I had a total breakdown Friday night. I started thinking about how sad I feel at night that I'm here, and that I'm not at home where I can look in at Triston sleeping. I thought to myself, what if Triston feels sad the way I do every night when he goes to bed because mama hasn't come and picked him up and taken him home at night in so long? Triston has spent the night at my parents house before and at one of his little friend's house before... sometimes even two nights in a row, but never a whole month. I know my thoughts are somewhat irrational because a toddler can't think those things, but I know that there are times where he must be wondering where I am and how come I haven't been picking him up . I also know that once I'm back home for a week or so he won't even remember that he spent the whole summer at his grandparents.
Irregardless, I totally broke down crying. I kept asking God why is this happening to me? Am I being punished for this horrible "decision" I made earlier this year? I was sobbing my eyes out. The next day I still felt the same. I've been in this hospital a whole month and haven't had one real contraction, haven't had any bleeding, haven't had any sign of infection, and all of my NSTs have been great. I just felt like there was no reason to be here. I talked to the doctor about going home, and she was really understanding and she seemed very willing to help come up with a plan if I did decide to leave, but obviously the doctors can't discharge me, I'd have to sign myself out. So I spent the whole day crying again, uncontrollably, wondering what I should do. I felt really resentful toward this baby. I didn't want a second child when I found out I was pregnant. I finally came to terms with having another child, even began to feel happy about it and then I started having problems. Then I end up in the hospital. To be honest, while time feels like it's standing still in the hospital, this pregnancy has moved WAY to fast and I'm still in disbelief that in only five weeks I'll be having a second child. Eventually my feelings subsided and I realized it was very unrealistic to think I could go back home and single-handedly manage Triston. And today I've felt better but I do miss him terribly.
This is hands down, one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do in my life. When I was in a relationship with Boorah (the ex; the baby daddy) I got myself into a lot of trouble. When we first started dating it was the normal "I'm an adult now" rebellion- smoking weed, drinking alcohol, skipping college classes, blowing my savings. I got fed up with me financing all of our fun and me trying to get ahead with my life while he did absolutely nothing (no job, no GED, no drivers license) and we broke up for a while, but I couldn't completely withdraw from him; I think I was just at that age where I loved the drama and I wanted to be needed. When he moved to Kentucky, I followed. At first he worked and he held up his part of the agreement where he would pay rent and utilities while I would pay my normal bills (credit cards, car payment, insurance), and pay for groceries and a phone. And then he stopped working and I was trying to pay my rising bills along with the expenses he was responsible for. I ruined a 770 credit score. My few items worth money suddenly started getting "stolen" and I naively thought our apartment was getting repeatedly broken in to. (Now I obviously know he did it, I mean who's apartment gets broken into 3 times?). I did things like shoplift clothes, and I set my priorities on clubbing and would often call off work so I could stay home and drink and smoke weed. There was this older guy (talking like 30 years older than me) who was a little off in the head and had money and so I took advantage of his naive-ness and would ask him for a couple hundred dollars at the beginning of the month to help pay my bills in exchange for driving him around to pay his own bills and take him grocery shopping, etc. He'd also give Boorah the pain killers he was prescribed so he could sell them to make extra money. Of course he smartened up after about two months when he realized nothing more would accumulate from our friendship, and even though I technically did nothing wrong I felt horrible for taking advantage of someone who was trying to treat me with kindness.
A week after my 22 birthday things started to really go south. I had just financed yet another car (the last one the engine blew on, and I still had a loan out on it, but I lived in the country and had to have a car in order to get to the city) and two days later got a DUI. After getting out of jail I had to walk 2 miles in heels to spend my last $100 to get my car out of the impound. Then a week later Boorah got pulled over in my vehicle and it was impounded again. I had to spend the last $100 that was left on my last credit card. After that I couldnt even afford to make credit card payments anymore. I couldn't afford anything. We had to start buying prepaid cell phones. We were almost evicted out of our apartment and had to scrape up the money to pay two months worth of rent. I couldn't drive so it was almost impossible for me to get back and forth to work, and my priorities still weren't on working. I was buying things of value on my home depot credit card and then pawning them for cash to try to come up with rent money and of course because of my screwed up priorities we always needed a few dollars left over so we could get some weed and a beer. I had huge costs to pay off my DUI and get my license back.
Eventually we got evicted out of our apartment and had to go stay with Boorah's family. 6 people staying in a two bedroom townhouse.... When we would have the gas we would drive out to our old apartment to get the mail. One day a package arrived. It was checks from a bank, sent to the wrong address. I had no job, no money, no apartment. My car payment was overdue, so I really needed a job. Gas was over $4 a gallon, I really needed gas to try to get to and from interviews. So I used the girl's checks to fill up my gas tank, to buy pizza, to buy things I needed from family dollar. Every time I did it I felt horrible. I would go back to my ex's house and retreat into his sisters bedroom and stay there for hours as if the police would catch on that quickly and were going to come arrest me that day.
Eventually I found a job, but a month into it Boorah found out the police were looking for him for credit card fraud, so we moved back to Michigan the VERY NEXT DAY and I moved back with my parents. My mistakes caught up with me. Kentucky sent out my felony warrants to other states and when I found out they were looking for me I turned myself in and spent four days in a holding cell. I had to tell my parents what I had done. In addition to this my credit was so horrible, and I was in so much debt I had to file for bankruptcy. It's crazy how much my parents love me. They paid for my bankruptcy, paid for my lawyer, took me to and from Kentucky for court, helped pay for my court expenses. All of this happened while I was pregnant with Triston. The charges resulted in a diversion, so for two years I basically couldn't get any job that required a background check, but now I have nothing whatsoever on my record. During that time in my life I vowed to change for my son- I prayed to God that if he would let my son be ok and keep my out of jail I would turn my life around- and I really did. I finally returned to the person I was before I had began dating Boorah- a sweet, honest, ambitious, hard-working young lady.
What's really funny though is that while I was going through all this turmoil during my first pregnancy, I still stayed with my ex. My family and friends were so angry and so dumbfounded as to why I couldn't see that my Boorah was the cause of all my problems. I mean he wasn't the direct cause, but now when I look at it he did indirectly cause all of my problems. I made the decisions but they were all heavily persuaded by his threats. In fact, back in Michigan I continued to let him use my car and it got "stolen" while in his possession. At first I believed it was stolen, but then 2 weeks later it turned up only TWO blocks from my house. A car does NOT get stolen IN DETROIT and end up in the suburbs. It just doesn't happen. And yet I didn't acknowledge until after I broke up with him that he somehow had something to do with it being "stolen". He must have thought he could sell it "hot" to someone or have it "stripped" and then realized he couldn't and had someone dump it by my house. I wanted to make it work because I wanted Triston to have a father and for us to be a family. I wanted to feel like our 6 years together really meant something. It meant nothing. When I look back on our relationship now I can't say there was a single moment when I felt pure joy or happiness. Every fun time we had together I financed. He treated me like shit and never did anything for me.
The point of telling this whole story to the blog (which believe me was a very very shortened version. I'm sure I could write an entire book on this experience) was because that time period of my life (dealing with a possible felony on my record, going through bankruptcy, spending 4 days in jail while I was pregnant) was one of the most difficult of my life. And yet in all honesty, this is harder. The hospital is like a prison in itself. A plushy prison, but a long term sentence. Being separated from a child you love with all your heart is unbearable. And comparing this experience to all the bullshit I went through with my ex is the only way I can think of explaining to someone how hard this process is. Is to say look at what I went through- this is WORSE than that.
So anyway, now that I've written a huge blog entry, I'm kind of inspired. Maybe I will write about my experiences with my ex... maybe a fictional biography sort of way.... don't have shit else to do. What do you think?
(Ugh the culprit himself, my ex. As disgusted I am to post this I figure at least my readers can have an idea of who I'm talking about. This is maybe 1 of like 4 pictures I have left of him (can't bear to delete any picture with Triston in it))
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