Ain't Got No Time for That

This time last year I was deep in the throes of hyperemesis gravidarum. I will openly admit I was not a happy camper.  There were days I could not even keep down the water that my mother was busily providing me, on doctor’s orders.  I was pregnant, it was not planned, and I was so far no good at being pregnant.

Not 100%

You could tell from about five minutes after conception that I was pregnant.  I told myself I was just a bit bloated, after all I had been on the pill for years, used two back up methods, and my boyfriend at the time swore on a stack of Bibles he had, had a vasectomy.  Turns out that God should have smote him right there because he did not ever so much as even think of having a vasectomy, but that’s not the tale for today. The point is that three reliable forms of birth control all failed and all at once. I am suddenly the cautionary tale that all sex education teachers tell you, at least down here in the American South where abstinence only sex ed is still the norm. I am a walking, talking, breathing, and eating, example that birth control can and will fail you sometimes…. And sometimes you have to just roll with it. It turns out to be the greatest thing to ever happen to you. Mind you I was 35 and pregnant, not 15 and pregnant, but I was still had no business being pregnant in the first place.

Might need medication. 

My boyfriend at the time and I had known each other for many years.  Dating was at first easy and fun. Then it started to change…. He started telling me he was the President of a Motorcycle Club.  Being the trusting soul that I am, at first I thought he meant a group of middle aged guys who ride around on Sunday afternoons together.  I shrugged it off.  I would tease him, and ask him if he was a “T-Bird” and if so did that make me a “Pink Lady”. He never found my jokes, I’ve got so many, very funny. Slowly he started filling me in on little details about this club of his, it was all so counter to the person I knew him to be, but I let him tell me what he wanted to and above all I just tried to listen to him. His stories kept getting more and more extreme, violent even.  I truly began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. The adventures he described became scary to me, but here I was pregnant with nowhere to go and desperately wanting to make it work because I was having his baby.  This just was not how I had always pictured having a family.

Jack, as I will call him here short of Jack Shit for Brains, was not the guy I grew up with anymore.  In fact, I had come to notice he was a heavy drinker, highly impulsive, lazy, selfish, and very dishonest. When he finally came right out and said to me that his “MC” was known as the Outlaws, (a VERY real club, just not for Jack) and not at all what I had envisioned originally.  This was a biker gang, for lack of a better term… How in the hell did I find myself dating the president of a biker gang?! Especially since I had never even seen him on a damn bike? He wouldn’t show me this patch that he always talked about, said something about it being only for those involved and since I did not want to be his “Old Lady” I had no business looking at it.  After one particularly exhausting week and the latest saga I recall just looking at him and saying “…but your grandfather is a deacon in the church!”  How much more Southern can I be? My disbelief in his being able to participate with this was measured against the fact that his grandfather was a church elder.  Stars and garters I must have been losing it. 

can you say wannabe?

As it turned out his entire tale and all of the drama was a lie.  Every. Single. Word. I will tell more details on that at another time, but suffice it to say Jack was acting out/playing pretend/delusional.  He did not limit these stories to just me or just him, every person in his life was somehow included in ways that kept him the center of everything. Literally every person he knew or I met was somehow connected to this club, which is real it just is not real for him.  Every sleepless night I endured because he said we were on “lock down”, the pain and weight of carrying his drama, the isolation of feeling too afraid to share it with my family were all so he could live life vicariously through his favorite television show, Sons of Anarchy.  I had never seen the show, and he fed me the plot line of the show as though it was his real life and he was the lead character.  I’ve since seen the show and I cannot understand why anyone would want to even pretend that was their life!

I was put on bed rest for preeclampsia at about 30 weeks or so.  He was quick to anger to begin with but being put on bed rest and not being allowed to leave the house sent him right over the edge.  Jack was livid that I would not be able to come over and stay with him for the time being.  During the whole pregnancy he had been talking about me moving in with Baby Girl, and we could all be a family with his other two kids. Around Valentine’s Day I got one last phone call from him.  He refused to come to my house because I am living with my parents and he did not want them around, “like we are children.”  Clearly my family knows that their pregnant daughter is no longer a little girl… but whatever.  At the time I had no idea I would not ever hear from him again, but my gut told me for quite some time that we were not alone in this twosome.  That this was more than a two-person relationship, and I do not mean the baby.  That last night he told me he loved me, he loved BG, and he would come see me the next day or perhaps the following day.  I never heard from him again. 

Jack has yet to even call to see if Baby Girl has arrived or if I need so much as a box of wipes or diapers. As I write this she is five months old.  He has never laid physical eyes on my daughter, though the rumor mill suggests he has seen a few pictures. One day she will ask about him and I hope I’m able to tell her nicer things about her “donor” but as it stands now I have nothing really good to tell her.  More than anything I wish I had provided a better father for her than I did.  That’s my failing…. But one day he will wake up, likely at the bottom of some bottle and realize he has missed out on the most amazing things.  Her first giggle was just as clear and light and magical as you might imagine.  BG’s first smile was the best thing I’d seen since they held her up for me to see.  She is the most beautiful little girl and making strides and changes every day.  These are moments he will never get back, moments that are

not my kid. 

as fluid as a stream and once passed they do not come back by.  His threats no longer keep me awake at night.

He will have his second baby of 2016 in November (you can do the math), this time a boy, with a girl that by marriage is his cousin.  They are not blood related so I hear they are pretty insistent they are not cousins, but everyone says they grew up knowing each other as cousins… I guess he is living some other show now? I do not know and I do not want to.  I am far too busy taking care of the most adorable baby.