3 Sides of the Family

Life isn't always as bad as you view it.

3 Sides of the Family

The phone rings, I pick it up. It's my mother.

“I have your real father on the line.”

My heart stops. What do I think? What do I say? 30 years old, I'm 30 years old and I'm only now being told the man I thought was my real father was not. The grandmother who raised me all of a sudden, we no longer share the same bloodline.

How does one deal with such information? For me it went like this, “Hi, I guess you're my real father.” That's about it. No real reaction nor emotions. I felt like I wasn't in a real moment; it felt fictional. Like I was a lead character in a 30-year-old soap opera where everyone knew what was going on except me. My own little Truman show. But, where was my secret door to escape from this soap opera? That's when I realized, girl, this is your reality.

After a couple of weeks, anger, trust issues, and sadness all set in at the same time. Sprinkle in a pinch of anxiety attack and there you have it—a girl lost!

It felt very real around Thanksgiving when everyone was eating. For the first time, I felt so distant and unattached from my family. I ate on the stairs away from everyone. I knew I was a foster child. I never felt like I was because my foster mother was my father's mother. Then I realized oh my goodness, I am actually a foster child. I started to tear up for a few seconds, then my heart felt warm all of a sudden. Thirty years and I didn't have one clue that I wasn't related to my father, some of my siblings, and my loving grandmother. That shows me that she loved me as her own. She never saw me as different from my brother I shared the same mother with. Instead of anger, my heart grew even more love for the family that took me in as their own.

Yes, I wish I had known my real new-found siblings all their lives, being that I am the oldest, but I was loved and lived well with my accepting family, for the most part.

I now have three families. How can I complain? My mother's side, my father's side and my real dad's side. My real dad's side has yet to meet my other father's side of the family. Who knows if it will ever be a thing that happens. I'm not going to push that into motion. It will happen naturally or it will not happen at all. I'm okay with whatever happens.

As of now, we have to bury my real paternal grandmother on Thursday, May 17th, 2018. I've only met her once. She had dementia. How things have worked out, due to DNA of course, I am the one that looks exactly like her out of the siblings on my real dad's side. My dad says she lives through me now. I guess that's cool.

In the end, finding out the shocking news about having a different father wasn't a downfall in my life, but a gain and a stronger protective shield around me.

Life can be beautiful if we turn our negatives, as much as possible, into positives. I didn't lose a family, I gained one. Three sides of the family. I am blessed.