DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

The Double Lined Life

 

She remembered the mere utterance of the words she told her boyfriend for the very first time. She was only 15 years old, in love, a B average student in school, had a part time job at a local retail store, not a care in the world. She was living her life like any normal teenager would. Hanging out with friends, going partying, having fun, etc. But one trip to the doctor changed her life forever.

 

Sam was sexually active; and had been since she was a sophomore in high school. Like a portrait in her mind, she could vividly recap the image of the first guy she had slept with. He was tall, 5"11, strapping, light skin, brazilian and black, basketball player. He was well known throughout  the school and even more popular with the ladies. When Sam was about 8 years old, he and her had met through the comradeship of their fathers. Their fathers were best friends in college back then. Like all little kids would, Sam and the guy hated each other but that changed when she reached the minor age of 12. They became fond of each other and before she reached 13 they had started dating. For the first time in her life, Sam felt happiness, joy, and adoration. She was head over heels in love with this guy, and couldn't quite understand how her hatred and animosity towards him could turn into something so beautiful and venerating. After two and a half years of kissing, touching, words of love, she thought it was time to give him all of her. She equated his touch with specialness, his kisses with love, and on her 15th birthday, he took her virginity.

 

It was a sunlit afternoon and she could remember not getting her period. "No biggie" Sam said as she thought she was just late. Unfortunate for her, one day turned into a week, and that week turned into weeks. She began to panic, and as she thought of what to do next, she went to the pharmacy and got not one, but two pregnancy tests. Carefully following the instructions directed on the box, Sam did as directed. The tests came back negative. She immediately felt relieved. About a week later, she went to the doctor to get her regular monthly check up and when the doc did blood work, results showed that she was in fact pregnant. At that instance, her heart stopped beating. Her heart was in her throat, her pulse began to race, and her my stomach dropped. She went into a deep trance, over speculating the consequences of what she had done. She was afraid, lost, and without hope.

 

Not Your Typical Teenage Life

 

After finding out the dreadful news that she was pregnant, she became hesitant about telling her boyfriend. She was indeed even more scared about her parents finding out. She knew she couldn't do it all on her own so that same day, she built up the courage to tell her boyfriend. After breaking the news to him, she felt a sense of relief and comfort. He took the news very well and decided that he wanted to keep it. However, in the back of her mind, she begged to differ but her love for him grew even more. She had dodged one bullet of him deciding otherwise. But as time progressed and her once flat stomach began to protrude, reality struck. In avoidance of her family finding out, she avoided any sort of physical contact with her parents. Since she was a tall, light skinned, skinny, girl, with a model like body, it was easy for anyone to notice. She wore big shirts around the house and everywhere she went. She even pretended to be sick most of the time and ate a lot on purpose so her parents would simply draw the conclusion that she was just getting fat.

 

Unexpectedly, one day, Sam's deceitful act of pretending to be sick ultimately backfired on her. She grew ill due to her iron being low and was admitted to the hospital. Unfortunate for her, she was admitted to the same hospital her moms worked at. As she was the daughter of one the nurses there, Sam proclaimed, "she found out when she received my paperwork", thus finding out there were indeedly more to the situation. Her only daughter was pregnant. The one day Sam hoped relentlessly would never come to pass, shone its light. Her mom looked at her, nervous and numb, with a sense of shame and disappointment on her face. She was furious, "she was mad...really mad" at Sam for the careless mistake she had made and for throwing her life away. And up to this day, she still reminds Sam of the past as "she probably still ain't get over it by now".

 

It all seemed disbelieving at first, but the bigger Sam got, the more she hated being pregnant. For her, the whole pregnancy experience was "crazy" because she "tried to hide it the whole time" she was pregnant. The bigger her stomach got, and the heavier her boobs got, the more insecure and unattractive she felt. As she looked in the mirror, all she saw was a vivid reflection of a 140 pounds of nothing but "fat, fragile, carrying a big load". Soon enough, the father-to-be drifted apart. When she was about 3 months pregnant, her boyfriend went away to play college ball, and during his freshman year there, he cheated on her. Sam was 7-8 months then, and being that she was near to giving birth, she immediately felt betrayed and hurt, but on a rush of hormones, adrenaline and a fantasy of what could be, Sam dung on the incessant notion that they could make it work.

 

Balancing The Scale

 

It hadn't hit either of them until Sam began to show, that the reality of the situation was going to be a permanent one. Once there were valuable proof and evidence that she and the father-to-be were going to be parents, it dawned on him that he was in fact going to be a dad, and in defense, he retaliated. By the time their baby was conceived, a handsome baby boy was welcomed into this world, Sam and the baby's father relationship had already irretrievably been diminished.

 

As the brightest stars in the sky came falling down, and she was walking the edge, Sam had never realized the insistence and constraint that parenthood would bring. She was faced with the perplexity of “having to adjust to two lives at one time...having to try to balance both...with limited help from [her] parents”. But why is that?  In a riveting article “What We Need to Know to Help the Teenage Parent”, Honig, A. S. (1978), outlines the essential and eminent attributes an individual could use to help a teenage parent as they try to unravel the life of being a mother.

 

Trying “to make everything work” wasn’t an easy task but once her son was here, Sam proclaimed that he thought her to be more “independent...responsible...and to work harder”. She continued to go to school despite the “stereotypes” of her being a teen mom and kept her head up despite all the tension she was provoked by. As the tension and stress from having the baby escalated, it dawned on Sam, that her son was not a doll she could put on the shelf until she felt like playing with him again. He was a living being who soaked up everything she did like a wet sponge and learned from it. He had demands and needs, and it was her responsibility to take care of them. Sam developed an “everyday routine”, as she called it, where she professed that she would “take him to the daycare, then go to school”.


Increased Motivation To Do Well

 

In her dire motivation and dedication to be a better person for herself and her son, Sam “cut out all the partying” as she came to the acknowledgment that her teen years where over. Even though it was overbearing at times, Sam managed. Her baby’s father came by frequently, though with each encounter, they became quite volatile towards each other. Communication between them both was to a minimum, but when they spoke it was pretty normal as the convosations were kept consistent and only about their son.

 

Looking back at the past two years, Sam came to the avowal, that she has matured and is still thriving right alongside her beautiful son. She indicated that,

“From then to now, I have matured greatly, I have made more wise decisions...I’ve matured. I became a better person for myself...I’m very much more responsible and I find that I became much more independent from having a child because I don’t depend on my parents for anything at the moment...I do everything on my own”

 

Being a teen mother was the most impeding, and obscure job for Sam, but for the most part, it was undeniably rewarding and edifying. She had no regrets, but wished things had happened at a later date in life, but with the same outcome. Sam feels successful in all of her life’s endeavours but knows that the road is still long, and there will be obstacles that she will have to face. But as of this very moment, she enunciates that

“Right now as a teen mother my life is going great...it’s better than I expected it to be...I graduated High school, I’m in college...I go to a college I love and enjoy...studying what I always wanted to study, while taking care of my son at the same time”.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
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Double Lined Life by https://johnjay.digication.com/KatressiaBrathwaite/Findings_Epage is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at https://johnjay.digication.com/KatressiaBrathwaite.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.