My Search and what I Found at the End
Once I found a match, and called the number. I was petrified. Luckily, it wasn't him because I am completely sure I would have had NO clue as to what to say to him if it had been.
I still was a woman on a mission, which unfortunately, is one of my character flaws. Once I take up a cause, I am almost obsessive in completing it and so it was with the search for the birth father.
Indirectly, I received some information about adoption which included ways to find a "lost" birth parent. It seemed like an omen since I wasn't really actively looking when I received it. One of the sources to get information was to obtain the marriage license of the person or people you were looking for. Another was to obtain the marriage license application.
I called the state of Delaware and immediately ordered the marriage license application. Because of my adoption, a lot of records were sealed to me but I slipped through the cracks on this one and was able to obtain it. I remember writing a $5 check which put me in the red and mailing it off.
Within a week, I had the marriage license application which contained the names of not only my parents but THEIR parents as well. And from my endless habit of reading phone books and a bit of a photographic memory, I remembered seeing my father's father's name and address in one. I had always assumed that this particular name was NOT my grandfather since he was a Sr. and a Jr. was listed below his name - I had always assumed that my father was the oldest child and so this couldn't possibly be him.
I was at work and so my closest friend there handled everything for me as we all agreed that it should be a third part who approached my estranged family. We called information and got the phone number and then my friend Karen made the call.
My grandfather remembered me immediately and even knew how old I was. He told Karen they would enjoy corresponding with me and that my father was a major in the Army and was stationed in Germany. Little did I know then that my entire family, maternal and paternal, were fantastic liars!
I went home that night and wrote long letter explaining who I was and what I wanted. I was careful not to detail the abuses that I suffered at the hands of my stepfather because I knew that could be overwhelming. I mailed the letter on Tuesday.
Saturday morning I had just come home from shopping and was eating lunch when the phone rang. The voice at the other end asked for me and when I responded positively, he told me he was my father.
It was July 2, 1988. Thus began hours-long calls between us as we got to know one another. He told me that he was actually a Lt. Colonel as well as a lawyer but worked in a secret capacity and couldn't disclose what he actually did. He lived in Northern Virginia very close to where I grew up and had another daughter who was 16 years younger than me - she was 8 at the time.
Needless to say I was overjoyed. I had found a father who was seemingly intelligent and seemed to be interested in resuming our relationship as well as a sister and a stepmother, who was Korean and happened to be in Korea when all of this happened.
By the following Tuesday, my father drove to where I lived in Pennsylvania and surprised me with a dozen roses. We stayed up talking all night. He was very careful to say only positive things about my mother and I was overjoyed. The next day I showed him around where I lived, took him to my alma mater and really felt quite comfortable and happy with the way things had turned out.
Unfortunately, things were to take a disastrous turn although I was too blinded by the romanticism of the situation to see it coming.
My father encouraged my husband and me to relocate to Northern Virginia so we could all be a "family" and spend more time together. Even after he brought my stepmother to meet me and she practically called me a home wrecker and a slut to my face, we agreed. By the time we moved, he had told his wife that he had decided to discontinue the relationship and as far as she knew, I was out of the picture.
This hurt me for a variety of reasons, the most prominent being that he could deny me so quickly.
The rosy visions I had of getting to know my father and spending time with him and my sister quickly faded. He decided he hated my husband and refused to interact with me if he was around. He made it clear I demanded too much of his time and wouldn't see me for weeks on end. Being all alone in a strange environment, I had really counted on him and obviously, he let me down.
His only contact with me quickly became long phone calls but only during office hours while we were both at work. My husband had to take two jobs to make ends meet in the high-end economy of Northern Virginia and I rarely saw him and spent all of my nights alone, positive that if my father would just spend more time with me, my life would be perfect.
He would tell me how happy he was that we found one another, how alike we were and how he enjoyed my company only to completely ignore me other than his daily phone calls which became portraits of intense emotional abuse. He didn't feel he could love me unconditionally and would always give me little tests by which I could prove myself worthy of being his daughter. His parents did the same and through him, eventually disowned me. I don't know if it was revenge against my mother, who was now dead, through me but I know I was emotionally killed by them all.
Finally, I sank into a deep depression filled with attacks of anxiety and had to be treated by a counselor and a psychiatrist.
I was still under his spell though and maybe that was a result of all of those years knowing my father would rescue me and the perfection I had bestowed upon my image of him.
Finally, my husband and I became pregnant. After so many years of waiting to be parents, we were thrilled. At that point, the emotional abuse of my father had reached an extreme. He got stranger and stranger - moving and not telling me his new address...changing his beeper number and not alerting me...not giving me a phone number by which to reach him. He told me it was a lesson for me to learn submission. I decided then it was detrimental to me, my husband and my child to continue the charade and I ceased all contact with him.
When my son was two, sentimentalism took over and I contacted him again. Once again, it was another weird search to find him but I did by contacting a bar association to which he belonged. We resumed contact but he had just gotten stranger and the emotional abuse began within weeks. The break this time was even more difficult because we had been corresponding through email and I always felt if I could just say the right thing, it would make everything perfect between us. With the help of my best friend, I was able to make the break although it was traumatic and incredibly painful to finally admit that nothing good could ever come from finding my birth father.
I have been "birth father" - or as I like to say now, sperm donor - free for about two years now and I am a lot happier (that is to say, he could have simply donated the sperm which was part of my conception and probably have been MORE of a father than he was so I refer to him as my sperm donor now...that is about how much regard I have for him.) It still bothers me to see people on talk shows so anticipatory of their own reunion because I know the pitfalls and I have been there.
GUESTBOOK!!
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