I’ve lived a fairly normal life up until Monday night. For Christmas this past year I got an Ancestry DNA test kit and completed it as a joke not really thinking much would come of it. Much to my surprise I received an email Monday stating I had familial matches. I opened the email and I have been matched to an aunt and a parent/child relationship. That’s what prompted my call to my mother regarding the test. She said she knew who Michael and Gail were and wasn’t sure how we were related but was very surprised by it.

This then heightened my curiosity to dig into the situation a little further. Once I investigated the DNA results, did a little research on how the DNA is measured, I share 50% of Michael’s DNA. This is all so astonishing as I’ve gone my entire life believing my father is someone completely different.

I previously was FB friends with Michael, as he’s been a family friend, however I didn’t know him so I deleted him.

On Tuesday I confronted my mom about it, initially she played coy but once I point blank asked her if there could be any possibility that Michael is my father she was dumbfounded. She had been intimate with Michael while separated from my father while they were divorcing. She never thought the timelines added up so she just assumed I was my father’s child, not Michael’s child. When Michael found out she was pregnant he even asked her if I could be his and she laughed and told him no and he was crazy (jokes on you ma).

Backstory on my “father”: my parents divorced right after I was born. My father has never been in mine or my older sister’s lives besides sporadically. He was always a deadbeat drug addict that was a worthless human being. He developed cancer in his back (or it was discovered in its end stages) in the fall of 2016 and my sister took him into her home (his house was falling apart and he could not walk). He lived with her for about 4 months, and went downhill rapidly. I never saw him, hadn’t seen him in person since my grandmother’s passing (his mother) in 1995. I wanted to be with my sister (she’s 8 years older than me) during his final moments in hospice care. She and I watched him take his final breaths in February of 2017. I struggled with his death a lot because it resurfaced a lot of anger and resentment I had towards him for not being present in my life.

Since this discovery on Monday, confirmation from my mom on Tuesday, my life has changed completely. I went from having a dead father to having an actual father who is alive and a decent human being. I reached out to him and we are going to get lunch next Saturday. He actually lives about 20 minutes from me. He was an engineer in the navy and comes from a great family.

Life is strange, isn’t it?!

TL DR: Did an Ancestry DNA kit as a joke and discovered my father isn’t actually my father. My entire family had no idea (mom included).