As is my norm these days, I am starting this with no clue as to where it is going to take us.  I wonder how the “real” writers do it, when they have to plot and plan and write, then re-write.  I just sort of get on here, ramble away, and see where we end up!  The topic de jour: teen pregnancy.  Why do I pick the really big topics?  I think, of course, that is largely in part due to the fact that I have lived through, and worked through, a lot of these issues.  I may only be 43, but in the life experience category, I think I am a much older soul, with a lot of untapped wisdom still to explore, and impart.

I did, what I think a lot of young people do, even now, 28 years later.  I fell in love, and thought that to show my love, I needed to have sex with the guy.  I would never want to classify my relationship with this man, who is a friend still today, as a mistake, because that isn’t at all what I feel about it.  That being said, having sex for the first time at 15, no matter how mature my body was, or my mind and heart felt, I was unprepared.  I had no idea what I was in for, emotionally.  See, in most cases, once you have done the deed with one person, it is highly unlikely you are NOT going to do it with the next, and subsequent person you are involved with.  Such was my case.  I am not a psychologist, of course, so I don’t know the deep seated reasons I felt the need to give myself as young as I did, except it may be simply to say, it was the beginnings of what has continued to today, as the desire to do whatever I can to make the people in my life happy.  I certainly enjoyed what I was doing when I was doing it, but honestly, I had no idea how to please myself, let alone how to get someone else to the point where they could please me.  I was happy and satisfied, only because it was within the context of what I knew. And, what I didn’t know, would become abundantly clear, as years went by.

So flash forward, just a couple of years, and I find myself, on the rebound from one of the only males, to date actually, who dumped my sorry 16 year old ass, and I find myself in a relationship with a man, and I use that term loosely, who is 5 years my senior.  My parents were, of course, unhappy, and convinced he was only dating me for one reason.  Surprise surprise, Mom and Dad were right.  To say that was a doomed relationship, right from the get go, is an understatement.  If I can throw out one, slightly off topic piece of advice here right now, it is to say, always go with your first instinct about a person. My first impression of the guy who would eventually become my first ex-husband, was that he was an arrogant, pushy jerk.  Even his own family told me to stay away, but I was MUCH smarter.  Or so I thought.

Our relationship moved very quickly to a sexual one, in part, because I felt I had to prove myself.  Here was this older guy, and I had to show him I could be as good as the older girls he had been with.  I have always claimed not to be competitive by nature, but I am starting to believe I may have been exhibiting a very competitive streak for a lot of decades!  Hmmm, maybe another topic, for another post, but I digress.

With my first love, we were always very careful and responsible about our use of condoms.  We never went there without, and actually lived through the scare of a broken one, on a particularly heated romp in a field of wildflowers.  Memories….anyway, guess who fell for the “it doesn’t feel as good” line with this experienced “man”?  Yep, I did.  He never used condoms, and I never pushed it.  I had a fairly regular cycle at this point, and we played the old Catholic game, relying on this lovely method.  In hindsight, my parents had had the opportunity to put me on the pill at 14 when I suffered such terrible periods,and refused, so they couldn’t be seen as giving me permission to do the deed.  I never had an open relationship with my parents.  I actually thought I was dying when I had my first period, because I was so young, and had had no information given to me on the topic.  Say what you will, I agree with sex education as early as possible, having lived through that particular nightmare.

Here is where I get entirely speculative, and kind of amusing actually.  I tell people I got pregnant from a horse.  Let me explain.  The March before I turned 18, we were visiting my best-friend at the time, who had a beautiful horse named Sugar.  I don’t class myself as a good rider by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but I could do OK.  After a nice romp on this magnificent  animal, as I was about to dismount, she put her head down to eat some grass, my foot caught in the stirrup, and I ended up sliding down her neck, full force, on to my tail bone, jarring my entire body, and ending up in the emergency room.  I have always, jokingly said that that fall knocked EVERYTHING out of kilter, including my once regular period.  I am sure that is not the case, but a few months later, my life was eternally altered.

So, here is the scenario.  I have sex with my boyfriend the second week of April, and then no period for May, June, and by July, my mother, in discussion with her friend next door, decide I need to see a doctor.  At this point, I am scared.  I had graduated high school, with good grades.  I had been the good girl and come home at 1245 after the prom.  I had a scholarship and acceptance into the nursing program at a hospital in the city.  I was about to start going places, and most likely, would have left the man I was involved with, without too many backward glances, had I gone off to school.  Not to be the case, and I am going to be huge now in my assertion that I have no regrets in where my life has gone, or in the decisions that were about to face me.

I guess it is pretty evident what that trip to see the doctor revealed.  I had just passed my 18th birthday by about 2 weeks, and I was pregnant.  My mother was heartbroken, and we spent that first night at my grandparents’ house, because she didn’t want to deal with the knowledge alone.  My Dad was away, and due to return the following weekend.  The scene that ensued when he was told was scary, and I still live today with some of the things he said to me that day.  I won’t go into them, because he was hurt and scared and angry.  I don’t blame him for one second for anything.  He watched all his hopes and dreams for me vanish in that instant.  It took him awhile to form new ones for me, and with me.

So, I have the knowledge at this point, and people could ask me, if I weighed my options.  For me, honestly, there was only one option.  I would never have given a part of me away, to a stranger to raise.  I was almost 3 months along at this point, and a doctor would not have done the unthinkable.  I have strong views on abortion.  Anyone considering one should look at my beautiful grandson.  He wouldn’t exist if I had gone that route, which I never even gave one mil-second of thought.  I may be entirely politically incorrect and out of touch with my opinions on the abortion issue, but I don’t believe there is ever an acceptable reason for one.  There are too many childless, good people, in this world, dying to be parents, for abortion to be the correct way to go.  I have heard all the arguments, about rape and illness, but I could never end a pregnancy.  I have no disrespect for anyone who has chosen to do that.  It is totally their choice, just never ever mine.  I know, had I not been as far along as I was, my father, and he gets very emotional any time he thinks of this now, but he would have tried to sway me in that direction.  You know, my Dad cried when my Mom told him,the only time she had seen him cry to that point in their 19 years together.  He could cry now, even imagining our lives without my son, and his family.

I see young girls who are pregnant even now, and I think, oh that poor child.  I was that poor child, and I survived, and thrived.  I think the major difference in my life, was the support I had from my family.  So many of the young mothers out there don’t have that.  It took my father all of a weekend to realize, he was going to be a grandfather, and that was a huge new chapter in his life too.  I wish that every young girl who came home with this news, had some kind of support system.  I could not have done without mine.  My parents were amazing, and have an incredible relationship with my son.

I could go into a huge long list right now of the trials and tribulations of being a young, unmarried, living at home, mother, but I won’t just now.  That will, I am sure, be a story for another day.  I have a lot to say on this particular subject, believe me.  I have certainly gone on more than usual today.  I will leave you with one reiteration.  I would not change one single thing about my life to this point.  One change of one circumstance, and I would not be the person I am, nor would I have the people in my life, who all mean so much to me.  Starting young having children, was never my intention, but has had far more benefits than I could ever have dreamed.  I am only 43, my kids are grown, married, happy, and filling my life with the joys my parents experienced, as grandparents.  I have tried to capture that in previous posts, but it bears repeating.  There is nothing in life that can compare to the joy grandchildren bring to my life.