Part 7

Wow.

That is pretty much all I can come up with when I think back on the time of being pregnant and getting married and leaving everything and everyone I ever knew, all at the age of (just barely) 19.

It was ROUGH.

So, I had started living in my car just before I found out I was knocked up. Not long after that, I asked some friends in Athens if I could maybe stay with them for a little bit.

Side note: Athens, Georgia, for those who do not know, is the home of the Georgia Bulldogs!!! It is just under two hours from Peachtree City, where I am from. The University of Georgia is a tradition-riddled Georgia institution of education and football!!! There are cheerleaders and frat boys and beer all over the place!!! I hated it there!!!

I really didn’t like it there, but I was living in my car, and it was cold outside. Athens was the only place I knew people who didn’t live with their parents. So that’s where I went.

I had a friend I had visited there not long before, and I called her up and asked if I could stay at her place. She said, “sure,” but to keep in mind that her entire apartment was about 200 sq. feet, and another friend of ours had also moved in since I had visited.

I was like, whatever – heat, warm water, a real door that locks – I’m there! I had all of my shit in the back of my car, so there wasn’t need for packing or anything. I headed up there pretty easily, and carved out a space for myself on the floor of the tiny living room of the apartment.

I put all of my shit that was in my car into the kitchen cabinets. They were empty – my friends were not into kitchen/cooking type stuff. The kitchen cabinets were the only space in the apartment that was not already being used. It worked out nicely.

I got a job at a gas station in Athens. I liked the people I worked with, I got along with my roommates – it was going well. I hadn’t been doing any meth or anything because I didn’t have any, and my dealer/boyfriend was back in Peachtree City. I was actually pretty content to just sleep a lot at that time, which would make much more sense when I found out I was pregnant.

I was there for about a week and went back down to Peachtree City to visit the dealer/boyfriend. I crashed on the couch at his parents’ house for the night, and I was there when I realized I had not had my period in a while. I started freaking out, and had to go get a pregnancy test immediately. It was like one a.m. or something, and he and I went to the 24-hour grocery and got a test.

I took the test in one of the bathrooms in his parents’ house – that’s where he lived at the time. A little line showed up on the results window of the pee stick, but it was very, very faint. He and I decided that meant it was negative.

He went to sleep – not so much for me. I kept thinking about that faint line. After it got light out, I got up and went out front to my car. I had left all of the packaging and stuff from the preggers test in the car so that his parents wouldn’t find the remnants in their trash and freak out.

I sat in my car and found the giant, tissue-thin piece of paper that folded down to business card size and that contained all of the directions and information about the test. This piece of paper indicated that even the very faintest of lines on the results window indicated a positive result.

I don’t really remember what I did then. I do know I went to a gas station by myself and got another test there – I didn’t have much money and had to get a cheap one, which meant that I basically had to do a science experiment with my pee in order to find out if I actually was pregnant.

I conducted the experiment in the bathroom of the gas station, and there figured out that I was, most certainly, knocked up.

The baby’s daddy was inexplicably delighted with the news. I was just dumbfounded – keep in mind that I was still only 18 and not in the best place a person can be in their life. I did feel, though, that the first order of business would be to get the baby’s daddy’s ass out of town before my dad found out about the whole impregnation-of-his-daughter thing.

When my sister and I were younger, we went on a double date. When the boys arrived to pick us up, my dad had them come into our kitchen and sit down at the counter. Then he took out a very large knife and started talking about “gonads.”

So, yeah – I was pretty sure my dad would kill the baby’s daddy.

The baby’s daddy moved up to Athens with me. We both slept on the floor in the tiny apartment for about a week or so, and then my friend arranged for a bigger place in the complex. We all moved upstairs into a three bedroom, two-bathroom apartment – it was like moving into a mansion!

By the time I was about two months pregnant, my friend, our other friend, me and the baby’s daddy lived in the three bedroom. Then another friend hooked up with one of the first friends, and there it was – two couples and one single all living in this tiny apartment.

We got along so well!!! It was actually quite a nice arrangement. The other girls (the first two friends) would go to class, the baby’s daddy would go to work, and me and my other friend (the new boyfriend of one of the first friends) would wake up around noon and watch Melrose Place re-runs.

I would eat a big bowl of cereal, go puke my guts out, and then my Melrose Place friend would giggle at me. Every day, the same routine – wake up, watch TV, eat, puke, and then get giggled at. It was actually kind of a bonding experience – this guy and I had known each other for a long time before that, and we are still friends today.

I would head off to work at the gas station in the early afternoon, and as it worked out, the five of us hardly ever saw each other. It was rare when all five of us were in the apartment at the same time – this was probably integral to us getting along so well. Regardless, I remember the time fondly – it was kind of a limbo between the realities of getting pregnant and having to grow up and do something about it.

Eventually I told the baby’s daddy that I thought we should get married. I had initially resisted doing this, because I didn’t want to get married just because I was pregnant. However, my religious upbringing brought me around to the conclusion that marriage would be the best thing, if not for us, then for the baby.

He said ok. I called my mom and told her that I was getting married. She said, “why?” I said, “because I’m pregnant.” She said, “I’m going to have to call you back.”

It was one of the single-most awkward moments of my life. It sucked.

So anyway, since I said I thought we should get married, the baby’s daddy was like, ok, and then we got married. It was two weeks to the day after I turned 19, and three weeks to the day after he turned 21. He got accepted to a school in Charleston, S.C., and we packed up our shit and moved.

Whew! I’m tired! To be continued!