Once the school year was finally complete, and my interim work obligation along with it, I threw myself into the search (and started this blog!)
I kept in pretty regular contact with Nicole, which was great to still have SOME “bonus” family on my side (as Nicole likes to call it–a fitting name!)
One night, I went down yet another rabbit role. After having reached out to several other matches, some of whom responded and shared their family trees with me, I decided to try searching some of those matches’ surnames in Jessie’s tree to see where the connection might lie. I ended up getting a hit for one of these (rather uncommon, at least to my ear) surnames! From what I understood at the time, the “pathway” of names at the bottom of the search screen ended with the name of the relative on the tree whose line was directly connected to that surname search–and the last name on that list was Minnow.
I was dumbfounded and immediately nauseous. This was the wife of “Ryan” Reilly. That must be the point of intersection of the two trees, and they only had two sons.
I feverishly began messaging Nicole, trying to explain the situation, then suggested we hop on a Google Hangout since it would be easier to go over my line of evidence via Screenshare.
She was so excited for me! I asked her advice on what next steps to take and her thoughts on the best way to make contact.
Sometime over the course of the conversation, she asked if I had talked to Jessie at all about this. I explained to her the last message threads I had with Jessie, and how she hadn’t replied in over a month, which wasn’t like her. A while back, Nicole and I had found several of the Reilly clan on facebook, and I sent a bunch of them friend requests, along with a generic sort of “Hey, just found out via AncestryDNA that we’re cousins on the Reilly side! Just saying hello and I’d love to chat at some point”. Only one ever responded, but just by granting my friend request. I explained this to Nicole.
She sighed, and mentioned how in a previous conversation she had with Jessie, she had seemed reluctant to help me…out of concern that she might be overstepping and that it might not be what the rest of her family wanted.
What the rest of her family wanted.
Only this was also MY family–one I’ve been deprived of knowing my whole life! How does ONE family member, my donor/biological father, get to decide my relationship to the rest of my biological family for the rest of my life?! He may have signed away that right, but I never had! Besides, what if his parents, my biological Grandparents, never even knew what he had done, that they had 3 more (at least) grandchildren out there? I can’t imagine knowing that your son bore children, and not wanting to know who they are.
The realization hit me that I was possibly being stonewalled by the very family I was desperately hoping to gain a connection to. But I was an innocent party. I never asked for any of this, never agreed to anonymity and signing the right to know my family away. Jesus, I have other aunts, uncles, grandparents, possibly even half-siblings out there that share my flesh and blood who I may never get the chance to know. I felt not only deeply isolated, but possibly even shut out by my own relatives, and it HURT.
I tried my best to keep the waves of emotion inside–it was the first time Nicole and I were seeing each other, although virtually via a screen, but the flood was just too much to bear. I stopped talking and cried–so deeply shaken that I could barely speak without breaking into a fresh sob. It wasn’t the introduction I wanted.
How could they shut me out like this?? I’m a good person! They don’t even know me! It felt like their silence was a statement of my worth. It just felt so unfair–I understood that many donors only donated due to the anonymity that they were promised, and that, if their family HAD heard about me through Jessie, that their silence was probably out of respect for that family member’s privacy. But that didn’t make it hurt any less–it made me feel like an illegitimate child, dirty…just a stranger–not a “real” member of their family. Perhaps I was just an item–a life-bearing cell–to be sold, not a person.
Yet there I was, their flesh and blood, and possibly being denied my right to know who I am and connect with my own God damn blood family just because my birth father decided to jack off into a cup and make a little extra money when he was young. Yes, I’m grateful to be alive, but this still stings. Maybe they weren’t trying to keep me out, but if they were, as I’ve heard of with some other donor conceived people, it felt like more than I could bear.
Feeling rejected before you were even born is a funny thing. In just about all other cases of fathers who opt out of being a part of their child’s life, they’re still at least recognized by society as the birth father, and are even obliged to support their child. Granted, financial support is in NO way what I want or in any way would ever expect in a situation like this, but the point is that, in all other situations, when a man fathers a child, he is still seen as being in some way, shape or form, bound to that child. He may still walk out, and he may end up being a shitty Dad from afar, but at the end of the day, that’s still his child. Another man may step in and raise the child, also becoming it’s Dad, but no one would deny that the biological father’s family is also that child’s family as well.
In the case of adoption, even closed adoptions, people tend to understand the grown adoptee’s desire to know and connect with his/her own biological family, their roots. The biological parents, if found, might still opt out of having a relationship with their biological child, but often others in their family welcome their long-lost family member with open arms.
I felt powerless to know and connect with my own roots. I thought of what I had learned so far about the Reilly clan, stretching back to Ireland and England, imagining my ancestors’ lives. Those ancestors were mine every bit as much as they were anyone else’s in that family–they existed long before my birth father ever signed me away. What right did he or the fertility industry have to take part of my family away from me? And how could the present-day family rightfully shut me out, if indeed they are? I did NOTHING wrong! I just AM who I am. How is that not enough?
We talked a bit more, and agreed that it shouldn’t be taken personally. Besides, since messages received over Facebook from someone who isn’t already your “Facebook friend” go to an entirely separate (and hard to locate) mailbox, maybe most if not all of them never even realized they got it. Maybe I was just projecting my fears and misinterpreting everything. It’s hard not to do that when you already feel so alone and on the defensive about your equal humanity.
I had gone from being totally elated (albeit nauseous from being so overwhelmed and excited) to being incredibly deflated and despondent.
Nicole spoke words of encouragement and wished me luck as we signed off our call, and I quickly said hello to her kids and apologized for my teary, snotty appearance. Yayyy for first impressionssss!
I decided to hold off on trying to contact anyone else in the Reilly family for the time being. Also, I decided that I would more or less enter a state of “search moratorium” until I could write, catch up on, and process via my blog everything that had happened so far. I would continue my search once I was up-to-date, and could finally start searching and writing in real-time.
This time, I needed a break from moving forward.