New Beginnings: Part One

Four years ago, I met V's dad. I can't really believe it's been four entire years, but it most definitely has. Since the day we met, my life has been an ever changing journey. I've gone from a crazy whimsical 20 year old girl who lived from bags and only thought about the future as some far off distant place, to someone who provides stability, comfort, and has goals to accomplish instead of dreaming life away. When I first found out I was pregnant with V, I was living in a two bedroom apartment with my previous room mate, working third shift as a cocktail waitress in a strip club, smoked cigarettes, made bad choices, only wore black and went to heavy metal shows. I was the ideal "scumbag" your parents probably warned you about at the lovely age of 19. When I met J he was in a band, touring with my room mate's boyfriend. I was unimpressed by him, but somehow he convinced me to go out with him. There isn't much of a romantic diabolical of a story there. I met him, we dated, we made a baby. Majority of the time I "dated" him, he was 4,000 miles away from me in California, making dating quite unusual. We would fly and visit each other, meet each other's families, etc. There was no importance to our relationship, it was toxic, unstable, cold, brash, and would have never worked. Did I see this at the time? No, otherwise this post would be extremely different than it is. Before things went from bad to even weirder and crazy dysfunctional - I peed on a stick as a joke, only to find this pregnancy "joke" wasn't too funny. After I told J that I was pregnant, things were wonderful for awhile. We contemplated all our options as a young couple who had been together for a brief time and were in a rocky place. We decided that the best option would be to have our child, and do the best we could. Things started out great, we made plans, were on the same page, everything was awesome. Then, something changed. I was in California visiting him for two weeks when we were sitting at his friend M's house. I asked what kind of plans we were going to be making as far as living arrangements went. I was already three months pregnant, it was time to make the choices on how/what we were going to do when it came to our baby. That was the day, my entire life changed. Not finding out I was pregnant, not telling him, but the day he decided it wasn't what he wanted anymore. When we left M's house that evening, things were different. I had a week left in my visit at his house, I slept in his sister's room and he didn't even speak to me. He drove me to the airport after a week of ignoring me, didn't even hug me, just drove away. It. Was. Over. There's a couple bumps in this tale but to save your brains the sanity, I'll exclude most of our relationship mishaps and focus on the new beginnings portion of this post and bypass a couple months of not even speaking to each other.   During the 5 months that J and I didn't speak, my room mate was a huge part of my support system. We bought V's crib, packed it away, put it in the car, etc. We set it all up, we made plans for a baby while J was in lala land somewhere pretending this entire relationship, baby, and "thing" hadn't happened. I prepared myself to do this alone, I went to all my appointments alone, faced all the adversity during this pregnancy alone. All and all, as happy as I am from the result, my pregnancy was an extremely depressing era of my life. Not only did my entire life change during that time frame, but my outlook, mind set, and what I expected from the opposite sex also changed. Eventually as the time set in closer, and J slowly emerged back into the picture demanding a paternity test and being 50 shades of sketchy/douche to me. He came, spent a week in my home (we moved into a larger starter house at that point, as seen above in that photo. Melrose was one of my favorite homes to date. We truly made that place our home). He stayed with us, ignored me, treated me as I was a lesser person. His mom even had the audacity after I spend all evening at 9 months pregnant cooking her a traditional southern dinner, to refuse to step foot into my house because it was small, didn't have central AC, and I didn't have a guest bedroom. Can we say I had too many red flags with it came to him at this point? Maybe if anyone actually reads this, I will continue with what happened after she was born and where another new beginning happened in my life.