Anyone found out later in life only one of their parents is bio?
Guess what I found out last week!
Short summary:
My mom got pregnant during her senior year and I was born after she graduated. She and my bio dad broke up during that summer and had a new girlfriend, who came with him during my birth and waited in the lobby. That’s how much he cared. Oh, and he didn’t tell his family about us until my mom was six months pregnant.
After my birth, he distanced himself completely from my mom and me. She ended up having to take him to court to get anything out of him. She was awarded child support that was 90% of his involvement. The other 10% was he got me one outfit and a toy. He had her pop her car trunk with her key fob so he could leave them in it. No questions about me and my wellbeing, just the trunk. She went out on dates with a few guys, but nothing stuck for more than a few weeks.
Fast forward to me being 1.5 years old. Mom and my TRUE dad got together. He knew about me but wasn’t scared away. Most mid 20’s guys with no attachments or responsibilities except for their own would have abandoned ship pretty quickly after I showed up, but he didn’t. After a few months of seeing his relationship with me grow and how much we loved each other, she decided he was the one. We all move into an apartment together and start being a family.
Fast forward again to four years old. Everything is going great as a family. Mom and dad get married and he wants to legally adopt me. Bio dad was still doing his own thing and ended up getting married to some chick named Heather. Anyways, in our state, a parent can initiate an adoption for their child without the other parent’s consent IF the other parent does not have any semblance of a relationship with the child. Considering I was four and all we heard from him was child support checks that automatically came out of his pay, I think that qualifies. They served him papers anyways, which he received but never responded to. Judge ruled in our favor and I was now legally his child. Paperwork was changed and everything to make it legit. The last thing they heard from my bio dad was a legal form in the mail to release him from child support.
Growing up, they never explicitly told me he wasn’t my dad. (Until now) I still had my mother’s maiden name though. I called her momma, but I called him by his real name. They never tried to force me to call him dad and I just picked up what everyone else was calling him. They’ve never really gone into detail of my life as a baby, but I also never asked. I always just assumed he was my dad because they never said otherwise. I never asked why we had different last names. Lots of things weren’t explicitly said because they weren’t explicitly asked for or needed to be said. We were a family and that’s all I knew.
After I graduated recently, they decided it was time. Dad’s guilt had become too much and he felt I would hate him more if he didn’t get it out. He said they waited until I graduated because they waited too long in the beginning and by the time I was old enough to really grasp what they meant by saying he adopted me, I was already in the middle of my school years and he was afraid it would wreck my school success to find out something like in the middle of it all. So they decided to wait, with the full intention of telling me after I graduated, which they did.
I am ALL over the place about how I feel. I feel everything at once. Love, sadness, thankfulness, betrayal, forgiveness, everything. I love him so much and would never want another dad, but I’m just so damn conflicted about myself and how I actually feel about it that it dominates my thoughts most days.
Short story over. Anyone else familiar with this? If so, please tell me everything. Were you ok with it? Felt lied to? Complete understanding. How the hell did you move forward after you found out?