I sometimes wonder what having a child will be like. This love I feel for my baby is, what I’m told, not even close to the love I will feel for her when I hold her for the first time in my arms. I can’t even picture myself as a mother. I talk about Adam as “daddy” when I speak to my unborn baby girl, and I’ve referred to myself as “mommy” but it’s just something I can’t wrap my mind around.

Mom. Mommy. Me?

I’m barely 20 years old and accepting the fact that in around two weeks, I will be an official “mommy.” It’s exciting and nervewrecking all at the same time. It’s scary how much love and complication comes with having a child. All the new responsibility, work, love and time you constantly give the new bundle of joy in your life. Yes, I’m afraid. But more than afraid, I’m so impatient. I want to meet her, be her mom, hold her when she cries, sleep with her in the cradle next to me and see her smile.

She has become my world. She and Adam are the two things that are most important in my life and that I would sacrifice anything for. They are my family, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

I won’t claim to be even remotely prepared for what lies ahead of me. I will say though, I am way more prepared for this baby girl than I ever thought I would be. I think about what she’ll look like, act like, be like and grow up to be like…my thoughts are taken over by this little girl who stole my heart.

I just wish I was bringing her into a more stable and figured out environment.

So a couple of months ago, I moved into my boyfriend, Adam’s house. It was mainly due to issues I was having with my parents, who were still having problems dealing with the fact that I was having a kid so young.

So I lived steadily at his house, barely talking to or seeing my parents. Then, when I went to visit for the first time, it was like they were extremely different people. I think the fact that they knew they could lose me if they didn’t change their ways really scared them. So I began enjoying my parents more than I can ever remember enjoying being around them, they began to be more excited and understanding and overall, just there for me. So I began to stay at my house more and more, until eventually I was sleeping at my house more than at Adam’s. I found it odd being at his house when he wasn’t there and it was just his parents and Ava (baby they are taking care of). Then it became almost routine that he’d drop me off on his way to work overnight, and then I’d sleep at my house, and he’d come over after work in the morning and sleep there with me.

He began to confront me that he felt like I didn’t really live at his house anymore, which I was beginning not to. I’ve explained to him that it is hard for me to deal with all this change. From finding out I was pregnant in April, getting a new job in May, having to transfer schools, hormones spinning out of control, Adam’s new work schedule working forty hours a week, and the loss of time with my parents, I was having to deal with a lot already. Being the amazing man he is, he understands. I know he’s bothered that I can’t really live at his house, but he keeps his mouth shut because of how much he loves me. I really got lucky with him.

Anyways..what brings me to writing this blog is that we have added complications. There are some that I legally can’t mention, but there are others that have become quite influencing in combination. So, as I mentioned before, Adam’s parents took in his cousin, Ava, who is currently 15 months old. Ever since they got her last October, he has spent a good deal of his time watching her when both of his parents work. I brought this up to Adam when we were planning on living at his house. I know his parents depend a lot on him when it comes to taking care of Ava, so I was concerned about how that would work when our new baby came. He talked to his parents and thought that he had worked out that he would only have to watch her once in October and then he’d be done for good. So, today, his mother calls him and tells him that she needs him to watch Ava for her because she works 2nd shift (which is the shift his dad works Mondays-Fridays). He said he’d be home around 2. So then he brings up that his new work schedule will be Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays and his mother flips out. She says that she works every Monday second shift all during October and that she had already talked to him about that a long time ago. So not only is she expecting her son to work, go to school full time, do random chores for them, but also to watch THEIR baby whenever they say.

So Adam, very frustrated explains that she told him that he would never have to do this again. And then she mentions days in November when he’s going to have to watch Ava….my due date is November 18th..REALLY? He needs to be a dad and have wathcing his own kid come first. He said he thought his parents would be sympathetic, but obviously they just expect him to do everything. He was so frustrated, he said he couldn’t live their anymore.

The reason I moved out was because my parents refused to let Adam live with us. And we need to be together to raise this baby. So now, I have to talk to my parents to hopefully convince them to let both of us stay here, even if it’s not the same room ( I don’t care). If they don’t, Adam is quitting school and working two jobs so we can move into an apartment. This is the undesirable route. So I’m crossing my fingers that my parents have changed their minds…or that I’m capable of changing their minds.

So many things are uncertain right now. Things are getting so complicated and unsure and scary.

Also, I have yet to tell my parents that I dropped out of school. I couldn’t handle college and pregnancy and a job. I hated the judgmental stares and high school environment classes. I kept freaking out about how I was going to keep up with math and papers and volunteer work in psychology.  I plan to go online next semester. I’m so afraid to tell them this though, because I’m terrified that they’ll be so disappointed in me. I can’t handle disappointing them right now. I feel so less stressed now that worrying about school is out and I can just focus on the baby and delivery.

I am also contemplating quitting my job. Adam and I have talked about what we want to happen after the kid is born and he says he wants me to do school online and quit my job to watch the baby. I have no problem with this. He says he’ll help me pay for school and help me with loans and everything. But, what if I need the money? My job pays very well and I don’t want to give up a good job (even though I hate it) when we might need the money someday. I just wish I knew the right thing to do. I wish there was some easy answer book. Why do I care so much about disappointing my parents rather than living life for me?

Why does everything feel so shaky? I could really use some solid ground right about now…

I feel like I’ve already grown up so fast, and the baby isn’t even born yet.

I have never felt quite so connected to someone in such a short amount of time. This little person growing larger everyday inside me, who I have known about for a mere three months, has been by far the quickest human to ever take over my heart so completely.

This baby is all I think about, all I dream about. From what it will be like, what it will grow up to be, what they will look like, sound like, be like…these thoughts fill my every waking moment. I think about all I want to provide for it, all I want it to have oppurtunities to do. I want to give it everything.  As I feel my stomach growing larger and larger, my love and impatience to meet you grow stronger.

There are so many people who love you and want to know you already, that I know you will have no problem acclimating to your new world. Right now you can only hear my heartbeat, and perhaps recognize my voice. But I wish I could tell you, describe to you, how much the person behind that heartbeat and voice loves you. I love you, my 19 week old unborn child.

Last Tuesday, April 5th, I decided-out of boredom while studying Economics to take a pregnancy test that I’d had in the drawer by my bed for a while. I did not expect it to be positive, only to reassure me that I was not.

This was NOT the case.

As I saw the pink + sign, accompained by a contrasting – sign, I regretted my decision months earlier of throwing away the box. I was so freaked out that I had to know for sure. My suitemate, Alyssa accompained me to Pick N Save across the street in search of more pregnancy tests. No sooner were we back to our room than I took the test and waited those long two  minutes.

Two pink lines awaited me at the end of this agonizing wait. Two lines. Pregnant. But I wasn’t satisfied with that, so a half and hour later I took another test. Waiting another two minutes. Yet again: two lines. Pregnant.

I’m….pregnant.

(There will be a follow up, this is all I can get out at the current moment.)

Anyways, new news about my college life.
This Tuesday, November 2nd, I am going to marry my “high school sweetheart?”.
After having pondered for a while about it, I finally know that I’m making the right decision.
Yes, we’re young. Yes, we’re implusive. Yes, I know some people think I’m plain old crazy for doing this.
But I’ve decided, I don’t care.
I know what’s right for me, and I know he’s right.
Yes, I’ve become that sappy girl I used to make fun of.

AND HEY! I turn 19 two weeks from tomorrow.
Score.
I’m hoping to go to Canada because the legal drinking age there is 19
Who knows what this new year and age will bring for me. I can only hope I will be as blessed as I have been within the last year.
I’m so grateful for all the people who have come into my life since then and the ones even before that.
I just want to say I love you all, and you make life worth living

When you’re drunk, you’re mean and hurtful and just all around a horrible person to be around.

Then you wake me or mom up when you come into both of our rooms in the middle of the night, apologizing for the stuff you said or things you did.

Well, I’m sick of it. Honestly, I know why your marriage is falling apart. You’ve had a drinking problem for as long as I can remember. When I was six years old you called the cops when you were drunk because mom locked you out of the house because you were too drunk to handle. She tried divorcing you then, but me, being six years old and loving you begged her not to do it. And she didn’t. Twelve years later, you’re still the same. You haven’t changed and your self esteem has probably gone down the toilet because you’re drunk all the time so you cause pain, which causes people to react negatively towards you.

I know I’ve said plenty of negative things to you when you’re drunk and even when you’re not. But, I honestly think things would get soo much better if you just tried. If you just tried to quit drinking. Dad, I know you’re not perfect, and none of us can be. But the only thing I’ve wanted for practically my entire life is for you to stop drinking.

Please dad. Stop. For Me.

 My life, my hair and even my fingernails were a deeply ominous shade of black. I donned the out-of-style black and white striped gloves, tight skinny jeans with a hole torn at the knee and a diagonal bang haircut. I was the stereotypical “Emo” kid. At 16 years old, I decided that it was about time I started showing how depressed and dark my life had become by expressing it in the way I dressed and kinds of music I listened to. I was plummeting down a deep, inescapable hole that became my world.

Similarly, my grades followed me down this hole, making barely audible thuds that I almost failed to acknowledge as they hit the bottom. On top of everything, the lectures given by my parents about how I had changed rushed past me like a gust of wind as I heard phrases like, “Cheer up” and “You’re too sensitive.” I was living life in a state of passive numbness; each day seemed like a year. At school, unintelligible whispers deluged my ears as I caught people looking at the deep swelling and puffiness around the sickly deep red cuts on my arms. Short sleeve shirts were now out of the question. Long sleeves became habitual, necessary. In my solitude I suffered, ostracized by choice from the people and world around me.

 No one could ignore how far I had fallen now. The traces of my emotional pain could now be seen from my dark ensemble to the traces of dark scabbing that I had weaved on to my arm, like some cruel, disturbing picture. Just as I had reached about the worst point of my short life, I met her. I owe her my life.

Her name was Anne, and she’s the reason I’m still alive today.

 I started to see my psychologist, Anne, about a few months into my obsession with being “Emo” and flirtation with self inflicted violence. “So Amy, why do you cut yourself?” She turned her head in my direction and gave me an encouraging smile. A smile one could tell she felt deserved an answer. I looked at her inquisitively, secretly sizing her up. She was tall, about mid-fifties, with a short haircut that would have looked strange on anyone else, but fit her like a glove.

“I don’t know.”

 I avoided her eyes as I said this, the unconvincing lie I stated to desperately cover the shameful truth.

 “It’s the only thing that makes me feel here, like I’m actually alive.”

 She was the first person in my entire life that I had ever talked to about my insecurities, fears and feelings. I let her know every thought that ran through my head, no matter how mundane. Admitting that I had a problem with depression and coping skills was not as tragically embarrassing as I had previously feared and imagined. We had formed an unexplainable and unbreakable bond that allowed that self-hatred, darkness and fear to fade in the light. She helped me shine that life on the deepest and darkest parts of my life. The shadows I had cast over the faults and imperfections in my life did not look as horrendous in this newfound light as I had dreaded. My perceptions of loneliness, worthlessness and fear were fading. The ground was becoming steady again.

 It’s been two years since I climbed my way out of that hole, which seemed impossible just months before I met Anne. I can’t say that I don’t still look down that hole sometimes, realizing that I’m just a slip away from falling right back down. The difference is, knowing that there is a dark and depressed part of me doesn’t intimidate me the way it used to. Instead, I am able to recognize faces at the edges of this abyss. I know that, if I should sometimes slip, there will be someone there to hold on to. It is thanks to an amazing woman named Anne that I can reach out and expect a hand to grasp onto mine and truly realize: I’m not so alone after all.

It’s inevitable.

Now I understand Peter Pan’s motives for longing for childhood to last forever.

Three of my close friends turned 18 this week. Shit.

It’s just a matter of time before most, if not all of them are “old.”

Dealing with how old we are all getting and adapting to the fact that I have about two and a half months of high school left, is hard. I don’t know why I thought it would be easy, fun, or unemotional.

I look at the relationships I have with everyone. My friendships, my acquantences, my romantic relationship…

and I’m growing up. Everyone has changed so much. I’m now, more than ever beginning to realize that things have changed and are changing forever. I no longer have my age as an excuse to act immature, I no longer can just have fun and meaningless relationships…

and it’s kinda scary.

Oh, if I could just be like Peter Pan… would I choose that road if I had the option?

I don’t know.

What I do know, is that I miss the innocence and lack of responsibility that came with adolescense. I miss being naive and believing in everything. I miss being fresh, new and untainted by the ways of the world.

But with life comes experience, responsibility and change.

I’ve never been good at dealing with change.

Just as I’m started to get confident about the ways things work and understand most things about high school, I’m being tossed out to a dark and unfamiliar ocean. I hear people around me saying, “Seniors!!! YES! Next year is going to be sooo amazing!!”

I wish I shared the same enthusiasm.

I can’t help but to be pessimistic these days. I find myself longing to go to parks and return back to that state of childlike innocence, longing to grasp ahold to anything that makes me feel young again.

Ironically, I’m also developing a strong need for independence, well at least romantically. I’m spending more time with my friends and less time with my boyfriend. It seems like I’ve missed so much from being dependent on him and paying attention to only him. I’m glad that I’m learning balance and independence from him.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

I love my friends, and for most part my life.

I don’t want things to change.

I don’t want to be thrown into a completely different world. I guess it’s just how we’re biologically programmed: homeostasis.

But, I wouldn’t want to remain here all my life, so I’m trying to accept and cope.

That’s all I can do, right?

He felt so different. So different from the way I’d felt about anyone else. As nine months passed, this feeling still stayed, but my emotions were on a different rollercoaster ride. As he progressed deeper into drugs, and I spent more time with a friend that I was interested in, things began to change. And I think that feeling was the only thing that kept us together as long as we were.

In AP Psychology, we talk about hindsight bias and overconfidence, and how unreliable they are. It’s true. We rely too much on our feelings most of the time, and not enough on the obvious facts in front of our eyes.

So I began to be concerned after dating my boyfriend now after three months, that I had no such feeling towards him. There was a strong connection when I first met him, where I could just feel something from him, where I felt that somehow he would become important to me. And so he did. I guess there always was this thing about him that I deeply liked, but no feeling where I was like “Yes, this feels right!”

And I kept asking myself and questioning myself about why there was no feeling.

Maybe I hadn’t recovered yet?

But, last night, talking to him after everyone else had gone home, I felt it. As I laid there looking into his eyes and he was hugging me, it felt right. I finally felt it. That feeling that I had been waiting so long to feel. I feel as if I could spend years with him. There’s just something so right about him, that when I’m with him, my problems or insecurities don’t really seem to matter. Because he tells me I’m beautiful, tells me that I’m different and tells me that I feel “right.”

There’s something about this boy that I just can’t get out of my head.

I’m in love with him.

He’s in love with me.

And it feels right.

With all that happened last year, with my first serious relationship that ended in disaster, the fact that I might be falling in love again freaks me out. I can honestly say the first two times I was in love with someone they ended horribly.

And I always feel like the only reason people date me is because they have an alterior motive in mind. So I ask him all the time “why do you like me?”.  I just keep assessing our relationship and comparing it to my past relationships and determining the similarities. Now, it would be smart of me to look at how different he is from those two people, but I just can’t get past the similiarities.

I know he would never intentionally hurt me. I know he would never cheat on me.

But….I’m just starting to realize how much pain I carry from last year. I’m afraid to lose my heart again to someone who might change their mind or fall for someone else.

Why?

Why can’t I just forget the past and live in the now? Why does this hurt so much? Why can’t I just let myself go and go with the flow? I think too much with my head.

See, I can see myself defending my heart from letting him in, especially when I’m around him. He’s like this part of me that I wish I was and when I’m not with him, I’m wishing I was. The fact that someone can get to me like that scares the crap outta me. I’m afraid to let him know how much I care about him. I can’t make myself that vulerable to anyone.

The first person I truly fell for, and gave myself to mind, body and soul to, well I just wasn’t the only girl he was thinking about. And when I found that out…it just broke me. Then, the second person who I’ve felt that close with after him kept changing her mind and broke my heart once again. I just can’t do it again. I know it sounds like I’m just some whining little kid who is just here to bitch about how unfair her life is, but I’m not. I’m just saying that, really, I’m kind of emotionally damaged when it comes to the relationship department.

I lost my courage, my ability to believe love conquers all and my ability to give my heart to someone.

And the worst of it is, he probably is the smartest choice of someone I could pick to fall in love with. I trust him, there’s no doubt about that. I feel close to him. But…I just have doubts about why he’s dating me and I can’t tell him about why I ask him why he likes me all the time. I can’t say what I just want to say to him without crying.

I’ve lost a lot. And I guess I just don’t want to lose anymore. I mean like… I know I’m going to college next year and he’s staying here, so there’s a very good chance that if I gave him my heart I would lose it once more. But it scares me that I don’t care. That I’m willing to risk my heart for him.

Anyways…I’m kind of in a conundrum right now. When I actually do fall for him all the way, I’ll deal with it then.

I mean love always finds a way, doesn’t it?