DNA result
S3e2 - S3e1 - S2e3 - S2e2 - S2e1 - S1e1
And so we got the DNA result of my Aunty from Ancestry, and it says we're family. In other words, the man who recognised me as his child was my biological father.
And there's no second backlash.
In the previous instalment, I had mentioned this could be an outcome and that, in this case, I had no explanation for what I have been through. The outcome of the DNA test got me thinking.
Like the rest of my family I had assumed that my violent father was the most evil of my parents. This result forced me to look at the events in a different light, and to my surprise the re-assessment came very fast. When I put together that my mother never raised a finger to prevent my father to bash me, that she never condemned him for randomly giving me beatings, that she never apologised to her family for the disputes created by my father, that she wrote the letter to the social services to tell that my wife mistreated our children, I realise that she was not a saint at all, I realise she was not a victim, I realise she might have been more evil than my father. For the first time I consider she might have manipulated him, and that he might have seen it but was never able to break free from the frame he got into.
There is a theory that the partners we chose have the very specific behaviours that trigger us, and therefore provide us with the opportunity to resolve our traumas. I have come to believe this is correct. I have indeed resolved a lot of my traumas and disabled the triggers. For example, when I realised that my wife was making me feel shit more and more often, I took steps to stop it. She didn't like that rebellion of mine, and we divorced. Back to my parents: both of them were making the other one feel shit, but they never took steps to get out of their toxic relationship. As for the violence of my father and the neutrality of my mother, I can only guess I was a pawn in their game. And I feel I am quite close to the end of that questioning in me. And it feels good.
An interesting thing came out of the DNA results. The genes of my father' sister are mainly associated with 3 main areas:
- 29% are associated with France,
- 28% are associated with South-Germany.
- 26% are associated with many regions in UK. Than means that my aunt's and father's parents had that heritage in them, but the family tree doesn't give any clue about who came from Germany or UK. Somehow that has become a more interesting question than the previous one.
As for myself ...
- 47% of my markers are connected to UK. That corroborated the oral history on my mother' side, but clearly my father' side adds to it – unfortunately without any kind of oral history to explain it,
- 6% of my markers are connected to Germany and must come from my father' side – he insisted that I learned German before English as my first foreign language...
- 16% of my markers are connected to Spain and Portugal. In earlier versions (I did my test at least 10 years ago), my two main regions were the UK (same percentage as today) and the mediterranean basin including North Africa and the Middle East. Beyond the history of Spain, my feeling is that I am more related to North Africa and the Middle East than to Spain and Portugal. I have seen the results changing according to the political sensitivity of the moment – I expect this specific region will change again,
- 25% of the markers are with France, where I was born.
In a very unexpected way this DNA result has put my mind to peace on the "why" I got to live what I got to live in my childhood, and it is a more satisfying peace than the one I thought I would get.
I am probably going to write to my mother at some point. There are things that need to be settled. I don't feel any urgency about it. It will happen when the time is right.
Last note:
If you ever wonder, I confirm that the whole thing is my true story. As I wrote about it, I realised there were 3 phases to it, and I decided to make it as episodes within seasons. That is the non-serious part of that recount.