If

There's no answer to this. No manual of guidelines and rules and checklists that can help you overcome each stage. It's a case of taking it how it comes and dealing with it the best you can. I feel completely brimming with emotion, and yet at the same time so empty that I feel guilty for feeling nothing. Is this right or wrong? Am I that laid back that I just don't care enough to let things affect me? Or am I going though some psycho suppressive period, where I'll come out the other end a raving lunatic like my mother? Am I pretending it isn't all happening? Am I unconsciously trying to pave it all over, planning to "deal" with it when the time comes?

It's been a month since I found out "The Truth". The truth about what? It was never a lie as such I guess, but a taboo subject that was never spoken about. And one year after placing that advert on a geneology site I finally got the answers I'd been looking for.

Maybe I expected it to be a whole lot bigger, that my whole world would change overnight. Deep inside, I know that it's down to the fact that I don't have my support group here, I'm on my own on this one! If I break down and fall apart, who is going to go to work every day? Pay the mortgage? Keep the house clean? Look after the dog? I feel angry that I haven't broken down about it and amazed at the inner strength I have at the same time.

If anything, this has given me more strength - strength to be myself and stop trying to please everyone else. Trying to please my boyfriend, his mother, his friends, their girlfriends, my family and everyone else I share my life with. I need to stop worying about how they'll be affected by what I do and what it means to them instead of me, as the only one who's going slightly loco here is me.

I know what I want, and I know how I want to do it. This is so important to me, yet I have noone here by my side to help me through it and just "deal".

It's not every day that you find out your biological father died of hypothermia in a park in Boston 8 years before you were able to contact him. If he'd known that I was looking for him, he wouldn't have gone down that route. If, if, if....

I want to take control of my life and focus on what I want.

I love my job, and I want to be the best I can be. I want to study again. I want to travel. I want to buy a freaking Mustang! Boy can keep the BMW if that's what it'll take. I want to see my friends in England. I want to be able to go out with my girlfriends for an evening without a sulking boy screaming at me and calling me names for not including him. I want to get to know my "new" family in Australia and England. I want to see where Danny is resting. I want to visit the park where he died. I want to dream and draw and imagine.

I want to live again.

I want to be me again before I forget.