My name is Kim. And I am a teen mother.
Crying babies, finals, and a killer headache are just a few of the joys of being a teen mom. I stay awake half the night trying to care for a six-month-old; the other half the night I spend trying to study or working. I get next to no time for sleep, but I still have to try to keep my grades up while doing everything else.
School is excruciating for me. My mother says that she will not watch David, my baby. She makes me take him to the daycare at my school. If he’s sick, I have to bring both of us home on the bus. If the baby runs a fever, there is no chance I’ll be able to go to school or work that day.
Last year, I was in cheerleading and drill team. This year, I won’t be able to do any of that because the daycare ends fifteen minutes after school lets. I can’t do any of the afterschool programs I love.
I mean, I won’t even be able to attend the homecoming, because I can’t afford to find a babysitter.
Worst of all, David’s father wants nothing to do with either of us. He turned his back on his own child. He claims that his family offered to pay for the abortion so, by me keeping the baby, David is solely my responsibility.
So here I am… At only fifteen, I’m watching my life turn to pure hell. My future seems totally screwed up. I’ll never be able to go to the college I wanted to. Can you just imagine a baby in a dorm room? You can’t, because it doesn’t work that way. I know I could get an apartment off campus, but how would I ever afford it?
When I go to my job, I can only legally work twenty hours per week. That is barely enough to pay for the baby’s necessities, much less anything that I may need. My mother says that if I can be adult enough to have a child, I can be responsible enough to pay for any expenses that are caused by myself or the child. But she doesn’t seem to understand: I can’t live off a part-time minimum wage job!
What sucks is that my mother wants me out as soon as I finish high school. She says that raising one child was more than enough for her and wants no part of raising my child, too. She thinks that I should have put David up for adoption instead of keeping him.
She says I’m wasting my life.
I don’t know if she’s right, but I do know I feel like I am diseased. Many of my friends have stopped talking to me. They say it’s because I can’t do many of the things we did before I was pregnant. I mean, I can still go to the mall, but it takes forever to get the baby and me ready to go. My old friends don’t want to hang around a baby all day long anyway, so it’s not like it matters.
When I was pregnant, my school made me withdraw and go to a special needs girl’s school, a.k.a. a pregnancy boarding school. I had to live onsite and, instead of learning normal high school subjects, I was made to learn stuff like diapering, feeding, and proper car seat installation. People act like being a teen mother is a contagious disease. I am not a disease!
Okay, I admit I made a mistake. I slept with my boyfriend, because I thought we would be together forever. That does not give anyone the right to treat me like crap. I have feelings, and I do know what is being said about me.
My math teach told me that I had potential, but she says that, as soon as I decided to waste my life getting pregnant, that I ruined my shot. I will not lie: there are nights where I wonder if she was telling me the truth.
Sometimes, I’ll lay awake and cry. I miss being carefree, having fun with my friends. I miss playing sports and going to the mall. I hate not having a life.
But…
The thing is that, when I look at my happy baby, my little man, my handsome son, I know that I made the right choice to keep him. I know that my life will never be the same, not how it was before David was born, but I am willing to accept that. He did not make the choice to come into this world: I chose to keep him. And now that I did, he deserves a chance to have the best life possible.
One girl at the school put an idea into my head. So now I’m looking into getting a GED next year instead of trying to finish high school. If I drop out of school at the age of sixteen and do not get a GED, I will have to wait until I am eighteen to get a driver’s license. I cannot afford to do that, because I have a child. I know that he will have doctor’s appointments; I know that there will be daycare, and grocery store trips that I will have to make. I could try to do this with the public bus system, but the few times I tried it before were too confusing and hectic, and that was without the added bonus of traveling-with-child.
One person’s been on my side this whole time though: my aunt. She wants me to move out to the country and stay with her. What sucks is that my mom says, if I go, she will never speak to me or her sister again.
Sometimes she doesn’t make sense. I really don’t understand why my mom won’t help even a little but is emotionally blackmailing me about going to others do want to help. She wants me to get out, right? She doesn’t want to have to take care of David, and my aunt is willing to help me with that.
It’s not like I’d be taking advantage of my aunt. I would have to work to earn my keep around her home, and still get my GED. The difference was that she is willing to be there for me as moral support. The only thing my mother does right now is give me and David a roof to sleep under. She’s just not there for me. Even when I am upset, she doesn’t comfort me like she used to. Sometimes it makes me feel like my world is tearing me apart.
Lately, more and more, my mother treats me like I have the plague. She is constantly talking about how much I ruined my life.
Does she think I forget that she had me when she was only seventeen?
It makes me wonder if she wishes she hadn’t kept me, if she thinks I am what ruined her life. I always thought that she was happy to have me. Life was tough sometimes, but she always acted like she loved me and worked hard so I had good things. I thought we had an understanding that went beyond this. I thought she’d always be my mom, even when I messed up. But now that I have David, I am really beginning to wonder.
So, there’s only one week before summer break starts. By then, I need to make a decision. Every time I try to talk to my mom about my options, she changes the subject or tells me it’s a bad time. I feel like there will never be a good time with her.
If my mom keeps dodging the subject, I am just going to pack up for David and I and go live with my aunt. At least there I would be able to express what I think or feel without someone running away from the conversation.
It is just sad to think that, after all these years, the woman I have admired and looked up to has turned her back on me.
I would not wish this trouble on anyone. I would not even wish the way my mother has been treating me on my worst enemies. She use to be proud of my accomplishments; now all she cares about is when I am going to schedule for a babysitter, so she knows when someone will be there to care for David. She has not even held David more than two or three times since he was born.
The thing is, even with all of these problems, I don’t want to have to move. I just want my mother to accept that I am David’s mother… and it would be nice if she would start acting like she is his grandmother. It is bad enough his father is nowhere to be found. David deserves people in his life who don’t completely ignore the fact that he exists.
I guess I should start packing my bags. I think I have my decision. Hopefully, someday, my mother will forgive me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Theresa Johnson is a mother and college student. She finds time to write when there are not family and school obligations. When she is not writing, she has her nose in a book or watching good shows and movies. She also loves to find the time to spend chatting with her best friend in Florida.