Facing Denial
I’m sure you don’t need three guesses to guess what the DNA results were to my youngest brother. His results came a few weeks after I compared with my sisters.
Of course, he was a full sibling to my other brother and to my sisters. Which meant, of course, he was only a half-sibling with me.
It was all there in black and white. I still didn’t know much about DNA, but after the three other results, I at least knew what to look for. Looking back, it’s painful to realize I was holding out some kind of unrealistic hope that maybe we were full siblings. He and I were always close as kids. I desperately didn’t want to be alone in my DNA.
But, unlike previous results, I didn’t react at all when I compared him and me. I just stared at the words and the numbers. I was just quiet. It was no defining moment. I closed his profile and went to sleep. Thinking back, I needed my brain to process it all. I went along for several days like that. Feeling nothing. The last blazing glory of denial doing what it did best.
We all know that the defining moment of any situation eventually happens. No matter how much I wanted to look away, it came. The final DNA results came in shortly after. My Dad’s first cousin. In my mind, these were the final results I needed. If it showed she and I weren’t biologically related then it was really over. Oddly, my body already knew the results before I actually read them. I had a terrible headache all day. I felt funny and shaky, and nauseous when I sat down at my computer to open the profile. As if I was somehow punishing myself, I compared everyone in birth order, knowing that I would be the last one in the line. One by one, I opened the profiles and compared Dad’s cousin with us all. My brother, 13 years older older than me…452 centimorgans shared with her. My sister, 12 years older than me…502 centimorgans shared with her. My sister, 10 years older than me…423 centimorgans shared with her. My brother, 6 years older than me…612 centimorgans shared with her. All had an estimated relationship of first cousin 1x removed. Right on point with being related to a first cousin of Dad’s. I had learned enough about DNA by now to understand what I was looking at.
And then, finally, I compared her to me. “No shared DNA detected.” Zero centimorgans shared.
If there ever was a moment that was defining for me, it was this one. The jig was up. I felt the grief pour down over me from the top of my head this time. It is so strange how I felt these feelings in so many different ways through my body at each revelation. What was significantly different this time was that, as dramatic as it sounds, this time, I literally felt my heart breaking. It was an actual feeling in my chest I’ll never forget. There was no other straw to grasp at. It was finished. The quiet weeping began. I hadn’t shed a tear up to this point. I realized in that one millisecond I didn’t have any full siblings anymore. I felt instantly exhausted. I felt confused. Who am I? Why is this happening to me? Who is my biological father? Will my siblings still love me when they find out? Why did Mom lie to me? How can I ever live with this? I had a million questions and a million feelings all at once.
This is my NPE story of discovering in 2015 that my Dad was not my biological Dad. If you’d like to follow along, I encourage you start at my first post of the series HERE.
Such heartbreak and such courage in making the decision to dig deeper and learn more. Hugs to you, my friend.
I see you, I understand, and I thank you for sharing these pieces of your story here. There have been various defining moments on my own NPE journey that have left me breathless and certain questions I haven’t had the heart to ask…yet. The defining line between Nature and Nurture is at times very blurry, and at others, incredibly crisp. Wishing you continued healing and a lovely week ahead!
How ironic that I took my DNA test in hopes of finding the exact opposite as you. If I could know I was either adopted or that one of my parents was not related to me it might explain my childhood. I tested my paternal aunt and my younger sister. Since then I’ve connected with DNA matches on both sides. I guess my parents just didn’t like me.