For thirty years, I believed my parents gave me up because they couldn’t care for me. I thought I was unwanted. But one day, I went to the orphanage where I was supposed to have lived—and they had no record of me.

My dad always said I was adopted, but I never questioned it—until I met Matt, who urged me to find out the truth. When the orphanage denied any record, I confronted my dad.

He confessed: I wasn’t adopted. I’m his wife’s child from an affair. He lied to me and even forged papers to hide the truth because he couldn’t face it.

Everything I suffered—being taken to the orphanage every year, the whispers at school—it was his bitterness, not my worth.

I left his house that day, finally free from lies. For the first time, I was ready to face my real past—and myself.