Tomorrow morning, I'm mailing my DNA test into a "Family Finder" company. I sent in both my parents' DNA before they died so there's really no need to send a sample from me. All the DNA the company will need to find matches is already sitting in their freezers because I'm the daughter of my parents.
I think.
It's illogical for me to think I'm not the daughter of my parents. I've seen my hospital birth certificate. I believe I have a picture of my mom pregnant. She was a a thin woman so it's hard to tell if there's a bump under her blouse or just a draft upwards from a breeze.
My husband tells me I look just like my mother and some people tell me I look just like my father. I am not a blonde living in a family of swarthy people. I am a blonde living among other shades of blondes with various shades of blue eyes. I have a solo picture of myself at birth and pictures of myself as a toddler among my family. My mother's good friend, Marge, who has also passed away, told me several times the story of my first visit to her home as a baby--wrapped up like a "little pea in a pod of blankets."
So despite evidence and documents and stories....there is a small part of me which wonders if I'm adopted....because my mother told me I was adopted.
In the five years since my parents both passed away, I've started some genealogy work on the family and I've rediscovered and contacted some first cousins and cousins. My mother always made it difficult, if not impossible, for me to communicate with them when I got older. I never understood why my mother didn't want me to communicate with them. After I discovered my mother had manipulated her birth certificate and was 5 years older than what she told people (including the DMV), I thought the reason she kept me away from family was because some of these relatives would remember my mother's real age. The age thing might be a part of the puzzle, but I also discovered or validated that my mother had some psychological problems.
I've always wondered....worried...that the strange behavior I saw in my mother was just my perception of her and her actions. But in talking to my first cousin, she described my mother's behavior towards me and my father and I knew for the first time....it wasn't me...it was her.
This was both a liberating and painful concept to discover. It answered so many questions.....it provided a reason for so many things in my life....but it still hurt. In a particular disorder, one I believe my mother had, it's not uncommon for a person to tell outrageous lies to people, especially to someone gullible like a child, and then be shocked that the child didn't understand it was a joke or a tall-tale. In essence, the shame is not placed on the trusted adult who told the story but gets turned back on to the child for being gullible enough to believe it.
That's exactly what happened to me.
When I was little my mother told me several times that I was adopted. She had this elaborate story of how she and my father went to the orphanage and how my mother picked me out whereas my father picked a red-headed boy. My mother, of course, won the selection and I came home. My mother also told me dramatic pregnancy stories...how difficult her labor was....how long...how she suffered. But as a child, I did not understand biology well enough to know that the orphanage story was wrong and the doctor sitting on her belly story was right. Eventually....I figured out I wasn't adopted.
Which never erased the tiny doubt that I was......
So although I agree....it's absolutely illogical......it's not necessary....its batty......I am sending in my DNA tomorrow and in a month I should discover my mother is my mother.
I know of no other way....to erase a very old lie.
