It all started before I was even born, actually somewhere around eight months before I was born. My mom was dating and living with some guy named Bill and he got her pregnant. When she told him the great news he got scared. He told her that he wasn't ready for a kid yet, that he wouldn't be a good dad, and that we were better off without him. She had thought he was a great guy, someone she could trust, but I guess she was wrong. So he left.

She went through the whole pregnancy with the help of her mother and younger sister. About eight months later my mom gave birth to me almost exactly a month early in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with her mother and sister by her side. My mom was living with her mom for the time being given the circumstances. A few months after I was born Bill decided he wanted me to go spend a day with him and his family so my mother and I went to his house.

There were lots of pictures taken that day with all of these people I didn't know at all and still don't. Pictures of the strangers taking turns holding and kissing me. They looked like they loved me. These people that would be my dad, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I haven't seen any single one of them since that day which I obviously can't remember at all-I was only a few months old.

When I was 9 months old me and my mom moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. My mom didn't finish college and had no degree so she advertised herself as a babysitter and waited for someone to call and employ her. She soon after received a call from a woman named Josie asking for my mother to babysit her two little girls Margaret and Claire ages 4 and 2. She accepted the job and started babysitting for them daily while their parents were at work, she brought me with her everyday and I soon became fairly close with the other two girls.

Not long after she started babysitting for these little girls their parents started fighting over everything, even the smallest thing that didn't matter at all. After two months or so of constant fighting and not getting along they agreed to get a divorce. The husband Jay was a cancer doctor which caused him to have a very tight schedule. The mother got custody and allowed Jay to have them on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and on every other weekend.

My mother kept babysitting their children for the father Jay. He soon asked my mother out on a date and she had known him for a while and knew he was a good guy so she accepted. They dated for a little over a year until he proposed.

They got married one spring afternoon by the fountain in city park. I was a flower girl along with his two daughters Margaret and Claire. Half way through the wedding Claire fell asleep on the ground and my aunt was forced to hold her for the rest of the time.

This was the day that changed my life forever, every single aspect of my life. If hadn't happened I would be an only child and I wouldn't have a father.

A few weeks after the wedding Jay decided to legally adopt me so I would legally be his daughter. We moved in together as one big family, we were no longer 2 separate families. Whenever I spent time with my dad's side of the family I was the odd one out, the blonde haired blue eyed girl, I wasn't blood, I was often asked if I was a friend of one of the kids. I wasn't blood.

Last year, in my freshman year of high school my mom decided to finally show me what she had been hiding from me for years. She walked into the room with a huge box in her hands and put it on the table next to my bed. Inside the box were tons of letters from my real father from many years ago. I had spent my whole life thinking that my biological father wanted nothing to do with me because if he had he would come see me or write me or something. And he had done just that, he wrote for my birthday and holidays. I sat on my bed and read every single letter in that box, they all said he missed me and to give me a kiss for him but the letters stopped soon after my sixth birthday and I will never know why.

In the years between my parents wedding day and now we went through many ups and downs but we made it through. I couldn't ask for a better dad even though he is completely embarrassing sometimes. To this day I haven't met my biological father, I didn't know if he had started a family somewhere else and had a wife and kids, and there is no way for me to find out or contact him because I don't even know his last name. No one has ever asked me how I felt about it, they all assumed I was fine because I had a "dad" now. My friends don't understand the effect it has had on my life. Cherish your real parents and the relationship you have with them because that is a bond you can never share with anyone. Truthfully I don't know if I will ever meet him and for now that's okay because I have the perfect dad and I wouldn't change what happened in my life for anything in the entire world.