Growing up, I always felt like the unwanted child.
\nMy sisters got affection, new clothes, and help with everything.
\nI got criticism.
\nMy mother constantly reminded me that I didn\u2019t look like her or my father, and as I got older, her resentment became harder to ignore.
\nAt fourteen, she told me I needed to buy my own snacks and clothes.
\nSoon after, she started demanding money every month for \u201crent.\u201d
\nMy father worked long hours and rarely understood how bad things had become.
\nBy seventeen, I had saved enough from my part-time job to order a DNA test.
\nI didn\u2019t tell anyone.
\nA few weeks later, the results arrived while I was at school.
\nMy father found the envelope first.
\nWhen I came home, he was standing in the kitchen holding it.
\n\u201cWhat is this?\u201d
\nI told him why I had taken the test.
\nHe opened it.<\/p>\n
Then his face completely changed.
\nHe shouted for my mother.
\nThe results showed something none of us expected.
\nMy father was biologically related to me.
\nMy mother wasn\u2019t.
\nShe finally broke down.
\nYears earlier, my parents had struggled to have another child. A close relative had become pregnant unexpectedly and quietly asked them to raise the baby.
\nThat baby was me.
\nMy father had been told the truth.
\nBut after a medical crisis years later, he had somehow come to believe I was biologically theirs too.
\nMy mother had carried resentment toward the situation for years\u2014and taken it out on me.
\nThat revelation didn\u2019t erase what she had done.
\nBut it finally explained why I had always felt different.
\nAnd for the first time, my father saw exactly what I had been living with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Growing up, I always felt like the unwanted child. My sisters got affection, new clothes, and help with everything. I got criticism. My mother constantly reminded me that I didn\u2019t look like her or my father, and as I got older, her resentment became harder to ignore. At fourteen, she told me I needed to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10117,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10115\/revisions\/10117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}