My Story: You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

I was uninsured. And pregnant. A scary prospect. I had gone to the local clinic for an “offical” pregnancy test, which confirmed what I already knew. I was about 2 months pregnant. They gave me an approximate due date………May 5th. I was reassured I would qualify for state aid. “Just go apply! everyone said, “You’ll be approved!” So I did. I don’t remember the process exactly. I remember being asked a bunch of questions. About myself, my income and the father and his income. I remember thinking the sliding scale for daycare was stupid. It cut you off the SECOND you made $____ amount. I remember thinking. “Thats not engough to pay for daycare!” And I went home and waited for approval.

About a week later I got a letter in the mail. I will remember this forever. It is so clearly in my mind like yesterday. I was sitting my car opening my mail and there is was……my approval letter. (or so I thought) I ripped into it only to find…………………the state failed me. I was denied Medial assistance. I made too much money. TOO MUCH MONEY????? I had nice car, an apartment, a few credit cards. I lived well. But I wasn’t rich! I didn’t have tons of extra money!! Not to pay LARGE HOSPITAL BILLS!!!!

Seriously. This was wrong I thought. There was a number on the top of the paper. So I called them. I asked them about the denial and they told me yes it was correct. CORRECT? I asked them what I was supposed to do??? How can I not make the money I was making? I had to pay my bills right? No. My car payment? My credit cards? My rent? Not in so many words but lady basically said no. I don’t believe she COULD tell me NOT TO pay my bills, but in a round about way she did. I was angry. I didn’t know what to do. I knew medical bills were expensive. How could I pay them with no insurance?? Or medicaid??

Once again L said “we” would figure it out. He would help with bills. R offered to let me move in with him, which I did, when my lease was up. I basically paid no rent to R. I helped watch his kids and helped with utilties. I could have gone back and re-applied. I was making the magical number they wanted from me. But I was burned. I was angry with the system. I knew I didn’t want to go back to them even though I was making less money. I had done what they wanted me too, but I didn’t want their help anymore. Living with R I was in the postion I could possibly start saving some money. So I found a hospital that would work on a sliding scale based on income. Once again I thought I had it all figured out, why at this point I thought things would work out is beyond me. Things were already starting to fall apart.

My story: Sonic Cheddar Bites and the REAL TRUTH comes out.

The end of September was when I realized something was missing. My period.

I realized it sitting at Sonic eating Cheddar bites with K. (like I said before WHY we remember small stupid things is AMAZING!) We were talking about L and G. Both had blown us off pretty badly. I had tried to hook up with L another time. Why I have NO idea. Just for fun I guess. But L had blown me off completely. I wasn’t used to not getting what wanted so I was pretty pissed off.

We were venting and I began to think back to that night in August and I counted the days. What was missing in September? And August for that matter now that I think about it. My period. I stopped smiling and K asked me what was wrong. I shook it off and told her nothing.  

I would take a test. It was probably just stress.

A few days later I went to Dillions and purchased a pack of 2 tests. I went home to my apartment. I took the first one and sat it on the counter. And watched a + sign appear. It said I was pregnant. I couldn’t, or didn’t want to believe it so I took the other test. Same thing. I knew I was screwed. This time became somewhat of  blur. I remember calling my mother. I don’t remember what I said or how I said it. I remember she asked me who the father was and what I planned on doing. I didn’t know. Honestly my first thought, was to get an abortion. I didn’t want to be pregnant at 20, especially by a guy I hated.

I went to work. I can’t remember who I told. I was in a daze. I told R I had to talk to him. By this time R and I had become very close friends. He knew the minute I looked at him something was wrong. We went into the office and I told him, “R, I’m pregnant.” He knew it wasn’t his because he hadn’t had sex since sometime in July. I also hadn’t had sex with anyone since L. So I knew it was L’s. I told R I wanted to have an abortion. R told me I HAD to tell L. I said I didn’t want to. R told me that it would be ok, he would talk to L for me. I was ok with that and left the office and went to work.

Most of the night L kept trying to call our job. I wouldn’t answer the phone. I didn’t even LIKE this man. What was I going to do, try and raise a child with him? R kept insisting I had to talk to him. I couldn’t I didn’t know what to say. He must have called 20 times that night. Finally I agreed to meet him at R’s later that night so we could talk.

And we did. I think it was the one moment that maybe somewhere deep inside L cared. He told it would be ok. I was going to keep the baby. That he would help, that we would figure out a way to make it work. I believed him. Young and Naive, at 20 I believed him. I believed it would be ok. He was going to stand by me after all. R said he also believed that L would do the right thing. So I set off to be a mother. Not the way I planned but 7 months from then I would be raising my daughter or my son.
Things wouldn’t work out the way I planned though.

My Story: Lies

Things didn’t change. Why should they? Everything was great. Summer was drawing to a close and it was started to get colder outside so our partying did slow down a bit. I remember now my period should have come around the begining of September it came and went without me noticing though.

Something else happened around this time too. We got a new manager. She was a transfer from another store, in fact the store I had left less than a year ago. She wasn’t like our previous GM. Things were going to change. Getting the hours I wanted, my raise in pay that I received, and many other things became a thing of the past. (YES…..I did have my pay raise taken away!!) I hated this women. I left the other restaurant, in part, to get away from her.

Another thing R and I talked about was our parties. Everyone had accepted them as the norm and no one questioned them. We were lucky that most of the employees were on board with us. Our previous GM was cool and no one would turn us into corprate. He had actually allowed R to do a lot of the hiring so R had screened out people he thought wouldn’t “fit” our restaurant.

When D came into the picture she changed that all quickly. Hiring became her job. Why R thought to let our parties involve some of the new employees is beyond me. But one night he invited H, one of the new servers. Ironically, this was probably be one of our wildest parties we had so far. I remember watching H out of the corner of my eye and the look on his face. Shock. I told R later that night, “H is going to tell what is going on, R!!” He admited that he was worried to but we would deal with it when it happened.

And it did…..but not how we thought it would happen.

About two days later D pulled me in her office.  H had quit. He had come to her about a problem in the restaurant. He has basically re-capped our party from a few nights ago to her. She told him she was in shock he would make up such lies about us. She then asked me, “Is this true, L? I can’t believe that you, R and the others would do this!!” I lied. I told her none of it was true. I didn’t know what else to say. I found later she had confronted R about it too.

“I think this needs to stop, R. I can’t lose my job.” I cried.

R agreed with me. The partying would stop at least at the restaurant. We dodged a bullet this time.
To this day I’m not sure HOW it came out that this was the truth. Because D eventally found out.

My Story: Our Undoing……Or the begining of an end.

During the summer we partied more. I remember sitting in R’s front yard on lawn chairs listening to Hank Williams Jr “All my Rowdy Friends have Settled Down”. LOL, Ironic right?

I can’t remember but I think it was my 20th birthday. Or else it was few weeks before. I was hanging out with K and R. We were all closing the restaurant we worked at and planned on having a few drinks after work. Right before we closed, R’s best friend L showed up with another friend of his from his job (I can not remember his name so we will call him G). I had met L a few times before. I didn’t like him. He wasn’t warm like R. He didn’t make me laugh and he was kind of shady. i knew he had been in jail and just got out.

After they got there K and I finished cleaning things up and R did the books and talked to L and his friend. K pulled me aside and said, “I WANT G!!! He is totally hot!” I knew this was coming because I KNEW he was K’s type. I told her I would ask R if he could hang out with us. Of course they wanted to. So R made a liqour run while G, L, K and I hung out at the restaurnt. When he got back we began to drink and drink and drink some more.

I can’t tell you what I drank or even very much more about that night. I remember K and G had sex, just like she planned. I also remember in the future R would blame himself for what happened that night, for not stepping in and taking control. He said, “You should have been with ME that night. And this wouldn’t have happened.” But I wasn’t……..I had sex with L. I remember going home to R’s house. We had sex on his pull out couch. I don’t remember why I didn’t think to use a condom. I remember getting up the next morning. I had on one of those “CO-ED Naked” shirts that were so popular for awhile. I left R’s house. Regret wasn’t something on my radar at this time in my life. So I didn’t regret it. It just happened.

It was all a joke. We laughed a few times about it and moved on. It wasn’t any different than anything that had happened so far. But we didn’t know what was boiling under the surface. The series of events that night had just set forward in motion. How everything was about to explode in our face. Our party lifestyle. Our jobs. Our future.

My Story: Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll

DISCLAIMER—–So I’m going perpetuate the birthmom myth, “Birthmothers have wild and crazy out of control lives, with drugs and alcohol.” SIGH. I hate doing it, but to tell my story I have to be truthful. The things I am going to tell are not things I am proud of.  They are not pretty. But they changed me and made me who I am today.
I WAS, WE WERE, out of control. It honestly didn’t start out that way. A few drinks here and there. A poker game one night. A party at his house. Things just weren’t 100% on the up and up. I mean I WAS under 21 and he was buying alcohol for us. We did a lot of things that weren’t legal. We weren’t exactly following the rules.  
I was working 2 jobs. (so was R) One of mine was from 7am-3pm Tuesday-Friday. Then I would work my full-time job, with R, 5pm-12am Wednesday-Thursday and 6pm-6am Friday and Saturday. I would sleep when I could, which wasn’t much because during my times off I was usually partying. One particular time I remember we laughed because we got 2 hours of sleep in two days. I had money stolen for me from the restaurant I working at. (notice I NEVER stole it directly, but it was given to me) I never went without anything I wanted. We partied, hard. And alot. We used the restaurant after hours for our parties, rented hotel rooms or went to our houses sometimes.  We begin to bring others in the restaurant into our little circle.  We also started hanging out with customers as well. Like I said people saw that we were having fun! And we were! Why not join? We welcomed them!
Honestly. I can’t lie, it WAS fun. Was most of what we were doing right? No. But when you get caught up in the moment sometimes right and wrong go out the window.
K, J, S and C and I became fast friends. (there is something VERY ironic about our friendship that will come up later!!) I hadn’t had any close friends since high school so I was happy! We never stopped partying it seemed like, it was a non-stop party. Hell, even work was a party. I remember going out back with K to smoke pot and drink and then coming back in to wait on our customers.
I knew R was having sex with a few people at work. That’s just how it was. We weren’t “offically” together so it really didn’t bother me at the time. I was with a few guys other than R at the time too. A guy from my other job, a friend of S’s. When I think back on it was lucky I didn’t get pregnant sooner. I was never super careless, that I remember. But that’s the key…..THAT I REMEMBER. I guess I just had that attitude that it wouldn’t happen to me. I guess we all kind of had  that attitude.
We were young and untouchable, right? RIGHT??

My Story: Saint Judes Childrens Hospital

When you look back on your life, its funny the things you remember and the things you don’t. How something so small and stupid can change your life forever.
When I met R, my favorite local radio station was running their yearly tele-a-thon for Saint Judes Childrens Hospital. I remember that like it was yesterday. He was cooking at the restaurant I was worked at. I had just transfered from another store to this one at the request of the general manager, who was a friend of mine. R was a cook/server/jack-of-all-trades, manager, baker. Whatever he needed to be at the time. He was cute. Man, I thought he was cute. He was the first guy I had REALLY been attracted to like that since B (yes, my current B!!) When J introduced us, he smiled his crooked smile and shook my hand. He was one of those people that was very easy to warm up to and soon we were laughing and joking. He had beautiful brown eyes and was incredibly funny. True to my form, he was damaged goods. lol. Recently divorced and it was not a amicable split. They had 2 young kids together. She had left him. For another man. Whom she had just married. Needless to say he was bitter.
But he made me laugh. And laugh. And Laugh some more. We went on one actual “date”, to a Mexican Restaurant, which was interupted by our jobs never-ending need for help. Haha. We became fast friends “with benefits”. We were pretty much inseparable. And we had fun together. People around us started to pick up on our fun and what a crazy spontaneous “couple” we were.  But we were about to get swept up in something. Something that wasn’t bad at the time, but spiraled out of control before we could stop it.
To anyone reading this story, you might be thinking, “I see where this is going, R is your daughters father!” But oh no, meeting R was only the begining.

Testing the Waters

Otherwise known as trying to tell my story.
My adoption story. I don’t know how well it will turn out because I honestly don’t remember alot. But here goes. I will tell what I remember when it comes to me.

It is on my mind and in my heart.

I sit at the computer and drink tea. Sun Tea. My house is clean. My dogs are sleeping. For a moment things are peaceful.
And “IT” is on my mind. It has been all day. Leaving. A new place, a new start. Just me, my computer and my dog. Me, making sense out of things for just me and only me.
I don’t know what will become of this. Wow, this blog could become my journey across the country into something crazy and new. If not, its talk. It’s talk about doing something crazy and new. Maybe that all I need right now.
I don’t want to “run away”. If I did I would leave now and never look back. I could run away easily. But I know, I’ve been around the block a few times, that running away doesn’t solve things. But I also know staying some place doesn’t always either. I want to run TO SOMETHING, like I said before.
One quote that came to mind reccently was from the movie “Mermaids”
“Life is change. Death is: dwelling on the past or staying in one place too long.”
Life is change. Nothing ever stays the same.

Running Away? Running From? Or Running To??

I have been thinking about running. Away? From? What? The more I think about its………TO something.
I’m not in middle or high school anymore, is running away really an option? I’d like to think so. Things haven’t been going well with my boyfriend lately, with my family, with my life in general. It scares the shit out of me but it excites me as well. I’d sell everything I have. Except my clothes, my laptop (which I will be buying soon) and 1 car. Wow, seriously starting “over”.
Sometimes I think I need a fresh start. In a city, in a STATE where its just me. (I’d take my boxer, I decided it would be best for my lab to go to my ex in case I do decide to do this) Doing things for “me” and no one else. Not worrying about judgement or pleasing anyone.
I’m so torn. I do love my boyfriend. I do. But sometimes I don’t know how he feels about me. He talks about our future but then he acts differently. I do know my family loves me but I also feel like its “condtional”. As long as I follow “their” plans.
And then I look at houses in Tampa. Why Tampa? I don’t know. Because I have never seen the ocean. Because a million times different than where I live now. Because its just something CRAZY INSANE, and I am KNOWN for always doing the right, normal, thing. Sigh.
Right now I’m holding my breathe. No one knows about my plan. Well, some people do. But not how serious I am.
One of my mom’s favorite sayings is, “Everywhere you go, there you are.” and when I told her about my possible plans she said this. But I really don’t think I’m running away, the more I think about it. Like I said above. I feel like I am running towards something. What it is I can not put my finger on it yet.
I can’t wrap my head around this right now. I can’t make a decsion. But the wheels are turning in my head……………….

The Crazy Chronicles

I just think Crystal’s blog “Boob Injuries and Dr Pepper”, rocks.

I don’t remember where or how I found her blog but I love it! I have loved following, “The Crazy Chronicles” . Go read them….seriously.  I am soooooo addicted!!!