This is to you.
As of this writing, to the best of my knowledge, I have somewhere between 30
and 50 children. There is always the chance I was lied to… but that is the only
truth I have so far.
If you, in the most general yet specific sense, find this… there is a notebook.
My grandmother, Martha Hartman, wrote, with stories from her childhood and
youth to pass on to me. I hope you can find a copy, if I’m not around to give
one to you.
Maybe that is where this leads. This introduction, into us, into yourself,
into this world.
My writing sucks, so it won’t be easy. With any luck and a few more decades of
life it might become bearable. But one can only have so many goals at a time.
…
In my own mind, this blog, this thing, represents a sort of transition, it’s
me, from the ages of about 14 to at least this entry at the age of 33.5. But it
wasn’t until now that it began to become about you.
You… fuck.
I should warn you, I curse a lot. There will be a lot of fucks. The amount of
fucks I give is pretty much always >0 .
God, I hope I get to meet you. I hope you’d think I’m cool. I mean, I’m not. At
all. Really, I can barely even stand myself. Actually, if you started at the
beginning and made it this far, you know there is probably no one in this world
I hate more than me.
But I love you. In all honesty, you are all I’ve been able to think about for
some time now.
You are my world.
I’m at a weird place in life, living in Chicago, short on friends, far from
family, without a place that feels like home, and with… I don’t know anymore. I
don’t know who she is to me, what this is. All I know is at the moment, I’m
unhappy. Maybe that’s why I’m writing you. Why I’ve been thinking about you.
The window in life where I can have children I can raise is rapidly closing,
and so you represent my lifeline. A realization or dying wish...
It occurred to me last night my greatest regret in life would be if none of you ever
contacted me. If I never heard your voice, learned your name, got to touch your
face, see your eyes, hold you…
Holy flaming fuckballs, you, this, came out of nowhere. Not literally, I mean. I
came in a cup. Someone scienced the shit out of that, and, ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom, here you are.
But I mean this feeling. This desire to know you. To reach out to you. Maybe it’s
because I don’t know how much time I have left. A handful of years, money
sucks, partners are… well, I don’t know I’d be writing this if I was happy. But
that’s for another thought.
I guess that’s all I have; this serves as both a midpoint, a prologue, and,
depending on my commute home and how I cope with another day of what feels like
a silent sucking endless black well of depression at the moment, a always possible epilogue.
Somehow, in this out-of-nowhere way, I’m not sure anything else has meaning
except you. Is this some shade of what having children is like? I feel obsessed
by you, with you, with a longing I can and don’t know how to understand, let
alone be able to express.
14 years after my first visit to Fertility Center of
California, after gaining the moniker donor 29HTS, I thought of you for what feels like the first time. The oldest of you is turning 14 around now. Starting your freshman year of high school. In four more years, you'll be 18, an adult, and if you know of me, able to choose to find me. I'd imagine you'd start with Google.
And now I’m talking to you. So, whether this is the first message you
read, the last, or it is just somewhere in the middle…
Hello; my name is Michael Anthony Sherrillo, and if you ever know anything, know that, whether or not I ever know you, I love you, with all my heart.
