The Day after Yesterday

I always thought it was funny when people look at me with an odd expression. Here I am pregnant with three others all relatively young. I get looks like I'll never know what I'm doing or I have way too many. Trust me this was not how I saw my life. Honestly I thought I'd be trying out for the Equestrian Olympics or riding endurance or anything that had to do with at least one or two horses. Somewhere along the line I would have graduated college and went on to have a comfortable career.

That isn't how it worked. When I was 18 I got slung into life as a parent. Unfortunately it was by a very abusive person who I had been with on and off for nearly 4 years then. If that doesn't tell you what happened then I don't know what will. Does it?...... Okay, okay, he dumped me because I was too far along for it to possibly be his. I was 3 months pregnant then and I had stopped going to school. It was then that I realised that I had better do something about my life or I wasn't going to get anywhere at all. So I went back to school. A pregnancy program for teen mothers and fathers who just wanted to move on with their lives as normally as possible. On January 24th I gave birth to an amazingly handsome little boy. I graduated when he was 3 months old.

His father tried to take me to court for custody and that really frightened me. So I went back to him. I paid for it. He took me down to Florida and trapped me in a trailer. I had no life except my baby. I had to get back to Ohio before I went crazy counting tiles. So that is what I did. I came back. I broke up with him before our son was one. For nearly six months I was free of him. Then he got to me again. With roses and promises that he would never fulfill. Shortly after we got our own place in the worst part of the worst city around. Then I was pregnant again. After getting shoved around, having my stuff broken and hiding in the bathroom with my son I didn't things could get worse.

I had a little girl on April 4th. She puts a meaning to pretty in pink. Not shortly after her birth he admitted to me that he was addicted to cocaine. That is when I decided I hated drugs, all of them. One day when she was nearly one and two days before my son's birthday he came home high. I decided it was time to move on. So that was the idea. I was a nobody but I was my children's protector. I had to get them out. He choked me, drug me up the stairs by my hair while I was carrying the kids and then threatened to kill himself in front of them. I had managed to call the cops but never got to speak with them. They came anyway. They drug him out on the porch with guns pointed at him. He went to jail and I barely looked back. I was done with him.

Shortly after I met the man I married. Of course he was young and didn't have any children of his own. So then came a boy, after we were married, on October 30th. At least he was a product of a thriving relationship and so is this one.

But no this is not my ideal life. Yet it is the life I live.