I’d rather be honest than impressive

Things I should know about myself but don’t

Sunday 21 June 2026

Five days into the internship and I’m using this Sunday morning to think. I made a list yesterday. Two columns. One column was “Things I know for sure about how I came into the world.” The other was “Things I don’t know but probably should.”

The first column was short:

  1. I was born by surrogacy in California in May 2011.
  2. My dads are my dads.
  3. The surrogate’s first name. (I know it. I won’t write it here.)
  4. The town: Modesto.
  5. That I am a US citizen because I was born there.

The second column was much longer:

  1. What the surrogate looks like now.
  2. What the surrogate kids look like now and how old they are.
  3. Whether she remembers my birthday.
  4. Anything about the egg donor at all. Anything.
  5. Whether I have, somewhere, biological half-siblings who are also surrogacy-born. (Possible. Genuinely possible.)
  6. What it felt like for her, in the days after.
  7. How my dads chose her, and why.
  8. Whether she ever wonders about me.

Looking at the two columns together was a strange feeling. The first column contains facts. The second contains people. The first column is the version of the story I’ve always been able to tell. The second is the version I keep finding myself circling around. And the odd thing is that both columns belong to me. I am the only person in the world whose story they both belong to.

What surprised me wasn’t that I don’t know the answers. It was how many questions there are. I’d somehow convinced myself there were one or two missing pieces. Seeing them written down made me realise the missing pieces are most of the picture.

I don’t think I have the right to demand answers to any of the things in column two. Some of them are hers, not mine. Some of them may not have answers at all. But I think I do have the right to know that the questions exist. And I think I have the right to take them seriously.

That’s a small distance to travel. It also feels enormous.

The internship has been good. The work is interesting. But this is a different muscle. And it’s the muscle I want to use this summer.

— D.

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