It’s the typical impoverished story. Teenagers having unprotected sex and made a baby. Uneducated and unprepared, yet a son was born. I never aspired to be a teenage parent, and felt guilty about getting an abortion. So, I kept the kid. Quit high school and got a job as a cashier to help financially support a baby. The father sold drugs. I remember feeling abandoned while pregnant. Because the father was able to be a free teenager, while I was not afforded that same freedom. I was the one up in the middle of the night feeding the child, while the father slept the night away. I was exhausted, stressed, depressed and just wanted to run away and leave the child and his father behind. All of the responsibility was on me. And I had to grow up real quick. I had no other choice. I was in a abusive relationship with the father. Emotionally and physically, on top of dealing with the stress of a crackhead mother and absent biological father. Everything around me was killing me and I wanted out. So, I stood strong and got my own apartment, broke up with the father, and tried to keep my drug addicted mother away from me. I say tried because she always manipulated her way into my life and home. But that’s another story. I did the best I could as a teenage parent, with what I had and what I knew. And it wasn’t much. Teenagers always think they know it all, and it’s far from the truth. But, I tried. I tried to keep the kid safe, work a full time job, manage my own depression and fears, unravel trauma, and find my own inner happiness. Through it all, I knew one day the kid would figure out that I never wanted a kid and take it personal. I also knew he wouldn’t understand I didn’t know who he was, I just never aspired to be a poor, uneducated, teenage, single parent who lived in the hood. I knew if I were to ever tell him the truth, he wouldn’t be able to handle it and possibly commit suicide. And I couldn’t have that on my conscience. I felt that he should fight for his life. Make something of himself and move on eventually. But he couldn’t handle hearing that. So, I moved forward. I still had the financial responsibility of a kid. I went back to school to get a better paying job. I moved out of the ghetto in Hope’s that he wouldn’t join a gang. I made sure he was well fed, comfortable, clothes, all of the things he needed and some of the things he wanted. I sacrificed myself, my life, my wants, my needs, my aspirations my freedom, to step up to the plate and be a productive parent. I fought to overcome a lot of obstacles to make sure he would go further in life than I did. Meanwhile, his father was living his best free life. Traveling and making kids with multiple women. I remember intuitively knowing the father’s absence was going to have a huge negative impact on the kid. Knowing his father didn’t want to be a parent, I offered to pay him to pretend to be a parent, to take his kid and do things with him. All on my dime and he wouldn’t do it. I knew I stooped to the ultimate low. So I walked away from his father and never said anything to him about it again. Shortly after, a female asked me if the father helped with the kid, and I told her no. She went back and told the father, knowing he use to beat on me. The father saw me, jumped out of the car, foaming at the mouth and spitting. Ready to hit me again, he was yelling in my face and saying stop telling people he didn’t do anything for the kid. I guess school clothes once a year for the kid made him father of the year. It was in that moment that I felt I could possibly die, and the girl wanted that to happen to me. I relocated again, changed my number and stayed away from everyone. The father was mad cause I wouldn’t stay in the abusive relationship so he can control me. He tried to use his kid as a pawn to manipulate my emotions so I wouldn’t date men. He was emotionally manipulative and physically abusive. So on top of my trauma from both my parents, growing pains, mental health issues, poverty, I also had to unravel being a abused woman, left to raise a kid on my own and I had no clue what parenthood was about. I had no other choice.