223: What if you were the dirty little secret?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Now I know that half of me, it's a lie. Where does that leave me? Who am I? Who is this person? It's like you entirely lose your identity and I feel like I almost have to start again to figure out who I am because I lost it. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 223. What if you were the dirty little secret?

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I was born in a little town quite near to London.

My mum was very young, so she had me when she was 19 and my dad was 31 or 32. He was earning the money for us to sort of get by, you know, living month to month. And my mum was just at home looking after me and then my sister was born a few years after me. I was a very anxious child, worrying about things and I remember asking my mum, "What happens when we die?"

And I remember it really bothering me that after I died, the world carries on and on and on and I'm gone. So I had an existential crisis at the age of about six.

I always felt as though my sister was the favourite. It felt like she could do whatever she wanted, but if I did something similar, I would be in a lot of trouble for that. And it felt as though she had more freedom to be herself, where I was always trying to be perfect. And I think that was my role, and I had to fit into that role.

I think I had a lot of pressure on me, not just from myself, but from my family because I was, I did well in school and there was pressure to continue that. And then my younger sister was so carefree. Why couldn't I be more like her? And she was the favourite. So perhaps if I was more like her, I could be the favourite. I remember just such an overwhelming sense of unfairness as a child.

she would write my name on the wall and I'd get told off for it. And I just remember it being so unfair because I was quite a logical child and I was like, if I was writing anything on the wall, it would not be my own name, but I would still get the blame for that.

It was my birthday and I had a birthday party and it must have been my sixth or seventh birthday and my mum made me be a clown and I didn't want to be a clown and my sister got to be a ballerina and I wanted to be a ballerina and I just remember it feeling so unfair but nowhere to go with that. As good as I could be and as well behaved as I could be they still liked her more.

I wasn't angry at my parents for the favouritism. I was angry at my sister and I think perhaps that's because I felt like my sister should be an ally. I was desperate for that. I'd have wanted her life. That's who I wanted to be. But she was the ballerina, I was the clown. And perhaps that's another metaphor for how it felt growing up as well. When I was under the age of sort of 10, my mum's family was such a mystery to me.

My dad had his mum and I came home from school and asked my mum, why do my friends have two nans and I've only got one? My mum sort of explained that she does have a mum, but we don't talk to her at the moment.

My mum had a very difficult childhood and there was a lot of issues that as a child I was somewhat aware of but I never really fully understood. And I was such an inquisitive child that I wanted to know why and I wanted to understand but nobody ever really explained that to me.

My dad drinks as well. I don't know if I would refer to him as an alcoholic, but he would come home from work every day and drink. He was never abusive, nothing like that. But we missed out on some things because of that. He was the only person in the family that could drive. So that meant friends' birthday parties, we couldn't go if they were after 4pm because my dad would be having a drink.

I remember my mum saying when she gave birth to me at the hospital, she had to walk to the hospital, which wasn't too far, but when you're in labour I imagine it feels a lot further because my dad had had enough to drink that he was unable to drive. That was also something that was always there but never talked about, the secrets. There was a lot of lingering secrets that I wanted to know the answers to but I didn't have anybody to turn to.

Instead of feeling as though things didn't add up, it was more that I felt different. I remember it was a video, VHS tape, of Matilda and I was obsessed and I would watch it over and over and over again.

Matilda doesn't fit in with her family. She was fairly academic and she was different and she also had a really nice teacher and at that point I had a really nice teacher and I convinced myself that perhaps my teacher would adopt me one day because I just felt different from my family as though I liked them, I loved them, there was a lot of love at home, I was cared about but I just there was something that just made me feel like I was different

I was in year two at school, so again, I'm assuming about eight years old. I was in the classroom and it was just before school had really started. I don't think the teacher wasn't even in the room. And my belly started to hurt. I must have gone straight into fight or flight. I wanted to run. I was so scared. I remember just people sitting down with me and saying, you know, it's just because you're worrying.

Which is absolutely true, people who worry a lot do have stomach pains, that is something that happens. But I remember going to see the doctors and the doctors saying to my mum that she just doesn't want to go to school. And I remember that being quite sort of a difficult conversation because I did want to go to school. I enjoyed school, I enjoyed learning, I enjoyed that sort of side of things.

I'd go to school or have to go to school and I'd be crying and I don't want to go because my belly hurts. People would just tell me it was because I was worrying. I then got referred to CAMHS, which is England's Child Adolescent Mental Health Services, because you're worrying and you don't want to be at school. So as a very logical child, I thought, well, if my brain can convince my body to hurt, my brain can definitely convince my body to not hurt.

So I ended up developing quite bad OCD at the age of about eight or nine. On the way into school, if I touch every tree that I walked past 11 times, then my belly won't hurt. And that sort of took over my life a little bit, which made me feel even more different. At home, I was really surpassing everyone sort of in my family academically.

That was just sort of another way that I felt different. And then as everybody in my family kept growing, I just sort of stopped. At this point, my little sister was a lot taller than me already. I always had wavy hair, like wavy to curly hair, and everybody else in my family had straight hair. I know it's not a big thing, but it was just another thing that made me feel a little bit different from everybody else.

We had like VHS tapes as children and we'd pop them on the TV and I remember being really hung up on the fact that the date on my birthday video was wrong. How it used to work on the old camcorders was on the bottom right hand corner there was a date and a time and the date on it was something like five days after my birthday.

And I remember being really confused and asking about it a lot, only to be told that the date must be wrong. But I remember thinking, but you bought this camcorder for my birthday. You'd have set it up properly. It doesn't make sense. I felt like that was a secret. I was convinced that there was something that they weren't telling me. If I asked my mum, why is this date there? Does it mean this? Does it mean that? She would just tell me that I was being stupid.

So whenever I was told you're being stupid, it almost felt like it was that this conversation is over. I don't like secrets. And there was so much secrecy. And I needed answers that sort of satisfied me that I wasn't getting them. The OCD part really evolved, which made sense in my head. I could trick my body into stop hurting. But I still had these stomach pains and I would, you know, nobody believed me.

It got to a stage where I was 12 years old and I was on the school bus and I just got off the school bus and I rang my mum and I said, mum, it hurts so much. I can't cope with this anymore. My mum took me to the hospital. I met this lovely doctor. Eventually, I got diagnosed with a really rare form of inflammatory bowel disease.

which was quite bad. I got put on steroid medication and so on. And it had been going on for about six years at this point. And everybody had told me it was in my head and it wasn't. And I'd proven it and I was right. And my OCD disappeared overnight. Finally, people believed me.

Being diagnosed with the inflammatory bowel disease that I have really made me feel even more different from everybody else. It is often hereditary, but nobody in my family has that. It was a really sort of difficult feeling for me to navigate because nobody wants to be unwell, but I almost felt like I'd won. I was right, and that was such a big thing. The doctors were wrong, my mum was wrong, the teachers at school were wrong.

As I got a little bit older, so I was probably around the age of 14 at this point, I decided I feel different. So let's embrace that. I sort of decided that my sister needs all this attention, but it still wasn't enough for her. I'd have loved the level that she had, but she just wanted more and more and more. And the more she asked for, the more she got.

I don't need that because I'm a strong, independent woman. I don't need that. So I'm going to go out and I'm going to prove that I don't need that. Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. It's been a busy season of events and travel, and my wardrobe has taken a beating. A total overhaul isn't in my budget, but I'm replacing some of those worn out pieces with affordable, high quality essentials from Quince. By partnering with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us.

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This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe,

And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. I left home when I was 18 and I was out on my own. I did my undergrad degree at university. I worked

I enjoyed it. I'd proven to myself I can be independent, I can do this myself. My IBD was under control. Once I finished university, I wasn't sure what to do next. What I did know was I didn't want to go home and I did my master's degree. I then finished my master's degree and I got a job working with children and young people. I'd always wanted to go on to be a psychologist, so that was always sort of the end goal. I got my own house, I was living by myself.

It was the first sort of time in my life that I felt like I wasn't studying. I had some time. And I've always been really interested in the family tree sort of stuff. I'd like to know where I come from and so on. So I made an account on Ancestry and I started looking at some bits.

I've said for so long that I didn't feel like I fit in. And I wanted to find somebody that I could relate to, I think. I don't know, like a great, great, great grandparent that was academic, that I could relate to, that I could look at and think, oh, yeah, you know, that's me. That's my ancestor.

I also knew that like my dad's mum, lots of her family lived in Australia. So I thought, you know, I could have this map with all these different places where people were living and that would be really interesting. I decided that I would do an ancestry DNA test. I'd mentioned to my mum that I was doing it and she was like, OK, cool. Didn't really interest her. I remember asking her if she found it interesting and she said no.

I then got like a message to say your results will be available soon and then they were literally available the very next morning and I opened up my computer and I had a look and it brings up this map and it tells you your heritage and for me I was something like 97% British so there was nothing exciting. The next thing that Ancestry does is it gives you a list of your DNA relatives

So my closest DNA match was a guy who I could see was living in America and he was a third cousin. And I noticed that you could see where your matches were from and a large proportion of them were living in the same country that my granddad was living in, which was a little bit strange because I didn't know that I had family there.

I rang my mum and I said, "Have you got any family you've never told me about from the same country?" And she was like, "No, none other than your granddad and your auntie. They're obviously out there." So I was like, "No, no, it's not them." And again, didn't really think too much of it and that was that. What I did next was I messaged the guy in America who was my closest match. His account was managed by his dad, Bradley.

So I messaged Bradley and he replied, "Oh no, really nice to hear from you. It's always nice to find family across the pond." It was him that said to me, "It's perhaps a little bit strange that you don't recognise any of the surnames." My surname, I've never met somebody else with the same surname. I rang my sister and I told my sister what had happened and I said to her, "Well, what about if you do your DNA test and I'll double check with your sister because it's weird, it's like really weird."

So I asked my sister to do the test. And she was like, yeah, of course I will. But you're being stupid. I was driving home from work one day and I got a phone call and it was my mum. And she said, there's a DNA test come through the door. Who's that for? And I said, it's for my sister. And she said, why? So I said, well, you've told me that I don't have any family in that country, but I do. And it doesn't make sense. So I'm going to do a test. And she was like, you've upset your dad.

He doesn't care what the test says. They're not real anyway. And I'm his daughter. So she then said, I'm putting it in the bin. So I said, you're not putting it in the bin. That's cost me £120. And that was the end of that conversation. That was it. My sister rang me a day or two later and said, well, I've got it. How do I do it? I was the manager of her test. But she, because she's an adult, she has to log in, create her own account and so on. So she did the test and she sent it off.

I then got an email saying, "You're going to get your results soon." I woke up the next day, I made a coffee, I went and sat at the table. I pulled it up and her results were through and I clicked on it. And then it tells you your most likely relationship. And it said, "Granddaughter or half siblings." So much came up for me at the moment that I saw that. I didn't believe it. I really didn't. I really did believe that I was being stupid.

Seeing it in black and white, it was different. It was hard. I was checking the numbers, I was coming out, logging out of it, logging back into it to see if things had changed. And I was just staring at the screen. Like half of me was really hurt. And then the other half of me was like, well, obviously this makes sense now. My partner then worked nearby and he came back and he sort of just looked at me and I just burst into tears.

I've been told for so long that I was being stupid and that those exact words, I've been told I was being stupid and I wasn't. The evidence, similar to my IBD, but on a much bigger scale, the evidence was in front of me and I didn't believe it. The bit that did confirm it for me was when I clicked on my sister's DNA results, I recognised the surnames. They were my dad's family, I knew them.

I wasn't related to them. So not only had I proven that we were half siblings, I'd proven that she was related to my dad and I was not. I'd never thought as far as what happens next. For every action there's a consequence. I think I spent a long time just sort of staring at the screen and thinking, what have I done? I've opened Pandora's box. Should I have? I can't close it now.

I started getting texts from my sister saying, I've had an email to say the results are in, what do they say? I text my sister back and I said, I think it's an error. I've not got the results yet. So I lied. I don't like lying, but I lied. I needed more time. That week was hard. I didn't really believe it. I'd wake up each day and almost run through it again. Like this is real. And I'd go back and I'd look at the results again and again and again.

I think there was a little bit more of a feeling as time went on as well about, no, this makes sense. This is why you're smaller. This is why I've got blonde hair. I've got wavy hair. I've got this illness that can be hereditary. I was the first person in my entire family to go to college, let alone anything beyond that. Of course it is. How did you not know? This makes so much sense. But then that means I've got another dad.

What does that look like? Who could that be? And I had all these questions. I didn't have anywhere to go with them at the time. What I did have was I had time to figure out how to talk to my mum about it.

One thing that my mum started to do was, I think she wanted to show me that she cared about me, but she didn't know how. So what she started to do was she started to buy me things. And all that did was make me feel guilty. I don't need anything. I don't want anything. She doesn't have much, but she would buy me things. And it made me feel really uncomfortable. And as much as if I told her that, I'd be called ungrateful. It came to the day when she was coming to visit me and I went to pick her up.

So she came back to my house and she started showing me all this stuff she'd brought me. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to look at it. I knew that I was about to just change her life in a few minutes. So I was like, mum, let's go for a drive. And we got out of the car and I said, mum, I need to talk to you about something. I've done the DNA test. You know I did them. And she was like, yeah. And she seemed like she just didn't get it at all. And I said, well, me and my sister, we're not sisters. She was like, yes, you are. And I was like, mum, we're half sisters.

And she was like, you're not, you're four sisters. And I was like, mum, there is no way I would come to you with this unless I was sure. There's no way. And she was like, you're wrong. You are sisters. So I said, mum, that's fine if that's what you're saying. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to dad and ask him for a DNA test. And at that point, she changed her story. She started crying and she said, I thought you were a twin. She said, I didn't want to tell you that you were a twin.

And maybe that's why you always felt different because a part of you was missing. I was like, right, like trying to get my head around it all. When my mum was young, 17 or 18, she hadn't seen her dad since she was young, like really, really young. She got in contact with her dad and he was living the other side of the world. She didn't know she had a baby sister, all these sorts of things. At the time, my mum was seeing my dad.

My mum then flew out to visit her dad for the first time. She told me that when she flew out, she found out before she flew out, sorry, that she was pregnant. She spent about a month with her dad over New Year and while she was there, she had a miscarriage.

She said she then came back to England. She went to the doctors because she hadn't had the miscarriage checked out. And the doctor said to her, no, no, no, you're still pregnant. It must have been twins and you lost one of them. That was the story. She got pregnant before she went abroad. She then came back and I was the leftover baby. And that was it.

If that was true, that she'd been pregnant with twins with my dad, gone away to visit her father and then come back and still pregnant with the same pregnancy, then absolutely my mum had never lied to me my entire life. She believed that my dad was my dad and the same dad as my sister. She absolutely had no idea whatsoever for the last 27 years that my dad was different to my sister's.

The reason it's hard to get your head around is because it's not true. The story that I've just said about my mum thinking she was pregnant with twins and her absolutely believing that I was 100% my dad, I think she believed it, at least in that moment. And her reaction really felt as though it was one of complete shock. So she was saying to me, "Oh, I bet you're angry at me. Don't be angry at me." And I'm there going, "I'm not angry at you." I genuinely was not angry.

I just wanted to know the truth. And she was crying and I'm like consoling her. I don't know, it felt like again that something big had happened to me but I still wasn't the one that needed caring for. She did admit that she'd slept with somebody while she was visiting her dad but she doesn't remember anything about him. She also told me

that when she came back to England she told my dad and he then went out and drunk drove and lost his license for a year or so which meant he lost his job. I think she carried a lot of guilt about that as well. So my mum said to me please don't tell your dad or your sister and I agreed.

I made the decision at that point that it's not my secret, it's hers. And if my dad and my sister found out the secret right now, my mum's life could change. I have been very independent from my family for the last 12 years. I don't live with them. I don't have that sort of relationship with them. So I feel like it would almost be selfish to tell them and my mum's life change and mine not.

when my sister next texted me and said, "What did it say?" I text her back and said, "It said we're sisters." So I've lied to her. My mum's asked me to lie to her and I have. Over the next few days, my mum was at my house, but it was like she weren't there. She completely switched off from it. She wouldn't talk about it. And then the only thing she said to me, which I doubt she'd even remember, she said, "I just feel really bad for your dad and your sister."

It's a big, big secret. I didn't want to keep it, but she's asked me to. I've done it. Nothing had happened to my dad and my sister. It happened to me. And I'm still not, like, I'm still third best. I've always felt as though I need to protect my mum from different things. And even this, like, keeping her secret, it doesn't protect me. It protects her. If anything, it hurts me. But I don't feel like I can stop protecting her.

Somewhere deep down, I have a fear that if I don't, I'll be gone. Would she just cut me out? What I think's going on for my mum is that she had such a difficult childhood and my sister is who she wanted to be and I am who she was.

So she wanted to be loved, she wanted to be cuddled, she wanted to be taken care of. But instead, she had no choice but to go out. And, you know, if you're in the care system at 16, you're out of the care system and you have to go and live life. And I'd sort of done all of that, like through my own choice. And my sister had done the opposite. And I think my sister was who she wanted to be and I was who she was. And she found that quite difficult.

Because as much as she loves me, it's like looking into a mirror at the bits you don't like about yourself. So my mum never really had anybody caring for her. And there still isn't anybody to care for her. But there is me. I know that somebody needs to do it.

But maybe it's just blinking all the way back round and it's a way for me to feel needed. She doesn't need me as a daughter, but actually if I can protect her, then I am needed. That role sort of works. So if I lose it, what's left? If I'm not her protector, who am I?

I think since this has all happened, it's really cemented the whole I don't need anybody sort of mentality. I think it's probably the biggest time ever of my life that I've reached out to somebody for help. And I ended up being the one that did help rather than the one that was helped. It backfired on me. Finding out that my dad isn't my dad, it changed everything.

Now, my dad is my dad. I wouldn't change him for the world. I love him to bits. I will always call him my dad. That's absolutely true. But I feel like I lost half my identity. I got really hung up on names. So my surname shouldn't be my surname. I know a name is just a name, but it's not mine.

And then you go back and you sort of question everything. When I see my dad's mum, even to this day, first question is, how is your sister? And is that because she knows? Does she know? And then my mum's family, they all make jokes about how small I am compared to them. Do they know? Could there have been a family that I fit in with that I don't know about? And you just start sort of questioning everything.

Now I know that half of me, it's a lie. Where does that leave me? Who am I? Who is this person? It's like you entirely lose your identity and I feel like I almost have to start again to figure out who I am because I lost it. When I go home and I see my dad and I see my sister, I feel like everything I say to them, every time I look at them, I'm lying to them. And for my mum that comes so easily. She could act to them like everything was back to normal and it was fine.

It feels like her life hasn't changed at all and it feels like I've got before the results and after the results and my life is completely different. I tried talking to her about it and she just told me she's ashamed. She spent a long time telling me she doesn't want anybody to know because she's ashamed and she kept saying to me, please don't be angry at me, I hope you'll forgive me, I hope you'll forgive me. That was quite difficult as well because I'd never, not once had I responded to her angrily

And she kept saying, please forgive me. And I was, I forgive you. I absolutely forgive you. You were a teenager. You went out, you did something, whatever. I don't judge you for it. You were a teenager in another country at New Year. It's fine. But we need to do the consequences. And that's where we're at. And you've asked me to do it secretly. I've agreed to your terms. Now I need you to give me something back. And all I needed was a conversation. But she wouldn't give me it. She just, she wouldn't.

She told me that she was too ashamed and she also told me that it brings up previous traumas for her. That was extremely hard for me because of then. My mum has told me that she had this awful childhood and she's telling me that every time I try and talk about my story, it brings up her childhood trauma. Can you imagine the amount of guilt that I felt? So that stopped me from asking questions.

You know, the whole like Facebook lifestyle where everything looks perfect, but it's not so perfect underneath the surface. She likes everyone to think that everything's perfect. I'm proof that it isn't. She's ashamed of the way I came into existence. And I had no say in that. That was nothing to do with me. But me being around, I ruined that happy family image. So I'm the dirty little secret that's evidence of something that she's really ashamed of. And I'm not allowed to talk about it.

But the thing I'm not allowed to talk about is who I am, literally my identity. I'm not allowed to tell my dad and my sister who I am. I've spent the first 28 Christmases of my life at home, not been home for Christmas since, because that feels too family focused. Everybody's there. It's family time. And I don't fit in anymore. And not only do I not feel like I fit in, I've got the paperwork to show that I don't.

So it's just been easier to not be around them because if I'm not around them, I don't have to lie about it. This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies like backpacks, binders and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

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I wrote my mum a letter and I said to her, look, I understand you're hurting. I'm not going to keep asking questions, but this is what I would like to know. Do you know what job he had? Do you know his name? She replied and she told me that his name was Philip and he was a physiotherapist.

So I found the universities that had physiotherapy courses during the years that he would have been there. I started ringing administration teams at these universities. I went on LinkedIn. I found the reunion pages for the right year and so on. And I spent ages like ringing people, calling people, asking if they know Uncle Philip.

A month later, I got another letter from my mum and she said I made it up. That's not his name. I don't know his name and I was too afraid to tell you. But equally, every time you bring this up, it brings up my past traumas. So that was the dead end. That's the last time almost that I spoke to my mum about it in any detail. The irony throughout all of this is the parallel of my mum through across the world to meet her dad at 18.

that my mum spent a lot of her childhood looking for her dad and now I'm doing exactly the same. So I ended up referring myself for some counselling. Turns out there's so much support. What I am, the terminology is an MPE, which is not parent expected. There's thousands and thousands and thousands of us. And then I got into this group. A lot of the people were a lot older, like a lot older than me. I was in my 20s.

It was good, it was helpful, I didn't feel alone and there were people that were feeling very similarly to me. I decided I wanted to find my birth father. I didn't know how to do it. But then I found out that there are these angels and they are people who are DNA experts who just help people who are NPA just out the kindness of their hearts. And these two incredible women got back to me. I sent them all my stuff and it took about four days.

At the same time, talking to Bradley about this, so this was my third cousin's father in America. Bradley's son had shown up with my third cousin. That was an error. Bradley's son was actually my second cousin.

And Bradley said, oh, well, let me just direct you back to this picture. And the picture that he showed me was a time when he and his wife were visiting what would have been her cousins in their country around the time that my mum was visiting. I sent my mum the picture and then there's a man. So that's one of the boys. So he would either be my dad or my uncle.

The next day, my mum rang me and she said, after you sent that picture, she said, I kept looking at it and I didn't recognise him at all. But what I did was I sent the picture to her step mum and she replied, yeah, of course I do. That's, he showed you around the country. She gave me the name. I hadn't said it. So that was my confirmation.

When I found out who he was, my first thought was, let's message him. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's find a connection. Let's do that. But if everything my mum has told me is true, he doesn't know I exist. So I did what every person in the 21st century would do. And I found him on Facebook. Through finding him, I found he has a daughter. She looks like me. A lot more like me than my sister looks like me.

So what I decided to do was I decided to write a letter. So I wrote my letter. I did about five or six drafts. I spent ages. I left it for a while. I went back to it. And then I told my mum and she said, if you do that, we're going to have to tell your dad and it'll kill him. So the risk is...

in my mum's head. If I message him and tell him, then he could, I don't know, he could message my mum, he could message my dad, he could tell them. Now, I think there's a very, very small chance of that happening. Equally, I don't know this man. I don't know what he's like. I have to admit that it's possible. And what if he does? And then what if he does kill my dad? That's on me. I've decided that I can't deal with that. So...

I stopped. I've written my letter, it's ready, but I'm not ready for the consequences. Me not sending the letter is protecting my mum, but it's killing me. The whole other side of my secret is that I don't think it's a secret. I think my dad knows. I take it back to the phone call when my dad said, "Those DNA tests aren't real. I don't care what they say. She's mine."

Now that instantly places a little bit of doubt. The next thing that I find quite strange is that not once has my dad said to me, "What did the results say?" Now my dad's the sort of person that would have loved to have rang me up and gone, "Well you've wasted your money haven't you? Bet you look stupid and you'd have made a joke about it." But he's never asked. That means either he doesn't want to know or he doesn't want to know that I know.

She told my dad that she'd been with somebody else and he then went out and lost his driving license. What I think happened is that he told his mum, "She cheated on me. She's now pregnant." And I think at that point, my grandma said, "I don't think the baby's yours." And I think my dad went, "She is. That's the end of the conversation." And I think that's why his side of the family has always preferred my sister. They've known. They've never asked. They've known.

And then about two years after I found out the information, I started to do the maths. I went online and I typed in my date of birth and it gave me my likely conception date, which I know isn't again a specific science, but it gave me my conception date as New Year. Now, my mum's story, if true, means she was pregnant and detectable by a pregnancy test at the end of November.

So she must have been pregnant for at least a month, which would have made it an 11 month pregnancy. It does not add up. It doesn't make sense. My dad's not stupid. My mum's not stupid. They must have known. Absolutely must have known.

I think my dad knows, I think my mum knew, I think my dad said I'll raise her as mine. My mum felt almost in debt to him because of that and here we are 30 years later and my mum, I think, doesn't want my dad to know that I know because that will shatter the illusion. Irony throughout all of this is I felt for a long time that I was keeping a secret about not knowing who my dad was.

But that's not my secret. I don't think that's my secret. I think my secret is I could shatter the perfect family illusion. If I was to admit that I know, then suddenly this construct, this narrative that my mum has created about this nuclear family, I could break that with a few words. Holding the secret is a huge weight. It's such a huge weight and it's always there.

I'm constantly looking on my birth father's Facebook. I'm trying to find pictures of my other sister. It's always hanging over me that my sister could find the DNA results. She could log in right now. I'm not going to stop that and dealing with the consequences of that. Then if they find out, they find out you've been lying to them for three years, three years so far. And I will continue lying, I guess. My mum hasn't spoken to me about this for two years.

I spent years and years going to and from the hospital trying to find out what was wrong with me. And that could have been key. I know it might not have been key, but it could have been. To not even have admitted it at that point. I don't know if my mum believed her own lie. I don't feel like I can have an authentic relationship unless she is honest with me.

I think the hardest part of holding on to my secret is how it's pushed me even further away from my family. If tomorrow everybody found out, I think my sister would stop talking to me because I lied to her. Because I can go against what my mum said. Of course I can. But I understand her feelings and I've chosen to put them first.

explaining that to my sister, I don't think she'd get it. I think she would, but you lied. And I can't argue with that because I have lied about something really big. And it weren't like with my dad, he's not asked me. My sister asked me, she said, are we full sisters? And I lied. I don't think she'd see past that.

My dad would be really hard because he doesn't say much in general. He's not got many social skills. He's the funniest person I've ever met, but most people would never experience that side of him. He's just, he's quiet and that's just the person he is. And I don't think he'd say anything. The idea that he could die an unhappy man because of that, that's hard. And then the consequence of my dad and my sister finding out that I lied to them is my mum being angry at me.

Me not telling my family, I feel like I've lost them already. My identity in the family at the moment is the protector of my mum. And if I stop being the protector of my mum, I no longer have an identity in the family. So I feel like whether I keep the secret or tell the secret, I've lost my family. In the way that I want them, I've lost them. If I tell my secret, my mum loses it too. I've worked so hard to prove I don't need anybody's help.

And the reality is, I need help. I don't know what to do. I need somebody to help me. But there's nobody to ask. My story's not got an ending. I don't know where it ends. And I don't know where it's going to go. So I feel like I'm constantly in this state of limbo. And it's hard to move on and just continue with my life in general whilst this is hanging over me.

I feel like I need to do something with it and I don't feel like I can move on in life authentically until I have done something with it. But equally, I think if I'm looking for the perfect way to deal with this, I'll never find it.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.