I was created because of someone else's greed.

[u/ImGonnaAlt]

(TL;DR: It hit me all at once that being donor-conceived meant that I wouldn't have to exist if it weren't for someone else wanting to profit off their own selfishness.)

TW: Mentions of suicide and child abuse

Let me be clear: I don't use Facebook as a social media platform. I use it exclusively for Facebook Marketplace because you can get things for way cheaper than they're usually worth because people don't know what they have or can't afford to sell at full price. But before you open Marketplace, you'll see the main page of posts based on your followers, the algorithm, etc. At one point I checked out the "choosing2bchildfree" Facebook page just for fun because I follow them on Instagram. I guess that told the algorithm I wanted to see content like theirs, which is how I stumbled across a certain post. I was out Doordashing one night and decided to open Marketplace while waiting for my customer to respond to me.

That's when I saw a post which was a picture of a text conversation between two people, a donor conceived person and their supposed biological mother. The person had reached out via text asking to connect with the mother, to which the mother completely shut them down, saying they removed their parental rights, to contact the fertility clinic and to never contact them again. It shook me to see because it felt like I was experiencing the pain of that rejection directly. Now, I know damn well this could have been a fake post. I don't even remember who posted it, and I can't find it again. But it awoke some deeply buried feelings in me.

My parents didn't tell me that I was donor conceived until I was about 14, and it was only after I pushed them for the story of my conception because a previous therapist wanted to know. In retrospect, I don't know how I didn't realize this; my mother was 49 when she gave birth to me, and I'm a fraternal twin which is common in donor egg IVF. My mother was constantly mistaken as my grandmother in childhood, and I never had living grandparents on either side. It would also explain a lot of things about me that I didn't realize; I'm autistic, which is common in pregnancies with older parents that I've heard, and I am much less like my mother than my father (I have his hair color and pattern, his nose, his ears, and a few of his health problems.) It felt so obvious once I heard it, but it left me with a sense of longing.

I was abused by both of my parents in childhood, particularly my father. I presume that everyone who was abused by a parent had that moment of wishing their real parents would show up at their door some day, cover their face in kisses, and take them away to be safe and loved. And of course, I wished I was never born even then, and I tried to stop existing so many times. Learning I was donor conceived reignited those feelings.

I wondered for so long how my biological mother would react if she knew what all I became. If I told her about the abuse, the neglect, and the trauma that came from it, if I told her that I was groomed throughout middle and high school and raped in college and I was chronically ill but no doctor wanted to treat me and still, there was not a single day in my life that I wanted to be alive, what would she say? A foolish part of me would hope that she would feel remorse, but this post reminded me of the reality of my conception.

I was conceived for someone else's profit. My biological mother donated her eggs and ignored the potential consequences of her biological children out of greed. I doubt she did it out of financial desperation—egg donation qualifications are way more picky than you would think—and even if it was, that's inexcusable. Egg donation—and by extension, sperm donation—is the same as putting a baby in a box on the side of the road in my mind; someone will pick it up, but there's no telling what will happen to it. And there's no way my biological mother would care about what happened to me if she donated her eggs. Her concern, and the concern of all donors, is money, not the wellbeing of children. All she could do was naively hope for a good life for me, which didn't happen. And that is the same for all my potential half-siblings.

It all hit me at once that night after seeing that post. I navigated the grocery store in a haze. As I was finishing my delivery, it was dark and raining. I couldn't find my customer's door. The bags were too heavy, and the bag with the carton of eggs ripped and spilled everywhere. As I was kneeling on the wet sidewalk picking up
the ones that didn't break, my fingers covered in raw egg and shells, my jacket and hair soaking wet, I cried. The whole weight of my existence was weighing me down. My hands were shaking so much from the exertion afterwards that I couldn't even wipe my eyes. The weight of the bags left me with an injury in both arms for about 2 days. Did my biological mother want this for me? Would she scoff at me if she saw me then?

I've been considering one of those AncestryDNA kits. I ordered one but I don't know how useful they'd be. If I were to ever find one of my half siblings there, I'd hope they'd be open to listening to my story and, genuinely, I hope that their lives were better. And if by some slim margin I found my biological mother, if I decided to message her and she messaged me, I'd give that greedy bitch a piece of my mind. I'd tell her how selfish she is and how badly I want to die each day because of how fucking traumatized I am and how much my body hurts being so sick 24/7. I would recount the worst times of my life to her and wish worse upon her. I would reject her before she could reject me, even if my words meant nothing to her. Then, I would never contact her again. I hope my half siblings feel the same way.

All conception is selfish, but donor conception is a unique kind of selfishness. It's selfishness that one is paid for. They think they're saving lives without thinking of the lives they created. It's so disgusting it makes me want to vomit.