my sweetest downfall.

Fourteen months and ten days ago today I concieved the little boy sitting in my lap attempting to suck on my arm. Fourteen months and ten days ago I was careless, I thought I was in love, but in reality I was in love with the idea of love because I always felt like it slipped out of my fingers... and maybe my son would be the solution. Maybe if I kept him instead of putting him up for adoption or some of the otrher harsher suggestions, then I would really get that love I so desperately saught.

Having a baby does not make that childs father love you or want to stay with you. He can still pack up his shit one day and kiss your forehead and say so-long. More than likely he will do it at some point regaurdless of what age or circumstance, because being a parent is a full time job. Being a parent doesn't pay well. It sure as hell is dirty and exhausting, and not all people are cut out for it.

Women are left with no options. We could never just up and leave our children, those precious things that grew from a single sperm into a writhing fetus, sitting on our bladders and keeping us up at night. We brought life into that crying infant, even if every fiber in us wanted to quit we woudl never just walk away.... at least not any reasonable woman of sound mind.

I was devistated when just another fight turned into just another break up, except this one permanent because he finally stopped loving me. I wanted to lay on the floor surrounded by the piles of clothes in the bedroom I used to call ours and melt. I wanted to fade into nothingness, to die. I kept thinking I didnt deserve happiness, that my baby boy crying in the next room would be better off without the "crazy bitch" his father thinks I am.

And then I hung up the phone, walked into the living room, and picked him up. He belched loudly and his crying stopped and he looked at me with these beautiful wide blue eyes, dependant on me and loving me purely because he never knew not to. He is my sweetest downfall. I gave up so much to have him, to raise him now is a constant struggle as I learn how to survive in single-parent-ville. But there is a love there that cant be taken away. That is eternal because we are part of the same life, the same blood. He looks at me and i know I will never feel like I am completely alone again.

He gives me purpose, makes me want to be better and want to be happy. Noah, my fourteen month and ten day miracle, has saved me. In every way a teenage girl can be saved. I love him more every minute, even when he's puking on me and wont stop screaming, I couldn't imagine my world without his love and so I will never give up.

Sayit it vs. Meaning it.

Love is a complex emotion with many differnt ideas and concepts. I love my car, I love that hat, tommy loves jane.... I love you. We say it like any other common word out there, throwing it around without thought or time or care as to what it really means.

Love is the hardest emotion because it doesnt just start or end. It builds gradually, sometimes smoldering in your soul until it explodes in this passion, sometimes it lays dormant then one day you feel it. The hardest party about love is that once you feel it, you will probably always have a piece of you feeling it until the day you die.

Love is affection meets generosity meets happiness and peace. Love is kisses and hand holding and smiles even when that person isn't around and the meere thought of them has presented itself to your brain filling you with emotion. Love is withough lust, yet with it at the same tiem. Love is eternal sunshine, its everything and yet a vast emptiness of longing.

You can say "I love her.." or "I love you..." until your face turns blue, and hell you might actually convince yourself to believe it. But love is not the word. Love is the promise. love is the light and the stars and the wind in the trees. Its freedom and yet an undeniable bond.

When I say it I always mean it and yet, when he says it to me I dont think he was ever entirtely sure he meant it. Maybe he doesnt know what love is yet, maybe he thinks he needs to be in love in order to feel complete.... maybe he never loved me at all and was killing time. Just sayign those words because he knocked up some complete stranger and the guilt and pain of losing his options was wearing into him.

The greatest part is that because I actually loved, I am free. I felt the hurt in my chest and yet something has pulled me through. I think the knowledge that love is never ending. That you have infinite amounts of it to give and although it hurts it is also a blessing.

Ive met this guy who makes my mistakes seem childish. Who lights up my day just by talkign to me, just by asking me how I am and texting me until I fall asleep at night. I can really see something there with him, I can see myself in bed with him watching movies and going out on dates. I can see noah loving him and buying his daughter clothes.... i can really invision it. And THAT is the power of love.

the power to hope for the future.

"Everything happens for a reason"... huh.

I can't explain this feeling. Its like the universe and god and all the people around me have finally alligned in a way that has shown me that there is a power greater than just mu will that is propolling me along my path. I was so sad, so hurt that he would cheat on me, say he loved me and just leave me and his son to fend for ourselves. But then I realized, this was the universe at its best.

Everythign happens for a reason is so easy to say, so easy to tell otehrs you believe in it. But nothing like yesterday or today has shown me just how true that saying is in life. The timing can be wrong, but meaningful. You can mess up with some guy and get a beautiful gift of a wonderful son out of it like I did, and then reconnect with an old friend and discover that maybe you were meant to be with him all along. That that experience was life making you stronger, in my case, life giving me what I needed to grow up and see the beauty in the world: Noah.

And yeah, just like freshman year of highschool I got cheated on and my heart broken and I moped around thinking it was all my fault and whatever would I do without him. Just like being fourteen again. But I am not fourteen. And I see now that the cosmic divinity of all this torment was to show me that there are good guys out there who have wanted to be with me for me, not for the sex or what they could get out of me, buut because in their eyes I am remarkable. Because in their eyes I am a potential path to happiness....

I always asked myself with the father of my child "why is love so hard? Is it meant ot be this way?" and then I realized, love is not supposed to be endless fights. It isnt supposed to be being so afriad to be without that person that you'd rather be miserable with them than lose them. But this is for the sake of both of our happiness. And I see that so clearly now.

Everythign happens for a reason. Everything. Even the bad.

Being Cheated.

It's been a while. Like I don't know where to start, I'm hesitating with my trembling fingers while I attempt to sort out the words I think I want to type down about all of this. A whole year that passed by, coming with its ups and downs and making me see that there was life after hurt, and that that life could be wonderful. Almost surreal. Like in my life I could deserve any actual, substantial happiness.

Just once I thought, instead of that glimpse into the "could-be-yours", I was going to reach out and grasp it tightly in my hands. I know I am not perfect. I know I did things that I regret because I am a human, I am a woman, and my thoughts are governed by my emotions. What I thought may have been best for a minute was not actually best in the long run... or what I thought was actually real was just a cheap illusion of happiness. Again.

I didn't know you very well in the beginning... there was something about you that intrigues me. I thought there was more to you than the surface of messy brown hair and dark brown eyes. More than the scars on your arm or the mask you put up to hide the reasons you made those scars. I wanted to be inside that jumble of human soul, I wanted, for the first time in a long time, to be human enough to be in love. And you were it. I knew it. That kiss and those butterflies and that reckless abandon in which I allowed myself to drown.

How could it happen, a chance meeting with a stranger, would throw me into this path of young mother and heartbroken lover. Two weeks, that was it, and you were hooked on me. It was like we had been together years in those days, and I was so afraid. I couldn't let another man in, I couldn't feel the ripping in my chest that I feel now as I write this... not again. I ended it. And yet some cosmic force kept us twined together... like it knew that there was something of yours inside my belly long before either of us did...

An accident and a blessing, a stomach growing every day... much like the love and the hard times and the worry and the anxiety. And more than anything the beautiful chaos. I got to know things about you... your family and your past, how Emily Allen broke your heart for three years and you carved her initials in your arm. The way you turn subtitles on movies and are so self conscious of your curly hair.

We became family, pregnant and grump and dysfunctional family but we had a routine. I would get scared or hurt, and I would dump you. And eventually, be it two hours or a couple of days, I was begging for you to come back because I missed everything about you, even your obnoxious honesty. And then, as Christmas rounded the corner and our families had come to know each of us and accept us... you pulled out that ring.

That one I had said I liked so much from Fred Myer, that you had secretly been saving up for so that you could get down on one knee in the middle of the night, me pregnant and in your t-shirt sitting on a bar stool in our bathroom wondering what you were so nervous about, and propose marriage. Ask me to be yours forever. Profess that you loved me truly and honestly...

But what is honesty anyways? I mean, I expect you felt it in that moment, and thought you wanted it for us, to raise Noah together in that white picket fence life we never had as kids... but where was the effort? Noah was born and it was like he took everything I loved in you and drained you of everything you used to be.

Instead of that brilliant, stimulating man I waited on every night and loved to be seen with, you were a shell. Living a lie. I dont know why. I dont know if it was me or if it was something else, the pressure of being a full time parent or the expectations or the face that I got so caught up in being a mother I neglected your needs and forgot that I was supposed to be the one you could lean on... But you stopped.

Stopped coming home, stopped saying that you loved me out loud. Pretty soon you werent even there. You were gone even when you were laying next to me in bed. I felt alone, like all the love we built was drained and we were just playing house... badly. All I wanted was to dump you like i did in the beginning so we could both realise how badly we actually needed and wanted to be together... that was how it always used to go. I thought I would tell you to go, and you would, and then I would call you crying and you would come running back and we would be perfect, we would fix our problems and get married in august... be a halmark family. But that was not how it went this time.

This time you met her. This time you really took the break as the end, as a release from the bonds of adult life and the girl you thought you maybe loved once upon a time and then impregnated. Oops. And she has set you free. She makes it so you dont have to think about me. So you can be yourself again and not have to buy or change diapers. So you can party or smoke or just sit at ease without having any wieght on your shoulders. I am not her.

I want to be happy for you. But I'm not. I want to say its for the best but all I can think about is how everything I ever did I did because I didnt know what else to do, I just wanted you and me... to be okay. I tried in the only fashion I knew how, scarred and running around aimlessly trying to avoid the reality of how serious our situation was. I wasn't ready either. I put that on you. But when I needed you, you went running into her brown eyes. That mystery girl who you love more than you have ever loved. Already. After three weeks.

Being cheated is like being stabbed with a hot knife then nursed back to health only to be stabbed again. It burns and rips apart all fabric of your soul, shreds your heart and leaves that breathless, throbbing sensation. You can't breath, all you can do is think about the pain... a million regrets and what-if's poolign up in your brain making you think that you will never feel happiness again. Never feel normal, only feeling the jealousy of the one you loved jumping right into another relationship and loving your openly more than he loved you... The fear that you were never good enough... the anxiety of winding up alone because even the father of your child cheated you out of the family he always claimed he wanted... cheated on you as easy as he told you he wanted to get back together just to sleep with you...

Being cheated is like burning alive. I just have to let it burn until I feel nothing, again, and hope that there is some shred left in me to be strong enough to clean up your mess one last time and grow stronger there by.