Finally Found

When my mother was seventeen years old, she gave birth to me. I was thrust forth into a life of being left alone with strangers, being shuffled from house to house, being abused. It all reached a head one day when I was beaten so badly that I had to be rushed to the ICU. I had a broken collar bone along with a whole host of minor injuries, I was less than a year old. My mother and I had been living either with my father and his twin sister at the time, or one of my mother’s many boyfriends. The story has changed more times than I can count. Regardless, the court system thankfully found my mother to be an unfit parent and I was put into the custody of my grandparents.

After I moved away from my father, he didn’t bother to see me anymore. I found out later that he had two other kids from different women within the same year that I was born. Maybe he was busy with them, or maybe he just abandoned all of us. My father was a gangster, and my father was a drug addict. My biological father died in 2000 at the age of twenty-one of an overdose when I was two years old. The older I get the more I wonder what life would have been like if he were still around. Would I have known my half siblings sooner? Would I have ever spent time with my father’s family? Would I have known these amazing and kind people earlier instead of missing out for eighteen years? Would my father have cleaned up his act and been there for my siblings and I? Not knowing has weighed on me heavily since I could remember.

For years anytime I talked to my mother I would ask her about my father, and she would tell me how much he loved me and how much he loved her. I don’t think I would have been as starry eyed if I had known about the two other children born within a year of me, but my mother didn’t find that out until I did. Unfortunately for me, learning about my biological father from my mom wasn’t the most accurate source of information. Between her being a pathological liar and a diagnosed sociopath, she’s not exactly reliable. She also has six, possibly seven, children with anywhere from five to seven men. My mother tends to mix up stories about the fathers of her children, or just blatantly lie to make herself feel better. My mother claimed to have no idea how to get into contact with my father’s family and claimed that she had been trying to find them for years. Later on, I found out that was a lie thanks to my godmother.

My senior year of high school my life had started to fall apart. I was afraid of the future and started having viscous panic attacks. I didn’t know if I could handle going to the out of state school that I had been accepted to. I didn’t know if I wanted to leave my job and leave my boyfriend. I just kept feeling like I didn’t know who I was or who I wanted to be. These feelings started me on the journey to finding my father’s family. I’m not sure if it started because I needed a distraction from all these big decisions that were quickly approaching, or if finding them would help me get my head on straight about who I was, and the answers would just come to me. Unfortunately, the latter was not the case, finding my father’s family did not hand me my answers on a silver platter, but I got to meet some of the most amazing people who I get to call my family.

Social media is a complex place, you have your friends, your family, acquaintances, strangers, a staggering amount of people. It can be a minefield trying to find people. Especially with only a last name. My mother claimed to not remember my father’s siblings, except for his twin sister, and she has claimed she couldn’t find any of them on Facebook. After a lot of pressure from me, she finally suggested I ask my godmother if she had any of them on social media. My godmother is one of the nicest people I know, and her parents babysat me for years while my grandparents worked, so I gave her a call. She immediately got to work trying to find my father’s family for me, and within a week I was setting a lunch plan to meet my uncle Jhonathan.

Jhonathan and I went to lunch at a Chili’s near where we lived, it turns out my entire life most of my paternal family lived less than half an hour away. Meeting Jhonathan felt comfortable, like I had known him my whole life. He told me that they knew Jason, my father, had another daughter, but they had no idea how to find me. That day I learned about my sister Destiny and my brother Miguel. Destiny is only three months younger than me, Miguel a mere nine months older. It was overwhelming, but my heart felt so full. It was the first time I had really felt connected to my father. Jhonathan became somewhat of a father-like figure to me after that day. I have always referred to my maternal grandfather as dad, and for all intents and purposes he is my father, but I feel like someone can never have too many parental figures or people who love them.

After meeting Jhonathan, I met my sister and my brother who both welcomed me as their sister with open arms. I talked to both my paternal aunts and my other uncle, and they also gave me a warm welcome to the family. I just felt so much love from all of them. My sister and I spent a lot of time together that year and we’ve grown pretty close, and Jhonathan and I spoke often. I will always be sad that I missed eighteen years of my family, but all I can do now is to be close to them moving forward.

Unfortunately, in the autumn of this year, my uncle Jhonathan passed away in a motorcycle accident, he was forty. My heart ached when I heard the news, but Jhonathan had practically raised my half-sister. She was devastated, I think for both of us it felt like we were losing our father again. I still have severe anxiety, and I kept having anxiety attacks on the way to the wake. I kept thinking; I can’t handle this. I don’t go to wakes for a reason. I need to go home. But then I started thinking about my sister and I realized my love for her outweighed the feelings of anxiety that I was having. When I pulled up to the funeral home, I realized that I didn’t know most of the people there. Between the bikers my uncle rode with and the fact I hadn’t met a lot of my extended family, I felt incredibly out of place.

A millennium passed by as I sat in my car crying hoping to catch a glimpse of my sister. Finally, I saw her and got out of my car. I walked over to her and hugged her, and we cried. Some of my cousins that I hadn’t met yet were there and my sister introduced me to them. They also immediately accepted me as one of their own. I spotted my aunt Wanda, who I hadn’t met in person yet and she introduced me to even more of my cousins. That day was incredibly hard, but it was also incredibly heartwarming. Meeting all these members of my family was so amazing and the kindness and immediate acceptance they showed me is more than I could ever hope for. I just wish that it was under better circumstances. I couldn’t go up to the casket that day, I can’t stand to see my loved ones in that state. But I showed up for my sister and for my uncle. I was so lucky to have a father figure as amazing as him, even if it was only for a few short years. I will always be grateful to my uncle Jhonathan.