Part 4 - Close Family - What's that even mean?

**WARNING!! ** This is an adult Blog with real life shit. I won't apologize for the language or the jokes. If I didn't have a sense of humor about this, I'd probably go insane. If you get offended easily, This might not be the blog for you....you've been warned!****

Ok - if you happen to be one of those people that can't count and you started the story from part 4.. Well, you missed a TON. I would highly recommend turning your ass around and going and reading those blogs too!

What kind of Neanderthal starts a book half way through?

I'm sure my shaming has made you reconsider your ways.

To get you quickly back up to speed from last week. I'm NOT a white boy. I'm latino. It's weird saying it out loud. But there you go. You're caught up.

Now back to the Ancestry info! -

Once you take the quick walk through DNA play land.. you immediately jump into DNA matches.

This next part is a little tricky... you see even if Mark submits his DNA - you still need someone else on the other side of the aisle to have submitted their too.

Without a match, you're just shooting in the dark.

However, as I scrolled down.. I was SOOOO confused?!?

There are real people here. They have names, and last names, and more importantly.. Ancestry gives you an idea of "HOW" you might be related to these folks.

Here's a good example.

The 2nd name that popped up was my cousin Chris. We grew up together. I know 100% that he's the son of my mom's sister. Hence my 1st cousin. NO doubts. This also help me gauge the next piece of information that I was about to receive...

The DNA test confirms what I know.... This is definitely family! I haven't seen Chris in ages, but we still talk from time to time. I love him like a brother.

The important thing here is 2 parts.

1) The test has some sort of validity... it's right about him.

Maybe it's right about other things?

2) He's my 1st cousin.. we share 15% DNA and 1,064 cM across 44 segments! I'm not sure if I fully understand all of that, but it's at least a good comparison to see what else I find.

HERE'S where it gets crazy!!

I have COUSINS... under a name that I have never heard of in my life!!

It's a recurring theme... Rasmussen, Rasmussen... Sevier.

But look at the cM's = only in the 600's and less.

But who are these people? What do they know?

Are any of them a possible link to my biological father?

The next thing I noticed was that one of these "Cousins" showed something different than the rest.. It said that this person was.....

"CLOSE FAMILY" ??

WTF does that mean?

Aren't 1st cousin's close? Apparently not.

There are 2 things that SCREAM at me... We share 25% of our DNA!

Holy Crap that is a big ass number. My cousin was only 15% with 1,064 cM... this person is 1,779 cM.. which is a HUGE ass number and it means that we are MORE related than my 1st cousin.. by far.

Who is this? I clicked the link and it tells my 100% that this person can ONLY be 1 of 5 people...

Quickly... my eyes got HUGE! I mean I knew this person was not my grandparent or grandchild.

They could have been a Niece/Nephew, Aunt, or half sibling.

Either way, I was betting this person could get me one step closer to finding my dad.

Surely, if this was a cousin or Aunt, I was getting REAL close to the source.

AUGUST 21ST 2021:

I needed to know who this person was. What did they know? So I shot her a message on Ancestry and It went a little something like this. "XXXXX - you might be my half sister - please call me at XXXX".

Shit. Not sure I thought that one through.

Sure, it wasn't the smoothest. It probably wasn't the opener that I was hoping for, but it was straight to the point. Hopefully there is enough SHOCK value that this person would at least want to talk and hear my story.

BUT what would you do if someone out of the blue sent you a message like that?

I would be expecting an email stating that "I was a king and had a large sum of money waiting for me... if ONLY I would send them $500 for postage". I mean it kind of had SCAM written all of it.

Who would believe some crazy stuff like this?

I had 3 other cousins that I messaged as well on the ancestry app.

2 girls and a guy and within 24 hours I would get a response back from one of them. However, it wasn't helpful as all they could tell me is that their mom had 12 kids.

At this point - I also had a name of a person that was potentially my half sibling or some sort of relation.

I HAD A F'N NAME! what do I do with it?

Of course I did what any NORMAL, completely crazy person would do. I jumped on social media and stalked the shit out of these people. I mean who could they be?

Facebook, Insta, LinkedIn.. I hit them all!

I found her! I found her on Facebook. She had a family. She had sisters and a brother, and a DAD...

Maybe this person was the link to my dad?

Definitely time to do a little research!

Luckily,

MORE TO COME!........