College is a place of self-discovery

As I mentioned last time, college was an interesting time for me. I attended a Jesuit college about three hours away from my small hometown in Massachusetts. I had never lived that far away from home before, didn’t have many friends, and was totally unsure of where I was going in my life. I knew I was good with computers and I wanted to become an engineer, but I wanted more out of life, probably why I chose the college I did instead of a more technical institution.

My sophomore year I participated in a program that focused on three questions in the Jesuit fashion, “Who am I?” “Who’s am I?” and “Who am I called to be?” These questions became a chant for us and something that we reflected on through classes, mentor groups, retreats, and journals. I had a strong sense of who I was as a person, but no sense of what my biological past was. I didn’t really know where I came from. I could tell you my family’s background and which towns in Ireland or Italy they came from, but I had no sense of who those people were to me. I respected my parent’s background, but I wanted to know my own, something that they couldn’t help me with. As for who I belonged to, I felt like I belonged to my family and God for sure, but there was another part of that missing. Did I belong to a biological family too? Did they have any claim over me? And would they ever? As for the person I was going to become, I felt like I could only partially answer that question because I felt like I needed to know my past in order to have a better sense of my future.

However, I had no idea where to start. When I was 18, I registered for a website with my birthday and all of the information I knew about myself as a baby in hopes that someone would also register for that site and know it was me. But that would require someone to be looking for me and I wasn’t sure if that was ever going to happen. I simply didn’t know enough. The simple answer was to ask my parents, but again, it was something that we had stopped talking about. It was daunting to me and I couldn’t bring it up. I didn’t want to hurt them in any way and I wasn’t sure if asking to find my biological parents would hurt them or not. In the end, I reasoned that I wasn’t in a good place to find them. After all, I was a college student who was trying to figure things out. I had new friends who were a second family to me for the first time. I also had a serious boyfriend for the first time, and I admit that I was so wrapped up in the novelty of it that I pushed this other stuff to the side.