So that you can better understand who I am, you need to know where I came from. I’d like to start from the beginning. The VERY beginning.
It was the summer of 2000. I was 15. Yes, we are going way back. I went to church camp, located in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The beach! Very exciting for a bunch of rowdy teenagers. I was a bouncing little girl who was excited to learn about Jesus, and spend time with girlfriends, work on my tan, and maybe get winked at by a cutie or two. This is where my husband and I would first meet. He was a bad boy with a crooked and naughty smile, and I was a goody-two-shoes who didn’t let any boy even look at me the wrong way, lest he get slapped and “blessed out”. It was not a good match, but it was perfection to a hopelessly romantic teenager. By the time we came home from church camp, he had my full attention. Something about the way he didn’t care, the way he smoked cigarettes, the way he smiled at me even though I had a boyfriend, his best friend. To a 15 year old girl who had never experienced anything, this was very exciting. It didn’t take long for him to steal me from his friend. After that, we were inseparable. His family lived on a farm in the country, and I was from the city, so he took me on great adventures through his parents’ land on four-wheeler rides, we went fishing off the dock of the pond, among other things. His parents were never around to keep an eye on us, even if they were there, they turned a blind eye. Rules weren’t really a “thing” in this household, and pretty soon we were sneaking off to his room to “watch TV” while he slowly started to take advantage of my innocence. His parents never seemed to care. Growing up with strict parents that forced me to obey rules, this was liberating. I made the choice, mind you, to do everything I did. I was stupid and young, and I thought I was in love. For what I had experienced of love up to that point, this was the best feeling I had ever had. This bad ass boy wanted me, he loved me.
Chris never followed rules, it was the way he was raised, and it was accepted. This would affect me the rest of my life. One rule he declined to follow was never using protection, stating that he had had so many four wheeler accidents he probably couldn’t have children anyway. I was completely naive and thought the same dumb thing that all teenagers have- “I could never get pregnant anyway, that would never happen to me, that is like, a one in a million chance…”
I mistook Chris’s carelessness and thoughtlessness for me as passion for us. I was hooked on him. He didn’t need me, and he let me know that by ignoring me, treating me badly, not showing up for dates, being extremely late, not calling, and that made me need him more. What is it about teenage girls and loving the abuse? After we had slept together, I fell deeper in love with this boy, because that’s what happens when girls play at sex to get love, they get boys who play at love to get sex. This boy, this liar who would go to parties on the weekend with other girls, who would smoke weed behind my back, this fifteen year old boy who watched porn, who stole things from everyone he knew and did drugs, none of which I was aware of at the time. I didn’t even know what porn was, what drugs were, I was innocent. He stole that from me. In every way imaginable. I ended up sneaking out of my home while my parents were away on vacation to go see Chris, because my parents could see he was trouble and had grounded me. It was even more forbidden, so of course that made me want him even more. I was starting to become like him. Lying to my parents, I had never lied to my parents. I loved him so much, and I let my parents know that they couldn’t keep me from him, so they didn’t finally. They didn’t like it, but they were trying not to push me away further.Trying to let me make my own choices, they thought I was smart enough. But they forgot that to a young and in love teenage girl, you become blinded, the reality of the situation doesn’t matter. Only “love”.
Fast forward to one year later. I was 16, had a car, and making the trip to Chris’s house was much easier than ever. I had recently skipped a few periods. More than a few, a lot of periods. I noticed I didn’t have my beautiful six-pack abs anymore… what was happening? Oh, God. Surely not. I went to my best friend’s house to spend the night, and her mother bought me a pregnancy test. It was positive. I took another one, positive. I cried all night. I went to the Christian-based Family 1st Center in our town, alone, and took another test- positive. This time, it became very real. I was shaking, crying, scared, petrified, alone. The lady that was my case worker tried to console me and tell me it was okay, that I could give my baby up for adoption. I didn’t want to do that, I could never do that… could I? I was pregnant. Holy crap, I was pregnant. And it was anything but glamorous, as the media would have you believe now with shows like “16 and Pregnant”. I called Chris and he assured me that we would make great parents, and that everything would be okay, we would get married, he’d quit school and get a job, and things would be fine. I’m sure he thought he meant all those things at the time.
I had to tell my parents eventually, and they were obviously upset. They didn’t even know we had been sleeping together. For almost a year. Everything they had put into raising me, and I repaid them with this. They told me I could stay in their home, but I could no longer see Chris. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Life went on as usual for the next few months, I would send letters to Chris through friends at church, and would even sneak a meeting with him at a high school football game every now and again. That was difficult, not being able to be with the father of my child. Add that with the added pressure of trying to find an adoptive couple for my child (even though I didn’t want to) and trying to decide whether or not I should go away to one of those homes for wayward pregnant girls, life was stressful. The beginning of stress. I visited the home with my mother, and these girls looked pitiful. They looked like future convicts, drug addicts, like motherless girls about to become mothers themselves. ‘I am so far above this’ I thought, but yet, here I was. When we left that place I swore I would never go back.
December, 2001, I was still 16, I would turn 17 in February. My mother and I sat down at the dinner table one night to discuss some things. I still had not picked a couple to adopt my baby. My baby. That’s the only way I could feel about her. About Hailey Elisabeth. I knew her soul, I knew her personality. Before I even had her, I knew her and I loved her so much. She was a gymnast. She was feisty, beautiful, rambunctious. As I sat at that table, my mother could see the look of longing in my eyes, and she said “You want to keep her, don’t you?” I nodded my head, and she smiled, “Me too. You can do this, I will help you.” And that was that.
It was almost time to have her, I was due in January. Christmas Eve had arrived, family had come, everyone was starting to move forward and actually get excited about the baby. My aunt even prayed over this sweet girl in my belly. Things were going to be okay. Then, I started to feel like something was wrong. Hailey wasn’t moving as much as she normally did. Mom assured me that babies just don’t move as much toward the end, because they don’t have much room in there. I cried myself to sleep on Christmas Eve, call it a mother’s intuition. Two days after Christmas it was time for my doctor’s appointment. I went in, they asked how I was feeling, I felt fine. And that was about to be it- until I told them I couldn’t find a heart rate at home on my own monitor, and asked them to please check and make me feel better. They didn’t seem worried as they grabbed the doctor and had him do a check. He was having trouble finding it, too. Not to worry, we will do an ultrasound and check this sweet girl out, she’s probably turned and we just can’t get a reading. No big deal. I went ahead and called Chris and the rest of the family. I knew, I just knew that something was really wrong.
Read Part 2 Tomorrow…
MorningLori 