and I did cost them something - at least, the shame he had to endure in front of the doctors) and why "You look like your mother" was so often thrown at me (I guess that was my entire sin - I didn't have to be another man's offspring to be resented, only not be his carbon copy - I really look nothing at all like him or his family).
I made myself believe I could expect nothing from him or his family - they owed me nothing. This made me remember how cold they were towards me.
But they owed me love and support, no matter who I looked like. My father should have loved me. He owed me that.
I might take some time off to process all this. I'd spent a lot of time obsessing over something that wasn't even true. There are other, real things to focus on, and although right now I feel drained and exhausted and deflated, it can only get better from here if I focus on my daily life from now on. I hope.
I learned and understood quite a bit about how DC persons and adoptees feel like. I will never be able to think in stereotypical terms on these issues again. I will always be an advocate for absolute openness and honesty and the right for everyone to know their biological origins.
If every DC person was certain to receive an original birth certificate at age 18 and lying to your children wasn't possible, these reverse crazy situations wouldn't be possible either.
I'm sorry if anyone feels lied to - I deceived no one on purpose.
I will not be deleting the blog - I stand by my opinions. My situation turned out to be different, but others are still being denied the knowledge of their roots.
The family story my aunt told me must have taken a wrong turn somewhere - I'm sure they did use ART to conceive me and that the "donor" bit got attached to the rumor somehow.
I spent a year on an emotional rollercoaster for no good reason. I made an absolute idiot of myself.
But there was something good about it: the idea of a possibly sane father out there who might be like me and who might like me enabled me to feel. I gave myself permission to love this non-existent man and grieve for him. I had never grieved the father I couldn't have. I hadn't felt any real emotions towards my father (or mother) for decades. I had blocked all emotions.
Now they came back - for a person who doesn't exist. It proved how vulnerable and, really, pathetic I am. I longed for one man in particular to be my real father - because he was nice and enjoyed my company and liked me and shared my interests and gave me books of poetry and short stories. Which was much more than I ever had with my father.
It was so easy to let myself believe this. To have a tangible reason why he couldn't love me. Why he resented me. Why I had to be sooo grateful just for being allowed to exist (I'm sure they had to use IUI or IVF and I did cost them something - at least, the shame he had to endure in front of the doctors) and why "You look like your mother" was so often thrown at me (I guess that was my entire sin - I didn't have to be another man's offspring to be resented, only not be his carbon copy - I really look nothing at all like him or his family).
I made myself believe I could expect nothing from him or his family - they owed me nothing. This made me remember how cold they were towards me.
But they owed me love and support, no matter who I looked like. My father should have loved me. He owed me that.
I might take some time off to process all this. I'd spent a lot of time obsessing over something that wasn't even true. There are other, real things to focus on, and although right now I feel drained and exhausted and deflated, it can only get better from here if I focus on my daily life from now on. I hope.
I learned and understood quite a bit about how DC persons and adoptees feel like. I will never be able to think in stereotypical terms on these issues again. I will always be an advocate for absolute openness and honesty and the right for everyone to know their biological origins.
If every DC person was certain to receive an original birth certificate at age 18 and lying to your children wasn't possible, these reverse crazy situations wouldn't be possible either.
I'm sorry if anyone feels lied to - I deceived no one on purpose.
I will not be deleting the blog - I stand by my opinions. My situation turned out to be different, but others are still being denied the knowledge of their roots.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
The genetic mirror
Knowing your genetic parents gives you a very basic and normal, but so commonly underestimated and misunderstood, privilege of seeing the traits you potentially have reflected in their actualized form.
You see who you potentially are and who you can become. This is the genetic mirror all human beings should have a right to at least take a peek at.
When you don't know your biological parents, growing up and discovering who you are is like trying to determine what you look like by feeling your face with your fingers. You can guess the shape of your nose and chin and ears, but you have no idea what they look like to others. You can also never discover the color of your skin or the color of your eyes.
When you're raised by genetically unrelated people and are kept away from your biological parents, you may never discover, nurture and develop some really interesting parts of who you inherently are.
My suspect is particularly suspicious because he fits so well as the missing central piece of the genetic mirror. Who I remember him as is so much like who I never allowed myself to believe I could be, but actually am. When I describe him, I'm actually describing a less known me.
You see who you potentially are and who you can become. This is the genetic mirror all human beings should have a right to at least take a peek at.
When you don't know your biological parents, growing up and discovering who you are is like trying to determine what you look like by feeling your face with your fingers. You can guess the shape of your nose and chin and ears, but you have no idea what they look like to others. You can also never discover the color of your skin or the color of your eyes.
When you're raised by genetically unrelated people and are kept away from your biological parents, you may never discover, nurture and develop some really interesting parts of who you inherently are.
My suspect is particularly suspicious because he fits so well as the missing central piece of the genetic mirror. Who I remember him as is so much like who I never allowed myself to believe I could be, but actually am. When I describe him, I'm actually describing a less known me.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
It's not fair
Part of the reason why I'm so obsessed with discovering the whole
truth about the circumstances of my conception and my biological
paternity is that I feel the current situation gives my narcissistic
social father an insane kind of power over me.
He is probably the only person alive who knows how I was conceived and - quite possibly - who my biological father is.
He knows something very important about me that I'm not allowed to know. I'm sure it's great fun for him to be able to treat me like a child in that way.
I have tried to give him a chance to tell me. I have asked him direct questions about their attempts at having a child and the circumstances of my conception.
His answers get more and more implausible and fantastical. Sometimes it seems like he's taunting me and flaunting it. The story changed from them trying for 12 years to only maybe not contracepting for a year or two, with variations in the meantime. The last time we spoke about it, he told a fairy tale of my conception that involved a romantic island in the middle of the Adriatic sea! When I asked him where my daughter got the red streaks in her hair, as none of his or my mother's ancestors had this, he flat out said, staring me in the eyes: "It must come from your husband's side of the family." I said no, I know even more generations of my husband's family, and reddish blondish hair has not appeared there. He repeated: "It must come from your husband's side of the family."
If my conjecture is true, I'll have connected the dots and found out all on my own. That would make so many things right on so many levels.
He is probably the only person alive who knows how I was conceived and - quite possibly - who my biological father is.
He knows something very important about me that I'm not allowed to know. I'm sure it's great fun for him to be able to treat me like a child in that way.
I have tried to give him a chance to tell me. I have asked him direct questions about their attempts at having a child and the circumstances of my conception.
His answers get more and more implausible and fantastical. Sometimes it seems like he's taunting me and flaunting it. The story changed from them trying for 12 years to only maybe not contracepting for a year or two, with variations in the meantime. The last time we spoke about it, he told a fairy tale of my conception that involved a romantic island in the middle of the Adriatic sea! When I asked him where my daughter got the red streaks in her hair, as none of his or my mother's ancestors had this, he flat out said, staring me in the eyes: "It must come from your husband's side of the family." I said no, I know even more generations of my husband's family, and reddish blondish hair has not appeared there. He repeated: "It must come from your husband's side of the family."
If my conjecture is true, I'll have connected the dots and found out all on my own. That would make so many things right on so many levels.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Update on my suspect: I received some photos
I have his chin and his cheeks and his nose and his forehead and his ears. His eyes, too, but he shares that with my mother. The resemblance is not breathtakingly striking, but it's there and it's real and it's haunting (I look quite a bit like my mother's family, too, and look NOTHING AT ALL like my social father).
I got these photos from the relative who inherited his house - she was his niece. He was her paternal uncle. Which, if the whole idea is true, makes her my first cousin and thus a very good candidate for a DNA test, right?
She'll be visiting in September and I'll probably be waiting until then to find out for sure.
I got these photos from the relative who inherited his house - she was his niece. He was her paternal uncle. Which, if the whole idea is true, makes her my first cousin and thus a very good candidate for a DNA test, right?
She'll be visiting in September and I'll probably be waiting until then to find out for sure.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Dualism
None of this could have happened if we hadn't split humans into body and spirit and claimed that bodies were completely irrelevant and spirit was all that mattered. This is NOT Christianity, it's the heresy of dualism. But Western civilization is immersed in it without even being fully aware of this.
This is how people can base their lives and families on the idea that nurture is what truly matters, and nature only provides the lowly base materials we'll get to form in our own image. That love is all you need. That family is defined solely on the basis of feelings, intentions, conditioning. That where our bodies came from has nothing to do with ourselves and who we are and how we feel and think and act.
Those who were raised by their biological parents can do this more easily - they can draw the nature/nurture, body/spirit, DNA/upbringing line wherever they please and claim "I didn't INHERIT my temperament from my mother, I'm like that because she raised me." They have the privilege of wholeness and integrity that they can then divide at will, drawing that imaginary line where they need or wish it to be.
Those not raised in their biological families know different. But they lack even the proper terms to express a desire for wholeness in a culture steeped in dualism.
Here's a great post on dualism in adoption by a Catholic priest who's an adoptee.
This is how people can base their lives and families on the idea that nurture is what truly matters, and nature only provides the lowly base materials we'll get to form in our own image. That love is all you need. That family is defined solely on the basis of feelings, intentions, conditioning. That where our bodies came from has nothing to do with ourselves and who we are and how we feel and think and act.
Those who were raised by their biological parents can do this more easily - they can draw the nature/nurture, body/spirit, DNA/upbringing line wherever they please and claim "I didn't INHERIT my temperament from my mother, I'm like that because she raised me." They have the privilege of wholeness and integrity that they can then divide at will, drawing that imaginary line where they need or wish it to be.
Those not raised in their biological families know different. But they lack even the proper terms to express a desire for wholeness in a culture steeped in dualism.
Here's a great post on dualism in adoption by a Catholic priest who's an adoptee.
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