Archive for October, 2009

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I took off work today, and I curled up on the sofa in front of the TV. I can’t say that I’m really watching it but it’s on and there’s a wide variety of old sitcoms dancing across it. I must confess that though I called in sick, I’m not sick – I’m pregnant.

As I mentioned, my body had been a little off lately. I contributed it to relationship woes, being uprooted, etc. but suddenly I found myself with a “green around the gills” feeling and there was no denying it – something in my body was changing. The pregnancy test I took that morning turned positive almost immediately and it was currently sitting next to the sink, it was almost like a magic wand that I used to dispel my disbelief. I’d walk in and pick it up and look at it again – there was no doubt, I was pregnant.

I wasted first part of the morning contemplating the “how” of this situation. Don’t get me wrong I understand the basics, but didn’t we always use condoms? I tried to replay the last few weeks that Rob and I lived together until ultimately I realized that I was just looking backwards to avoid trying to figure out what to do about the future. If we had forgotten to use one once, or if there had been some mishap, was irrelevant – I was pregnant.

In the interest of full disclosure I will admit that I considered ALL of the options available to me, as I stayed close to the house, weighing all of them careful.

I considered terminating the pregnancy. It was the easiest option for me to rule out, but I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that I thought about it. I didn’t think it would be the easiest option to live with afterward, but it would be something that I would have to live with alone – I wouldn’t have to deal with disappointing my family, telling my coworkers. At the end of contemplating – I realized that all of my reasons that made terminating my pregnancy seem attractive were all rather selfish, and considering that it was such a selfless act that brought me into this world it seemed like a poor way to repay my Birthmother’s selflessness.

The second option I discarded was keeping the baby. I was living in a one bedroom apartment, with very little furniture, trying very hard to make ends meet on my own. I didn’t think I could count on Rob for any help – financial or otherwise. I kept thinking about the hard questions that I knew would be inevitable – how come I don’t have a Dad? Where did I come from? I kept thinking about the talents the baby might have that I would be responsible for helping to cultivate – how would I be able to afford tee ball, piano lessons, or anything else “extra” that the baby might want? I thought about all the struggles that were ahead for the baby and me and I felt that I was entirely unequal to the task. I wanted more for the baby than this one bedroom apartment without a bed. (Of course I should point out that while one neat paragraph may make it look like a quick decision – it wasn’t.)

So I came to adoption, but do I really think I could place my baby for adoption?  I wonder how I would go about finding adoptive parents, I knew that I had family members that were currently trying to find babies to adopt but I didn’t think I could have my child be close and yet not know who I was. (Not to mention what happens when they find out that “cousin Joy” is really their birthmother?) No, keeping the baby in my family seems like a bad idea.

I started making lists of the things that I needed to pull together to proceed. I want to find an adoption attorney,  I need to Google adoption and see what information is out there, I have to figure out what I was going to tell my family (and when), and of course there is the sticky situation with Rob. (I’d rather just drop off the planet and never talk to him again, too imature? I don’t know.)

I have a starting point, I am pregnant and placing my child for adoption, and a rough idea of where to go from here. I have to admit that I’m a little scared, but I have to do what’s right for me, and what’s right for the baby growing inside me, and making me feel mildly nauseous, even as I write this.

It’s funny how after a break up I always feel like I’m building a whole new life, not just rebuilding my broken heart. My new apartment is five miles from work, a quarter of the commute I was making before. Since I’m fairly familiar with this part of town, it isn’t that hard to find a new grocery store or learn my new neighborhood. The initial burst of girl friend support has come and gone (where my wonderful friends have tried very hard to make sure that I’m not left to my own devices too much to contemplate my return to single status) so I’m left to settle into a new routine.

I still seem to find myself waking up on Saturday mornings feeling that little tug that I should be doing something. Normal Saturdays when Rob was in town we would go for a long walk or find some other trouble to get into. Like climbing on his motorcycle and going for a ride. Now I wake up and realize that I don’t really have anything pressing to do or anywhere to be and I am trying to enjoy the luxury of all this free time, but I have to admit that sometimes I miss him. To have someone go from being such a big part of your life and your plans from the future to being someone that you aren’t speaking to at all is hard. (I’m afraid I’ve never been very good at the post break up “let’s be friends.”)

In all of the excitement of spending time with friends, the heart ache of not talking to Rob, and the settling into a new routine I find myself looking at my calendar thinking that something is missing. I’ve never been the greatest at keeping track of my cycle but it seems like it’s been a while, longer than it should be. I don’t think it’s been long enough for me to run out and buy a pregnancy test but it’s been long enough that a nagging voice in the back of my head says that if something doesn’t happen soon that day is just around the corner.

When I was a teenager if you had asked me where I would be in my mid-twenties, I would’ve told you that I expected to have my college degree and perhaps I would be pursuing a law degree.  I expected that I would be dating a fabulous supportive man and we would probably be well on our way to white picket fence and 2.5 children.

I did not think I would be a college drop out, having fled my home and my last relationship like a refugee leaving my homeland. I didn’t expect that I would be living in an apartment with a sofa, TV, and little else in the way of furniture, but that’s exactly where I am, sitting here in the mostly empty apartment. How did I get here?

My relationship with Rob had moved fast, shortly after meeting we were living together, and our life settled down into a fun and easy schedule. We lived a little way outside of town and so in the evenings we enjoyed long walks on the quiet on the street and on the weekend we picked our way through trails that lead to an area that might grow up to be a subdivision some day, but for now it was wooded with winding trails. We went to the movies, dinners with friends, had long sleepy Sundays watching movies and lazing around the house.

Things changed slowly, I could feel Rob pulling away from me and at first I wasn’t sure why. I thought he was wrestling with his own demons, and I just tried to gently be there so when he was ready to let me in, he’d know I was there. His job took him out of town for one weekend a month, and when he came back I lapped up all of the stories that he shared and asked questions but it never occurred to me to dig too deeply.

Emily, I heard him talk about her a few times, she was a friend of a friend so she seemed to be around when he was on these weekend trips away but I didn’t think much of it, well not in the beginning. It was when her name started popping up on the caller id on a regular basis that I realized that she must be more than merely “a friend of a friend.” I also noticed that when Rob was on the phone with her and I walked into the room, he would stop talking.

It was the day that Rob met me in town for dinner and so we were both driving home in separate cars that I was forced to confront the ugly truth. I called to check messages on the answering machine from my cell phone, and Emily left a message telling Rob how she couldn’t wait to see him that weekend and she hoped that soon he would be “free” and my face burned when I realized that she meant free from me.

I didn’t angrily confront him, in fact I continued to pretend that I was still the same trusting and loving woman I had always been but I was moved out in less than a week. My Mom helped me find an apartment and with two friends with large trucks, I was moved out on a Saturday afternoon. Rob came back to town from a weekend with Emily, and I was gone, I didn’t live there anymore.

When Rob got home and saw that I was gone he called me and then we had the angry confrontation. He denied that he had cheated on me because he and Emily had never “crossed the line” in their friendship, I argued that the minute he was confiding in her about our problems instead of working on them with me he was cheating. He felt guilty but he also seemed relieved that the whole mess was over. I don’t remember how the call ended, but it ended, just as I thought our story ended.

I’m here, sleeping in the living room on the sofa because I don’t have a bed nor any kind of savings to furnish my new apartment. Still sorting through all of my belongings which I had packed in garbage bags and bundles so they were rather chaotic. In my mess I’m quite the contradiction – happy and hopeful one minute, sad or angry the next. I don’t know what the future holds but I cheer myself that the possibilities are endless.

I didn’t know it when I moved out but I was already pregnant with my son. I had a light period and just assumed that it was because of all the stress I was going through with Rob. I still remember sitting in that apartment trying to focus on all the possibilities of the future.

When I met Rob, we were both going through times of intense change. I had just left college when the bar that I worked at closed abruptly and I was left without the means to pay my tuition. (I could’ve asked my Mom and Dad to help but I was far too stubborn for that, and really that’s a story for another time.) I had lived on a friend’s sofa for two weeks before moving in with my friend James to be his roommate. I was trying to figure out what my next move was, but for the time, I was renting my friend James’ spare room and working at a temp agency.

Rob was one of James’ best friends and fairly recently divorced. He had dated someone after his wife but the relationship ended abruptly and tragically, so Rob had kind of withdrawn from life unsure if he ever wanted to let someone in again. In retrospect we were both sort of lost and drifting, and almost from the moment that we met each other, we clung to one another.

James and Rob were going out one night and I was curled up in my room with a book, when there was a knock on my door. When I invited the knocker in, I expected to find James or his girlfriend, and

instead there was a tall handsome man I had never seen before. Rob was not only tall, he had broad muscular shoulders that made him appear to take up most of the doorway. His smile was slightly crooked, and his hazel eyes were twinkling with mischief.

“Hi, I’m Rob, James, his girlfriend, and I were going to go out and I wanted to see if you wanted to come with us,” he said and he laughed a nervous little laugh at the end that made me smile.

There was something about the boyish laugh from the strapping man that was absolutely charming. I agreed to meet them in the front of the house in a few minutes and I proceeded to get dressed and ready to go out.

When we got to the bar, I was having second thoughts. It was a bar that was very popular with the college students and even worse, it was college nights. I was going to be confronted with a number of classmates who would want to know what had happened and why I was in classes this semester. I dreaded having to explain over and over again that I was out of money and unsure what I was going to be doing next, however I peeked over at Rob sitting across from me in the backseat of James’ car and he was talking so animatedly about something that I found myself smiling despite the butterflies in my stomach.

The night was a blur of people and loud music, I only remember that at one point I turned around and felt my stomach fall to my feet when I was nose to nose with my ex-boyfriend. Just the person that I would like to say something positive to, about where I was and what I was doing, and here he was with a beautiful girl on his arm and I had nothing to say. I’ve never asked what Rob saw on my face, but a moment later he was next to me, with his arm around my waist, introducing himself as my boyfriend and just like that he was my boyfriend.

Is it any wonder that in the weeks that followed, I fell in love with him? He was tall and handsome, and he showered me with crooked smiles and generous gifts. We started to see each other a little bit here, and a little bit there until we were together more than we were apart. When we were separated we were like giddy, giggling teenagers talking on the phone all hours of the day and night.

The story I want to share with you, may not be a love story, but there’s no doubt that it’s a story that starts with love.

You know, to me it’s all so clear
Every one of us is here
All because two people fell in love
~Brad Paisley