I think it's time to look for my biological father.
I have put it off for years -- starting and stopping out of fear. Getting halfway into filling out the forms to get the long form of my birth certificate (the one that should list his name) and then filing it away again. Doing half-assed searches online for various spellings of his name before filing it away in my brain under "To be determined sometime in the future."
I worry about who this person is and what new pain and difficulty he might bring into my life. Like I don't already have enough crap to sort through as-is. Why would I be crazy enough to invite more in? I have been balancing the need to protect myself against the worry that it will be too late by the time I am ready. I've been doing a lot of readying these last years. Beyond that I am not sure a right time will ever exist. It's time to act.
Opening the doors like this is not easy or simple. I have no real way of knowing what lies on the other side of the door until I open it. And I'm fairly certain that I can't just open the door a crack, take a peak and shut it tightly if I don't like what I see. A lifetime of experience with my mother's choices leaves me with a pretty reasonable sense of doubt about what to expect.
I have always felt like an outsider and a person without parents or a family. Like an alien who fell from the sky with the misfortune of having knocked on the wrong door. Even though I was technically raised by two people, I don't look back on my time with them as parents. I only use those words for lack of anything better. They didn't parent me. Growing up was about navigating around these people until I was old enough to have a chance on my own. Now that I am older and have more insight I am able to see where I fit in, for better or for worse. I can look at the maternal side of my heritage and see my place along a continuum. But the paternal side is a blank. It's a part of me that exists genetically but remains a mystery. A mystery I would like to solve, come what may.