Gemotions

He stared at the blank screen, the website’s cheerful logo jarring. The results confirmed it: He was not who he thought he was. He leaned back in his chair, the office around him seeming cold and indifferent. He felt a tremor in his hands, a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.

He thought of his parents, the people who had raised him. A knot formed in his throat, making it difficult to breathe. The feeling of being adrift, of being lost, was overwhelming. His carefully constructed life, the one he thought he knew so well, felt like a fragile illusion.

He pushed back from his desk, the chair scraping against the floor. He needed to escape, to be anywhere but here. The prospect of facing his parents filled him with a mixture of dread and a desperate, driving need for clarity.