u/Harvardbunny

Classic case of: successful/gifted woman with only a “few quirks” gets diagnosed late in life. Some people don’t understand why this diagnosis has been so hard for me to grasp. “The diagnosis shouldn’t change anything. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”, they say as they forget my lifelong struggle with anxiety attacks that no therapy or medicine could touch and ignoring the fact that my mask is what allows for my success at the expense of my mental health and nervous system.

So here’s the story I tell people to help them try to understand:

Imagine you are Greek. You grew up in a family that celebrates this fact and fully embraces all aspects of being Greek. You yourself LOVE being Greek. Your whole life you’ve made all the Greek jokes, making homemade baklava with yaiya is one of your favorite childhood memories, you hosted a watch party for the Odyssey, you’ve even been to Greece several times, and your entire family practices the orthodox traditions.

Until one day you take a DNA test: 0% Greek, 100% French.

Does this change anything about your history and your experiences? No. Can you still participate in all the things you did previous to this discovery? Yes.

Except now, it makes sense why your last name isn’t Greek. You never questioned it before, probably just some weird family drama or something (you have always assumed)… but now it makes sense.

It gives reason for why you are so pale compared to other Greeks, something you’ve been bothered by your whole life… you want to be tan like other Greeks and you’ve spent WAY too much money on fake tan because no matter what you try, you only burn instead of tan. You always assumed it was because you weren’t raised in the Mediterranean and brushed it off, except now you know why. Now you know that even if you were raised in the Mediterranean… you would still need fake tan to fit in.

You always felt like an outsider when your family got together because they are all big drinkers (like most Greeks) but not you. Alcohol isn’t your thing and it hurts your tummy, so you never really partook in drinking during family celebrations. Before the DNA test, you laughed at the jokes your family made about your decision to abstain because “you were dropped on your head lol” or “you must have been adopted lol”. After the DNA test, it’s hard to laugh along with those jokes that were once light hearted and funny because the fact that you’re TRULY an “outsider” now makes those jokes hit a little harder, because they are right. It’s no longer a joke. You actually aren’t like them.

So you are now tasked with exploring the very things that make French people French so you can learn about yourself, your last name, and your history. You know everything about the Trojan War but nothing about the French Revolution. You never once thought about the French Revolution but now it’s all you can think about. You have to unpack decades of family lineage just to find out where you came from. You’ve never been to France and now you’re researching ways to get there… and it’s a LOT more expensive and difficult than when you went to Greece last time. Getting to Greece only required one direct flight and $500. Getting to France requires 3 connecting flights over the course of 2 days and $1500.

There’s nothing wrong with being Greek. Your family is going to continue to operate as they always have. There’s nothing wrong with being French. The past experiences you had as a Greek person are just as real as they were. But you can’t go back in time and insert French memories into your childhood. You’re starting from scratch. From this point forward, all of your interactions with Greek people and French people have fundamentally changed. Although you have answers to questions you previously pushed aside, you now have a daunting amount of learning ahead of you to figure out what it is to be French.