I was found abandoned in the back booth of a diner in 1974.
Wrapped in a jacket that didn’t fit. No note. No name. No birthday. Just a little kid—me—sitting alone, staring at the door, waiting for someone who never came back.
The waitress called the police. They guessed I was maybe two. Maybe younger. They looked at my teeth, the way I spoke—or barely spoke—and decided to assign me a birthday.
March 8th. The day I became… nobody.
The system swallowed me whole.
For the next 12 years, I lived in orphanages, foster homes, and Catholic charity houses. I learned quickly that I wasn’t a child in those places—I was a problem to be passed along. Furniture that never fit in the room. A number in a file. A mouth to feed and a check to cash.
And worse—when no one was looking, when the doors were locked and the lights were off—I was prey.
Priests. Deacons. Men who claimed to be holy.
They broke me down, piece by piece, while telling me that God was watching.
And every night I prayed that if God was watching, He would finally make it stop.
He didn’t.
But at 12 years old, something miraculous happened.
A family from Queens adopted me.
A real family.
A mom who made soup when I was sick.
A dad who taught me how to ride the subway without looking like a tourist.
Siblings who teased me, fought me, and still called me theirs at the end of the day.
They gave me my first birthday party. My first sense of safety. My first feeling of belonging.
They saved me. And I swore I would never take that for granted.
But lately…
They’ve been asking questions.
Soft ones at first.
“Don’t you ever wonder where you came from?”
“You kind of look Native—maybe Seneca? You know Salamanca has that reservation.”
Then it became a request.
“Let’s do a DNA test. Just to see. Just to know. Don’t you want to know?”
And the truth is—no. I don’t.
I’ve spent my whole life piecing myself back together from ashes. Why would I dig through them again?
I know who my family is. It’s not the woman who left me in a booth. It’s not strangers with my blood. It’s not statistics or ancestry percentages.
It’s the people who showed up.
Who stayed.
Who didn’t need proof to love me.
But they don’t understand.
They think this is about curiosity. A fun family project. Something light.
They don’t realize that for me, it’s a wound. And opening it again might destroy me.
So I kept saying no. Until yesterday.
My mom sat me down, her hands shaking, holding an envelope.
“I need to tell you something,” she whispered. “I did the DNA test… behind your back. I sent in a hair from your old brush.”
The air left my lungs.
“You’re 51% Seneca,” she said. “And… you matched with someone. A sibling.”
My heart stopped.
I asked the only question I could.
“Are they looking for me?”
She nodded, tears in her eyes.
Then she said the part that broke me in half:
“They told me… they never abandoned a baby. They think you were stolen.”
My hands started shaking. My chest felt like it was caving in.
For fifty years I believed I was left behind. Forgotten. Thrown away like nothing.
Now I’m being told… maybe I was kidnapped.
So here I am.
Caught between two families.
One that saved me.
One that lost me.
And I don’t know which story is mine anymore.
I never wanted the truth. But the truth found me anyway.
And now… I’ll never un-know it.
