I was two years old when the judge gave him weekends and holidays.

My biological father, after long court battles, was granted joint custody. The order was simple: he’d pay my adoptive parents $100 a month, and in return, he’d get time with me on weekends and holidays. The visits were to be supervised, in public, with a court-appointed amicus present and a family representative.

It looked official on paper.

He made his first payment. My parents made plans. My mother packed a bag, dressed me, combed my hair, and Clara took me to the designated meeting spot.

She waited.

Two hours.

He never came.

No contact. No message. Just silence.

He never showed up again.

Eventually, we learned the reason. He had been arrested and sent to prison for auto theft. Just like that, he disappeared…not just from visitation, but from my entire life. Even when he was released, he never attempted to contact me again growing up.

Later, when I was old enough to ask about him, my parents didn’t soften the truth:

“He was a criminal.”

Not long after that missed visit, my parents went back to court. The same judge who once divided me between two homes now gave them full custody. No more shared weekends. No more supervised visits. No more $100 checks.

Just me. Theirs. Officially.

I always wondered why he allowed the charade to go on as long as it did, if he didn’t care somewhere deep down. Was it really just the money?

As a child, I imagined all kinds of reasons. Maybe he was scared. Maybe he didn’t know where to go. Maybe he was just unable to be anything but a predator and his gift to us was he let us kids have a chance at life.

But the truth is simpler….and harder.

He didn’t show up because he didn’t care. Not about me. Not really. Not any of us.

He couldn’t. He could only cared about himself. He was and still is a malignant narcissist.

I wasn’t a daughter to him. I was a possession. A pawn. And when the power play didn’t go his way, he bailed. I wasn’t worth the fight, only the win mattered. Or, the money.

Turns out, I wasn’t the only one.

To date, we know of eight children, from seven different women. None of those relationships lasted, or even began. None of the kids really knew him. And three of those women, who had never met, told nearly identical stories of abuse and trauma.

Now, as adults, my siblings and I are piecing things together…connecting birthdates, butt chins, and timelines.

My brother and I joke darkly,

We should put our faces on a billboard and say, “If you look like us, we might be your sibling.”

We do look alike. Same baby face. Same hazel eyes. But what’s eerie are the mannerisms.

The identical way we hold a steering wheel. The subtle hand twitch when we’re nervous.The anxiety, social and otherwise. The ADHD, and an absurd amount of other physical characteristics no one can explain. No one taught us. They’re just… there.

Coded. Inherited. Genetically Wired.

What if I’m him?

It makes you wonder… how much of who we are is ours, and how much is his?

Because sometimes I look in the mirror and think:

What if I am just as bad of a person or parent as he is?

What if I have the potential to be just like him?

I don’t have an answer. Not yet.

But I do know this:

I am not who made me. I am who I became.