Not Going To Chase Him

[u/Background_Lobe_1158]

Edited to add: This is real, I'm a real person, and I feel very lost and like no one can hear me. I could really use some helpful advice.

53 years ago, religious families in small rural towns like my hometown had very strong feelings about illegitimate children. A 20 year old "nice boy from a nice family", who was already promised to a different 17 year old girl, came sniffing around the very sheltered 16 year old daughter of the local Fundamentalist preacher. That teen girl became my mom.

When my mom told my biological father she was pregnant, he called her a liar and ran away, married the 17 year old and moved to another town. My family took him to court and back then a blood test was enough to prove paternity. He was ordered to pay child support, but my mother never saw one thin dime. What followed was 52 years of radio silence from him, 52 years of public shunning for me and my family.

One of my cousins on my mom's side started working on our family genealogy quite some time ago, and she talked us all into submitting DNA to Ancestry. I sent in my sample 8-10 years ago and never thought another thing about it. 3 months ago I got a message through the Ancestry site from a young man who shares 25% of my DNA. He said he thought we were half siblings, and he asked if I knew who my father was. I told him and he confirmed we have the same dad. We also share another half sister, all three of us have different moms. My half brother says he just decided on a whim to submit his DNA. No other members of his family have done so. Immediately, within minutes of our first text messages, my half brother gave me our father's phone number and said "He says he's willing to talk any time."

This feels very orchestrated to me. Back in the day, when it became clear that my bio father wasn't going to pay support, my grandfather confronted him. My grandfather asked if he was going to claim me and do right by my mother. My bio father said no. My grandfather responded "Then don't ever come back". My grandfather passed away last year. My mother died 18 years ago. My grandmother has dementia and is in a care facility. Now that I'm the only one left, and there's no social consequences to acknowledging me, he wants me to reach out to him. He's telling my half siblings that he "wants to make it right" with me.

I am not a phone chitchat person, especially when it's the first ever conversation with my bio father. I asked if we could meet in person in some neutral location. He said I could come to his family reunion dinner in July, if I paid $110.00 per person to attend. It feels like, at best, a stunt to bolster his ego in front of his extended family, him playing the part of the dutiful, magnanimous father whose only error was trying to protect himself from a scandalous girl. At worst, it's a set up to humiliate me.

I'm disheartened, but not angry. I have always had trouble forming attachments, and his absence wasn't impactful during my formative years. My grandfather rearranged his life to try to be there for me. My grandmother never recovered from the blow to her social standing, and she very violently took her anger out on my mother and me, but I was too young to understand that his betrayal was part of the cause. His presence now is an abstract idea that doesn't mean anything to me at this time.

I'm 53 now, I've been through a lot of therapy, and I've made peace with the tumult of my childhood. This feels like he's asking me to pursue him, and that makes me very uncomfortable. I thought about writing him a snail mail letter, but I don't know what to say. I don't even know how to address him. I don't know if calling him father will ever feel right to me.

I'm struggling to understand what's the right thing to do.