My life was perfect. I had just got my license; my parents gave me a black Mercedes CLK 550 for my birthday a couple months ago. I would drive all my friends around in it, blast our girly pop music, and get waved at by all the cute guys. I guess you could say I was pretty popular, and not to be cocky, but I guess I could say I was considered to be totally gorgeous by my fellow peers and other people goers. I have a lot of friends, but I have this group of girls I consider VIP’s. There are five of them—Courtney, Sarah, Kristen, Ashley and Hilary. They were my best friends and they were so loyal to me.
I guess you could say I was the leader of the pack. I drove them to the tanning salon, or to get our nails done at the spa, and sometimes I would invite them to go to Greece with my family for spring break if they were really lucky. My friends are really pretty too. I had the hottest boyfriend in school, his name is Jake Headings. He is a football jock; he is popular and amazing in every way. We had been going out for about a steady eight months. I would wake up in the morning, and the birds would always be singing and the sun was always shining, even if it was a dark, cloudy day in other people’s eyes. I would wake up in my comfortable king-sized bed with my ultra expensive Juicy Couture bed sheets with Egyptian cotton. My mom would gently wake me to the glorious Sunday mornings for church. I’m pretty sure I was the favorite of the family. My house was basically a mansion to say the least. It was decked with beautiful, classic Christmas lights, and expensive vases and solid gold picture frames laid on table tops for decoration. Beautiful paintings worth thousands spiced up my richly painted, endless hallways. I hate to be bold, but it’s the truth. My life was perfect.
Oddly, I woke up this morning, rather early, and things felt different… I did not feel the sun glistening upon what was now my acne-covered face, I didn’t hear the birds singing their beautiful songs, and my mom comes in screaming at me, startling me from my lousy sleep. I feel ugly, horrid, fat and swollen. I feel sick, like I’m going to vomit all over my ruined Juicy Couture sheets that I had puked on previously. I feel this empty feeling, like half of my heart is ripped out, and I live in a dark hole that no one can pull me out of. It’s a feeling of a mental ache, or a feeling that pries tears out of the corners of my eyes, one by one. I had never experienced a feeling so horrid until now. I guess this what the dreaded feeling that people like to call “lonely.” My friends went to the mall without me for their weekly shopping spree once again and I had not gotten a good morning text from my boyfriend in what had felt like months. Oh wait, it was months… What boyfriend? My Mercedes had been sold for cash, because I had to be this thing called “responsible” for myself due to the fact that I was about to become a sixteen year old mommy.
As slow as a slug, I stood up from my bed, crawled out of my dark room, with my ankles swollen and my soul depressed. I move at a snail's pace to the bathroom to puke only six times. It was more like I moved at a pace of a snail getting salt poured on it on a hot summer night. I was a snail that wanted to die faster because I was being rained on with torture. After that dirty feeling that I was now used to after seven months of being pregnant, I took a semi-warm shower and brushed my teeth. I was restricted from having my showering water being too hot because apparently it could harm the fetus inside my non-fully developed body. My morning sickness was slightly weird. It was okay though, because my doctor told me that everyone’s morning sickness can be different. I did not get mine until last month, unlike others who get morning sickness the first month. In the mornings, or whenever I take the slightest glimpse or whiff of food, I have the sudden urge to puke. It was pretty embarrassing. I then put on my ugly motherhood clothes that I had to buy myself. I had a maternity outfit for every occasion: floral dresses for the beach, sweatpants for the gym, jeans for casual things, and special stretchy khaki pants for work. They weren’t the closest thing to couture…I didn’t have much of my own money because my mom snubbed me and refused to pay for me at all anymore. I might as well be a bum on the streets of Philadelphia. My mom highly suggested for me to get this thing called a “job.” It, to this day, is awful! I have to work in the dry cleaners. I could not even get a well paying job at the restaurants where I could be a waitress and get tipped because I could puke all over the food. I could not go to school anymore, so I had to be tutored daily, which is where I was headed. I got up and went to my tutor for three long, painstaking hours. I luckily had not puked during my tutoring session.
Then I had to go to work at the dry cleaners down the street. I had to get a job close by so I could walk, because I could not drive for I had sold my car for money. Yeah, I had to do it all by myself. Jake stopped all communications with me. He wanted to help, but his parents sent him to boarding school to keep him as far away from me as possible. I guessed that he had to pay child support, but it hurt so bad to know I was stuck with a kid for the rest of my life without a father. It was not exactly the ultimate all-American family dream. I figured that he would never come back, I just knew it. He begged me to get an abortion when we first found out about it, but I felt so guilty because it was my own fault for not being responsible. I couldn’t end this baby’s life. I cried every day and I would rub my belly to comfort the baby and myself.
“You better feel lucky I do all this for you. You spoiled baby…” I would always whisper and giggle to myself.
I tended to talk to my belly a lot. Is that weird? I had no one else to talk to.
I walked to work among the busy street, where cars would slow down from 35 MPH to 10 MPH and people would be rubber necking to look at my young face but oh so pregnant body figure. My belly grew faster day by day. I was already rounded. At work, most people stared and said nothing. Don’t think I didn’t see the little eye brow raises or dirty looks that people would sneak behind my back. I mean I got a few pity hugs and young ladies told me to be strong. Men stared at me in disgust, and so did old ladies. It’s not exactly the old-fashion way I guess. In this society, pregnant teens are not okay. This is a small town where everyone knows each other’s business. One woman named Mrs. Hogart gave me dirty looks as she washed her clothes in the washing machine. When she finished her load of laundry and paid, she built up the nerve to tell me I had the attitude of a prostitute. That was great—just what I needed to hear! After pricking my fingers with sewing pins in that awful workplace, I had to walk back home in the agonizing wind chilled air as more people stared at me while they drove by. With my scarf wrapped over my face up to my eyes to disguise myself, I walked home to get nagged at by my not-so-friendly mother. I felt bad because she was so ashamed of me. She was not proud of me because I dropped out of a top private school to portray a trashy, pregnant teen. The dreams she had for me were crushed like an empty soda can, and she told me that every single day. She wasn’t very supportive of me and my decisions, no matter how hard I tried to make her happy again. It made me mad that I had to be the one to make her happy, but I was the one who needed to be cheered up because the baby was in my belly.
It was about 5:00 PM, and no one was around. That “lonely” feeling came back. It was really always there, but the feeling intensified when I was home alone in the dark with no one to talk to. I cooked myself dinner. I threw up, so I lost my appetite to eat the spaghetti and garlic bread that I had made. After dinner, I had no homework to do because I didn’t go to school, and I had no friends to call on the telephone. I carefully sat on my computer chair, and sat delicately, being careful on my baby, and looked at the computer. Slightly eager for the attention I knew deep inside I would not receive like the old days, but no one instant messaged me. I did get a Facebook message calling me “dirty whore,” though. That wasn’t so fun. That night I deleted my Facebook with no regret because I got nothing but negative feedback. I spent my night watching the health channel on how women gave birth, because I was terrified to do it. I curled up in a ball on my tan leather couch in horror as I watched women screaming for their lives in extreme pain, with an IV in their hand, and a husband’s hand to squeeze for stress release and comfort. I had to learn everything I could, and it was surely mortifying—especially because I had no one’s hand to squeeze for when it was my turn to go into labor. I fell asleep early on my left side. That was what my doctor told me to do so I would not crush my only friend inside my belly. It was another long, uncomfortable, miserable sleep starting at 8:30 PM. My life sucked.
I woke up by a soft touch of a hand stroking my back. I was lying on my stomach! I couldn’t do that! I would crush the baby! I shot up, with the sun shining in my blue eyes. I heard something sweet. I recognized the sound. It was the birds outside my window singing my favorite tunes. I turn to the side and there I saw a man. It was Jake. He looked older, but handsome as always, more broad, with his big smile and a good morning kiss prepared on his lips for my left cheek. I felt relived. After college, my hero, my love, came back into my life. I know he wasn’t there to hold my hand during labor, but he was holding my hand now. The loneliness was gone. I had his hand in mine. I had a friend. I had finally got what I wanted all along. Who needs fake VIP friends and a Mercedes when you have Jake, baby Robby, and I in a whole new world? We were a united family, and I realized that was all I ever needed in life—not money, but love.