Just some follow-up, or follow-on, as I sometimes see people say, to yesterday’s existential weirdness: I remain in limbo, which is where I intend to stay for all time, as to whether I have a daughter. Such a strange and un-me thing to think about, having always (well, almost always) been careful and never coming anywhere near paternity.
I found as much on this young woman as I expect to reasonably find without contacting her directly, which will never happen. She seems like a normal enough kid and I don’t want to disrupt that.
I had said earlier that no obvious physical resemblances seemed to exist but on closer look I do find some. But then maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see, which in this case means seeing what I don’t necessarily want to see: Evidence that I fathered this person. We have similar noses and chins.
The woman I had the affair with gave birth to two daughters. Neither of them looks anything like the other, not even close. One has a longish nose, the other a flat one. One is clearly Asian, the other white with no traces of typical Asian characteristics. I’d say it’s like they came from different mothers but by my reckoning, if what I’m thinking is true, the fathers’ genes made the difference.
As for getting answers, getting what I guess you’d call closure, I neither need nor want either. Closure in this case would mean anything but closure, rather an unneeded opening. Peoples’ lives are complicated enough without someone such as I barging in on what may as well be a complete stranger.
For as much satisfaction as I used to get being a forensic genealogist, filling in gaps of random families’ lineage and family trees, I consider myself something of a genealogical sociopath. I don’t have negative thoughts or bad feelings about my extended family. I just don’t care. I do not find extended family connections inherently remarkable simply on account of being family.
Now, tables turned in a way, I further feel that with no responsibility or expectations of me in terms of things like custody, child support, or other financial hooks this child, if she really is mine, neither is nor ever was my problem.
I remembered today the story of an acquaintance from college who, just out of college, had an affair with a married woman. He was 21 or 22, she was in her thirties.
He got her pregnant. She sued for child support and won. He was ordered to spend the next 18 years of his adult life sending this woman I don’t know how much money a month, even though both she and her husband had well-paying jobs.
Damn, I wish I could remember that guy’s name and see where he’s at now, or how that sorry situation played out.
I think of anecdotes like that and conclude that the best option is to stay away from this little mess I might have helped create.
Having been with that woman 25 years ago has felt like a stain on my life, a stain not worth explaining, not even worth talking about, but a stain which yesterday spread again, entirely unexpectedly.
