So I decided to take one of those at-home DNA tests on a whim. I didn’t tell anyone since, honestly, I just wanted to see if I had any interesting ancestors from Europe. Nothing big. But when I got my results, I realized something was very wrong.

I noticed that my mother wasn’t matching up as well as she should have—the strange thing is, I look just like her. In addition, there were several relatives I had never heard of. It was like browsing through someone else’s family tree.

I began investigating deeper, texting a few distant relatives who appeared in the system. As I spoke with them, I discovered they lived on the opposite side of the country. I was utterly shocked when one of them told me about a long-lost relative who had allegedly vanished decades ago.

The more I learned, the more I suspected that this absent aunt was, in reality, my biological mother. When I saw a picture of that aunt, I noticed she and my mother looked very similar. When I addressed my mother, she burst into tears and expressed her desire that I would never learn that she was not my biological mother. She told me that her sister went missing for a while and returned home pregnant.

After I was born, she departed again, leaving me with a letter saying she had “realized she wasn’t meant to be a mother.” She grabbed all she could sell from my grandparents’ home. When mom returned a few months later, broke and determined to take me with her, my grandparents kicked her out.

My mother had previously gone to court to keep me and formally register me as her daughter. She has not contacted anyone since my grandparents died, and I have no idea if she is still alive. But now I’m afraid she’ll come up to our place since I’m not sure how I feel about it all.