I am the Skeleton in the Closet

Finding Family

It took months, but I finally got my phone and my car back. For once things were, well things were normal again. Finally, things can just be at peace, for once. I sighed, unlocking my phone screen and sifting through to see all that I had missed. Looks like Levi and Eric made things official. I shuddered at the thought. At least I finally had the courage to break it off when I did, I'm glad he's finally moved on. Well hopefully finally. I couldn't shake the feeling that he'd be returning into my life soon, of course as previously mentioned I was not wrong. Madi's got some serious stuff going on there, maybe I should text her or something. Wait, friend request? I paused at the red notification as it flashed across the top of my screen. Who could that be? I tapped it and followed through to her page. Ugh, she looks like she might be friends with mom, no way I'm accepting that. I deleted it without a second thought and kept scrolling away. Weeks passed and daily I would delete the same notification from the same thirty year old who for some reason wanted to be friends. Just take the hint already geez. I rolled my eyes each time, pressing delete and moving along with my day. I don't want a snitch on my feed to tell everything about me to mom. Recalling all of the past experience I had with this exact same thing happening to a much more innocent youth. It had become part of my daily routine, I didn't think twice about it, until I got two in one day. They were from different people of course, but the other request stopped me dead in my tracks. Her name was Stephanie. If I hadn't known any better I would have thought that someone was catfishing me with my own photos. Closer inspection proved that she was a different person entirely, but the resemblance was ghostly. I mean she looked just like me. Same dark blond hair, same stature, eye brows, same somewhat creepy smile that you could tell she was trying to make, same tiny bags under the eyes that just never seemed to go away, she could have been mistaken for my twin if I was still in middle school. There's no way that's a coincidence. I marveled at the profile for a bit longer before accepting the request. This can't be a coincidence. There has to be some kind of relation here. There has to be something. I couldn't escape the idea for days. If it's her, she'll message me. If she knows me she'll say something. If I know her I have to figure out how. Why would she send me the request? I have to know her somehow. This isn't a random guy from India trying to hack me, she's way too real. She's way too similar. What is going on here? I racked my brains trying to figure out exactly how she knew me, but I couldn't think of any other way than by blood. Is she one of them? Can I ask? Would it be weird to? I mean this can all just be some crazy coincidence. I'm overthinking it. People send random people friend requests all the time. It's nothing. Calm down. I came up with every reason why she couldn't know me, we couldn't be related, she's just some random person, but the more I thought about it the more sure it seemed. They never told me I had a sister. There's no way. I argued with myself. Well they never really told me anything I guess. So there's no real way to know. I went back and forth and back and forth. I asked Erica about it but she had little more to say than that it was weird and she had more important things she had to do. I tried asking advice from as many people as I could, but ultimately no one really knew I was adopted so their advice was always given in a disbelieving tone from the hypothetical situation I brought to them.

"Well if they didn't keep them, why would they have had another kid?"

"You said they had divorced, there's no way."

"If they look that much alike maybe, but it'd be a long shot."

Of course none of this helped me, and the only one who could have possibly understood didn't seem to want to. The last thing I wanted to do was throw myself out there to some stranger, getting my hopes up only to be brought crashing back down to reality. I'd been so used to people telling me what to say and how to act that when it finally came down to me being the only one that could decide all I had was questions no one could answer. Well no one except them, but I wasn't even sure if I wanted them in my life. I had rehearsed time and time again their feeble attempts at making up for a lifetime of disregard, but suddenly now there was a chance I could meet them. For once in my life I could ask all of the questions that had been buzzing through my brain and no matter how much I had claimed to not care, or how thoroughly I had decided I didn't want to know, I did. I had always wanted to know, I just never wanted to get my hopes up. Just message her. What's the worst that can happen? She says no, fuck you? I tried to set myself at ease thinking of what the worst case scenario would be. I mean they don't even know me. I don't even know them. Even if all of my fears are realized, what changes? If nothing else I'll be able to say everything I practiced saying to them. I needed closure, I never thought I'd get it but I knew I needed it so after a week of debate I finally decided to message her. Now it was just a matter of what I could say. How do I bring this up? What am I even supposed to say? 'Hey I know this is a weird question but do you think we might be related?' That's too weird. I went back and forth, writing out a message then deleting it, then rewriting it, and deleting it again. Eventually I messaged her this long message explaining everything. I said something along the lines of: "Hey I know this is a weird question and I won't bring it up again if you say no it's just that you look just like me when I was younger so I wasn't sure if there was a correlation. See I'm adopted and I don't know who my real family is so when I saw your friend request. I mean I don't really know you so I just thought maybe. I know this is weird and I don't really expect a response so you don't have to reply if you don't want. I was just curious because I've had a lot going on and I was just curious. Again don't feel pressured to respond and if this isn't you then just forget about it and I'm sorry to bother you." I think I even kept going. I was so afraid. For as much convincing as I did to myself that she would say no it was all I could do to not break down thinking about what would happen if she said yes. That was my biggest fear. I could finally get an answer to the question that was constantly buzzing around my brain but once I got that answer what would happen. Would I be happy just knowing that?