The Paternity Puzzle
When I was in my late teens, I met an older woman online.
We had a lot of fun one summer and when I went back to university she would drive a few hours just to see me and have some more fun.
After about half a year of this, she told me she was pregnant. It wasn’t a lie, because we kept hanging out and she started getting a big belly.
I didn’t know how to handle this but I basically accepted responsibility and even went as far as telling my family about it. They were not happy but they accepted it.
The woman in question started getting very defensive at this point…it’s almost as though she was jealous and afraid that if I had too much support I’d take the baby away from her. She even communicated some of this sentiment with me.
So what does she do? She lawyers up. She hired an attorney and basically stopped all communication with me at this point. After a while, I started asking for us to get a paternity test to prove it was mine but she and her attorney ignored me.
All I have is a photo of the baby in her stomach, and the name that she wanted to give the baby.
She just completely dropped off the face of the earth. This was about 5 years ago and I have no clue where she is; her and her attorney stopped responding to my contacts after a while. I might have a little kid out there somewhere and I’ll never know.
This was an extremely stressful time in my life. I even failed university as a result of the stress it caused me. I had some severe panic attacks and was diagnosed with panic disorder as a result of this. I’ve since learned to tone down my mind and no longer have panic disorder.
The only silver lining in this is that it became a catalyst for my success. At the time, I had a choice to make: become a statistic, or use the experience as motivation to better myself.
Now almost 5 years later I’m doing extremely well in life. I built a career making upwards of 6 figures a year and I don’t even have a college degree.
I still don’t know where they are. I haven’t yet found the courage to start looking for them. I am fearful of being misjudged because of what happened and how long it took me to act, but I had no choice because I was a teenager that failed out of university with no money and no options. The only thing I could do was work on improving myself and learning from that mistake…and I did just that.