This Road I’m On Is A Broken Road

Jimmy, Suzanne, and Madeline Gunter, circa 1966.  My mother is expecting my twin brothers in this photo.

This Road I’m On Is A Broken Road

Please overlook the multitude of typos that are bound to be in this post.

Over the last week or so, I have mentioned wanting to know WHO I am.  I know that several of you are wondering what has me in such a state of confusion right now, so please prepare yourself for more than a moment of crazy here.

Some time back, I had my DNA tested at Ancestry.com, to help further my family tree research. Not too long ago, my sister did the same thing, also through Ancestry.  One day, I opened up the DNA page there to see my sister staring back at me as a DNA match. Nothing unusual there…or, it shouldn’t have been.

What it said under her name threw me for a loop: Half-sister….

I shared this information with David and we decided not to say anything to her, to just wait and see if she said anything about it.   And, we waited.

On 5 December 2018, she emailed me and asked if I saw that it said we were half-sisters.

We both know that we are the children of the same mother. So, this just left us to try to figure out who belongs to Daddy and who doesn’t.   She’s the one with his family members showing up as DNA matches. I don’t have any of them in my match lists. NONE.

This has been like losing my Daddy all over again.  He passed away back in December 2012. David and Daddy were in the hospital, both on death’s door, at the same time.  I couldn’t be both places at once and didn’t have the means to go back to South Carolina to see Daddy. He died back home in South Carolina, and a big part of me died here in Texas that day. And now, to find out after all this time, that he is very likely not my biological father is devastating. I’ve lost him all over again.

It gets even worse.  Much worse. My mother was repeatedly victim of a particularly disgusting type of abuse in her teenage years, into her early 20s.  My sister brought up the possibility that I was born of such an unholy union. If this line of thinking plays out – and I hope it does not! – it would mean that my mother and I are half-sisters.   I cannot bear this thought. I already want to drain every ounce of blood out of myself. This would explain why my mother never seemed to love me, why I never measured up in her eyes.

There are other possibilities.  Neither of my parents were faithful spouses.  Being born of adultery, although not ideal, would be much easier to handle than what my sister has supposed.

Our mother has just been in the hospital due to pneumonia. She is home now, but neither of us want to give her a heart attack by laying this on her.  We are trying to investigate things on our own, minimizing questions we’re asking of her, otherwise she’ll wonder what’s going on. I don’t want to upset her.  I DO want to know the circumstances of my creation, at least who my father actually is.

The gross could be ruled out if Mama has a DNA test. If we share a father, we will have a 100% half-match on the X-chromosome because daughters get 100% of their father’s X-chromosome (that he got from his mother) unchanged, in addition to the X they get from their mother.  Full sisters, and half-sisters with the same father, match like that.  Please pray that we can raise the money for this DNA test for Mama and that she will agree to take it.

Daddy will always be my daddy. DNA will not change who loved, raised, and sacrificed for me. He was not a perfect man, none of us are perfect. He has some significant flaws. Domestic violence ruled my childhood.  But, he also had very loving moments and he loved me.

So, this is where I’ve been for much of December, falling headlong into the cobra pit of depression, disgust, and “who am I?”  I cannot express the depth of my feelings right now. Not a day has gone by since that day without me bawling my eyes out. I can’t think of any of this without crying.  I can’t look at family pictures without crying and, depending on who is in the picture, being enraged and puking.

Genealogy work has been my passion since I was about 14 years old.  I’ve been very close to hanging up the “Retired Genealogist” sign. But, how I can stop now? There are so many answers that I need to find.

Ideally, I will find them before I totally lose it.  I am so close to that right now, most of the time I can’t even speak in coherent sentences or write them either. And every moment of speaking is punctuated with tears.

Thank you for reading through this pile of “stuff”.  Thank you for any prayers that you may send up for me and my family right now.

Have a blessed weekend and a very Merry Christmas.