Illegal Musings

The featured image for this post is a photo mashup I made a few years ago. When I’d finished it as much as I could I showed it to my then boyfriend. “That creeps me out a little. Gives me a shiver.” The comment didn’t hurt but it did make me curious. The feeling made sense several weeks later when I took a pregnancy test, refused to acknowledge the result, and texted my mom a picture of the test with the question; “Does this say what I think it says?” She responded gleefully, “Yup! You’re pregnant!” And then I felt the dread, perhaps the same dread that my boyfriend might’ve felt when he saw that picture. The dread that precedes the realization that everything is about to change.

The feeling quickly gave way to wonderment. To the initial wave of falling in love with an idea. To me that’s all my daughter could be, my stomach was still flat and she must’ve been microscopic. There was also the fear she wouldn’t make it, and the realization that I loved and wanted her.

What complicated matters was the fact that I’d broken up with said boyfriend only two days ago, and my period had not materialized. Hence the pregnancy test. I was looking for confirmation that I wasn’t pregnant and got the opposite.

I don’t want to say why I broke up with him because it’s embarrassing for me, but I will because maybe someone else will get something from it. Since I was in total denial that I might be pregnant and extremely emotional, he posed that question “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” I yelled back at him, “Fuck you, I’m not pregnant!” And he, being unreasonably reasonable, just shut up and kept driving.

I’m a big believer in the intelligence of the body, that it knows things before your mind does. My boyfriend was battling a crippling addiction to opioids. Mind you, I’d loved this man from the moment I first had a conversation with him nine years before and I didn’t hold it against him. He was honest with me, he was almost trying to recommend himself as a waste of my time. I didn’t care. Addictions I’ve since learned come in all forms, but an honest man is like finding a golden needle in a haystack.

So why then did I break up with him? My body knew it was carrying a life, and my body desperately wanted her even if it meant breaking up with someone I adored, demons and all. My body knew that taking care of that new life was incompatible with the life I’d been living and the demands that loving an addict laid upon it. This is also a good time to mention I was an addict in my own right to alcohol, and I needed to eradicate this vice. The positive pregnancy test confirmed my fears and then my hopes, but I had a serious apology to issue whether he wanted me back or not. I owed him what he was good at giving me; the truth.

This is three years ago now and it’s still hard to talk about. Anyone acquainted with the grief of losing someone close is there’s always the what-ifs. The desire to blame oneself, if for no other reason than to make sense of it.

I do believe in destiny. That our souls understand why they chose to be here and in some cases for how long. Years before any of this happened, I remember this man I loved telling me “I won’t be making it past thirty.” He already knew in his bones what would take years to fully manifest. And manifest they did.

I told him about our child over the phone, and the most miserable man became the happiest man. He dropped everything and headed straight to my apartment. It was a forgone conclusion in his mind, we were going to get married. But we both had a battle ahead of us.

To sum it up seems trite, and maybe I’ll flesh this story out more later. But I will say this; American society and policies have a lot of growing up to do regarding addiction. The odds were stacked against him from the beginning. Between the stigma addicts face from friends, family, and employers to all of the ways insurance companies, the healthcare industry, and treatment centers see them as ATM machines rather than people, he was in a corner. A hole. And my God, did he try to find his way out of it. Many times between the time we found out we were going to have a child to his untimely death at the age of 29, he tried. He wasn’t the failure, society failed him.

I see my daughter as a grace of God. The only living genetic thread between my fiancé and this world. Losing him was devastating, but knowing she was growing did not afford me the luxury of devastation. I say this as a testament to Divine Providence and love, not to my strength; losing my fiancé took my will to live, but carrying the life of our daughter is what gave it back to me. The best thing we made together.