It is November 1999, I am on top of my game, or so I think. I have a decent job in a factory, I'm finally making my truck payments on my own. I live with my Dad. I smoke, and I love to smoke! Camel Lights a pack and half a day. During the week I keep a low profile. Work is early in the morning and by afternoon I'm exhausted. The weekends are mine. I love to party. I love men. Oh yea, I got it going on, or so I think.
My Mom gets a new neighbor and wouldn't you know it's a cop, an older cop, but not so bad. He has parties and he invites me over. So in addition to my Friday night margarita night, I go to his place. Needless to say I am not thinking clearly, not at all. I am all caught up in the uniform and the appearance of possible money.
I make a huge mistake by going to his place one afternoon, and just after it all begins he realizes what he has done, because he has a daughter just a few years younger than me. But at that time I was fair game. I just wanted to be loved.
So anyway I am pregnant. I am frantically trying to figure out if there is a way out of this situation. How can I possibly tell my father? How can I even consider keeping this baby? So I pray hard to God, I ask him to help me, to show me, and sure enough I am still pregnant.
I am still smoking, I am still drinking, I am hiding this secret from all but a few close friends. I am ashamed of myself. How could this happen now, after the divorce? How could this happen when I am finally beginning a new life. I have been trying to keep my partying down to the weekends, trying to do the right thing, and now this.
So I ended up getting morning sickness pretty bad. It stayed with me all day and most of the night. I drank a lot of slushies', ate a lot of crackers, I puked a lot. I puked so much and just about everywhere. I was beginning to recognize toilet brands and who had what brand. It was horrible. Because I was still smoking, I got a horrible sinus infection. I finally quit smoking at just about the three month mark. By this time I am no longer employed at the factory, instead I am working at a McDonalds. Still living with my Dad, not paying my bills.
My father and I are at odds over this. Mostly over what I wanted to name the baby and my irresponsibility that landed me in this situation. Though it was not the highlight of our relationship, I can say that for the most part he was there for me.
Where was the baby's father? Well he was long gone. He told me that this was not, could not be his baby. After all I was known to have quite the male following.
So I end up delivering a beautiful baby boy on a sunny July Day. He was so cute, and he looked like his Dad. I remember when I went into labor and this feeling of dread overcame me. The feeling that nothing will ever be the same and my life was now changed forever.
I brought this beautiful baby home with me, I have decided to formula feed him. When asked if I would breast feed I said no, and nothing more was ever said. No one tried to explain to me the benefits of breast feeding. I count that has my first injustice to my son.
So my baby cries and cries and cries and cries some more. I have no clue as to what I should do with him. I am stressed, I am tired, and I am angry. I am angry at him, at my situation, at the world. My mom was a huge help to me by coming to hold him. By letting me stay with her and helping me through the nights. This baby was up every two hours.
I loved him so very much, but I was still clinging to the hope that I could be normal again. That I could hang out with my friends that I could go places without my baby. My mom made this possible and before I knew it I was partying again. Smoking and drinking and living the high life.
It got worse from here. It started as one innocent party then it went into becoming a bar fly. This was the pattern for nearly seven years. I loved my baby boy. I tried to give him everything that he could possibly want and more, but the one thing I could not give him was all of my heart.
I would sleep off hangovers on the floor next to him. I would go places with him and my Dad hung over or counting down the hours until I would be free. I gave so much to others, but not enough to him.
As he grew, he became sullen and sometimes angry. But there again he was living in a volatile situation. Things were not rosy between my Mom and I. We fought all of the time. Rages with throwing things and swearing. It was a battlefield.
By the time he was nearly seven, I had grabbed onto a lifeline and was slowly pulling myself back to sanity. We were going to church, I wasn't drinking, I was trying to quit smoking. My Mom had moved out of state, so for the first time in nearly four years I was without my primary babysitter. The downside was my sister moved in with us. She too had her own demons and was also expecting a baby.
We fought a lot. To this day my Son still talks about the argument where my sister threw a laundry basket at our dog. I was trying to turn over a new leaf, I was trying to make up for all that I had done. And somehow out of the darkness I met the man that would save us all.
So I am now pregnant, and married and my son is struggling to find his place in all of this change. I tell myself I am being supportive, but was I? It was hard on all of us. He was trying to find his place with a new father figure and a new baby. But somehow we made it work. It was an uneasy truce between him and my new husband.
And then my husband leaves for basic training nearly two years after coming into our lives. It is now my son, my baby, and me. I am trying to continue working. I am beyond stressed, I miss my husband, and my son is so unhappy. It was like a constant hurricane was blowing against our lives. I finally quit my job so that I could be a full time mom, because my oldest needed me and my youngest was starting to show signs of needing special services.
This time proves to be a turning point in our relationship. We are looking forward to the future, but neither my son nor I know if it will all work out. It didn't. Right before we were getting ready to pull up stakes and move to my husband's first duty station, I send my son to stay with his Dad for a week. I never get him back.
On a rainy Thursday afternoon, when I am sick and stressed and trying to get things in order for the move, I hear a knock on my door. I am being served custody papers that state that if I leave or I take my son out of the state I would lose custody.
My world fell apart, my heart stopped beating for several minutes. The moment I had always feared, always known would come to pass was now here. I tried so hard on that beautiful sunny Friday to find a lawyer who could help me. But I was cornered. I was expecting another child, I had my middle son who needed therapy services, which had all been stopped as we awaited our moving date, and my husband needed the car that I had, it was our only car. Everything was ready to be moved on the following Tuesday. The lawyers didn't want to touch my case because I had unknowingly broken the law by telling my son's father verbally that I was moving, not giving him a 6o day notarized written letter. Finally one lawyer broke it down to me that if my son's father was his client he would have advised him to let me move our son and then make the move. It was a horrible day.
Late that Friday afternoon I walked into a lawyer's office sobbing and signed the paperwork. The staff was rude to me. They were judging me without knowing the full story. I got to see my son that weekend and on Monday night I had to take him back to his Dad's house.
For two years now I get to see him for a few weeks a year. Luckily in 2013 I had the opportunity to return to my home state and spend almost a year there and I had my son a lot. But our relationship isn't the same. We don't know each other like we did. We try to call everyday, but it doesn't always work out.
Every time I see my son he tells me how his Dad says this or that about me or the situation. I hold my peace. I finally told him that he had my maiden name until he was nearly three years old. But I want to make sure that he never hears me speak ill of his Dad, let his Dad say what he will.
Tell your children as they are growing to make wise decisions. The only victim in this situation is my son. All his life he has belonged to two families and it has been really hard on him to figure out where he belongs.
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