Saturday, 26 September 2009

• Becoming a Teen Mom Changed My Life

  
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  I was looking at the blogs of some of my friends on xanga and it sparked some old memories. Not a lot of people know this about me, but I have struggled with an eating disorder since I was in fifth grade. It all started with puberty. I don't know if that's where other people's stories start, but I got my period in fifth grade. I was the only girl in my grade that had and it changed my perspective on lots of things. Including, of course, my body. I was taller than all the kids in my grade and because I'd started puberty earlier than them, I had bigger hips. It was absolutely devastating.
  
  I wanted to be short like the other girls. I wanted to be thin like the other girls. I even envied their perfect hair. (Mine is naturally curly, though I straighten it now.) When I looked in the mirror I had to stare at myself for so long before I could find something to compliment myself on. In sixth grade my parents lost their parental rights and I, along with my siblings, was adopted by my grandparents without being explained to what was happening. My grandparents were (still are) very into the Mormon church. I am a member and I believe in it. I would call myself deeply spiritual, but not very religious, meaning I very rarely attend church because the week has worn me out so much. That was around when I realized I didn't have much control over what was happening to me.
  
  And criticizing myself continued through the next grade and into junior high. Junior high was awful. I felt like one of the hugest girls in the school and I couldn't stand myself. If I talked about myself to anyway, it was to criticize. Then one day after I'd eaten lunch in seventh grade, I was feeling a little nauseated and light headed. I was standing with some friends in the lunch room and one of the girls opened those mini donuts that have coconut on them. I had to almost run to the bathroom because the smell made me so sick that I threw up everything. And it felt wonderful.
  
  That's an awful thing to think, isn't it? But it started something. I didn't start throwing up a lot, but I cut back on my food intake drastically. I drank milk, water, and ate a piece of bread and maybe some soup everyday. On a "bad" day, I ate a sandwich. If my mom wanted to take me out to lunch, I forced myself to eat in front of her and then didn't eat for two or three days afterward.
  
  In eighth grade, I began to wear my hair down because I realized that I had beautiful hair. That was when confidence and arrogance began to set in and it felt like I was an entirely different person at school. I felt like I was an actress and school was my stage. In ninth grade, I got my first kiss from a boy named Kevin. I had liked him for weeks. A girl had slapped me because she wanted me to back off and I pinched her cheek til she was crying and told her that if she touched me or threatened me again I would "stomp her horse face into the sidewalk". She was the only challenge I needed to start making a move on Kevin. At first, I didn't care if we started dating or kissed or made out. I didn't care what we did, I just wanted to flaunt him in front of that girl. But after we kissed, I got attached. The only thing was, he didn't. He moved onto the next girl and I was warned, a little bit too late, that he was a player.
  
  I said I didn't care. I was still the same confident and energetic girl that had showed up to school everyday that year. I could get away with anything, in fact. I had my teacher's wrapped around my little finger. I used to convince my choir class to to yoga to warm up their vocals. I used to play karate in the library and Charlie's Angels in the hallway. But at lunch, I didn't go to the lunch room. I stayed outside if I could or in the library, the computer lab, or another classroom, to stay away from the smell of the food. I convinced myself that the smell would make me sick. Instead, I drank water and ate some raw veggies or fruit brought from home. (I still LOVE to eat raw peas in a pod, raw green beans, raw carrots, and fruit of almost any kind). I was taking a social dance class and I fell in love with dancing.
  
  Every time I saw Kevin, I wanted to be skinnier and skinnier. I think I wanted him to realize he'd lost someone who was beautiful. I slowly began to lose my soul to conformity as well: I dressed more and more like what I saw in the other girls that he liked until one day, when I saw him with another girl in our choir class, it just became too much. Depression hit my like a bus. I remember one day in the middle of winter, a day that I felt particularly huge, I decided I needed to walk or exercise. I couldn't sit still. I walked around the school the entire lunch period in the freezing cold until I had to sit in the sick room cuz of an asthma attack. I was in the worst emotional shape of my life, but no one in the world knew it. I barely ate, I was withdrawing from my friends. Being skinny was the only thing I had any control of anymore and I clung to that.
  
  That was the year that I met two boys who changed my life forever. Matthew and Jason. I met Matthew first. He was a sarcastic, fun loving, free spirited guy who loved the beauty of life, but who also was not afraid to embrace the emotions that life threw at him, and I loved him for that. He was the first man that I ever fell in love with. I wanted to marry him, we talked about marriage too. And how many kids we were going to have. We were also going to have two border collies.
  
  But, like so many teenage stories, he picked another girl over me and my life was "over". In my mind she was skinnier, smarter, better looking... Everything about her seemed better than me. It was all something that I could improve on. When I met Jason, I liked him so much. He made me feel differently that Matthew ever had. Not more, just different. But I couldn't be with him. I made up the excuse that it was because of my parents and religion, but it was really because I wanted to be available if Matthew decided that he wanted me back. I spent that fourth of July with Matt doing everything I could to try and make him love me.
  
  High school started, and for a few months, everything was fine. It was probably only two months, actually. I still was friends with Matthew. I was still in love with Matthew. And he wouldn't leave the girl he'd picked over me who was now making his life hell. One day he asked me to be there for him. I couldn't do it. I told him no because I was in so much emotional pain and turmoil. I couldn't possibly handle it if I went to him as a friend, hoping for more, and got let down yet again. So I told him I couldn't be there for him and that he shouldn't talk to me anymore and I started a series of on-again-off-again relationships with Jason. They were an epic failure and almost destroyed our friendship forever. (I'm happy to say that Jason is one of my closest friends now). Sometime before eleventh grade began, I was contacted by a guy who was revealed to be my stepbrother. My father, aunt, and grampa came back into my life. During the time between when I told Matt to stop talking to me and til the summer before eleventh grade, I almost stopped eating altogether. I drank coca-cola for migraines. I drank water. I ate bread sometimes. If I ate fries or popcorn, it was because I'd eaten nothing else all day. If I ate at a fast food restaurant, it was because I hadn't eaten in a day or two. My body was completely under my control. Feeling full was (and still is) one of the worst feelings in the world. Water was my best friend and ultimate trickster as I learned that if I drank water when I felt hungry, the water often went away.
  
  That fourth of July (2007) was spent bawling my eyes out and trying to throw up the nothing that was in my stomach in front of Matthew at the house of his older brother when he was the only person in the world I could think to go to at a time like that. He'd seen me at my absolute best and at my very worst. He was one of the few people I could let my guard down around.
  
  Jason liked another girl. Jason and I were best friends. Jason talked to me about that other girl because we were best friends. And it absolutely tore me apart. Me, Jason, Mitch, David, Chelsey, Ryan, and Erica all went to a local concert in Roy one day. It was my first encounter with hardcore dancing, scene kids, and straight edgers. My friends wanted me to think that the drummer of the band was cute. I told them he looked like a twelve-year-old and I didn't think twice about him. Jason was the only guy I wanted and I had to support his relationship with one of my other really good friends.
  
  But Jason loved their band and set up a house show at our friend JT's house with their band and Jeremy's band. It was fun, I guess, but I was in a horrible state of depression. I remember making myself throw up everything I ate that night and then cry while I dry heaved into the toilet for thirty minutes. Matthew was there. And we talked, but for the most part he and his friend Shad made fun of me and I more and more desperate to eat something so that I could throw it up every time he talked to me or talked about his girlfriend at the time. I talked to him a little bit. I cried. I can't remember if he held me. I can't remember how talking to him made me feel. I talked to David for a little bit too, who assured me that Jason would come around at some point. That cheered me up so I chewed gum to get rid of my puke-breath and started acting like my energetic, hyperactive, crazy self with my best friend, Cheltzee. We asked for the vocalists number because something about him was really cute. For me it was the lip rings. We thought about asking for the guitarists number.. But, truth be told, he had such a sarcastic sense of humor that we chickened out to save our feelings from being hurt. I took a chance and asked the drummer for his number in front of his girlfriend. He was an asshole because he thought I was hitting on him in front of his girl, but I took his phone from him and put my number in it and got his number anyway.
  
  On the twenty first of September I went to the drummers house with Jason because he was teaching Jason how to play drums and I started to have feelings for him. His name was Jeremy. He ended up breaking up with his girlfriend and asking me out. We dated for six months and he was very concerned with my eating habits. I tried to eat more around him and I told him I was doing better. I had stopped making myself throw up, but I wasn't eating any more and I had started cutting once in a while. After dating for about six and a half or seven months, we went to prom together and then broke up. I stopped eating again and started throwing up from time to time. It felt so great to be able to not eat again. I met Ashley, who to this day is like a sister to me. She is one of my very best friends. That summer a lot of stuff happened to me. I ended a one month relationship with the first person I'd dated that was younger than me, I set out to break up one couple, got taken advantage by two different guys, took advantage of one guy, and wrapped a twenty year old around my finger. Ashley and I spent that whole summer staying up way too late and sleeping in til noon. We lived off of free food and fruit punch from taco maker, ranch corn nuts, and hot chocolate. We ran around barefoot. We wore shorts that were too short. We snuck out of our houses multiple times. We had so much fun doing whatever we felt like doing.
  
  But the biggest change happened at the end of July. It wasn't discovered until mid to the end of August, but I had an idea. I guess, for the most part, intuition never fails. On the second day of school, the truth was revealed with a pregnancy test and my life changed forever. I won't lie, I thought about abortion because I couldn't imagine becoming a mom and Jason thought it was the best option for me too. One day he and Cheltzee told me that they didn't think I could go through with it and that's when it hit me: They were right. There was no way I could go through with it. Whether or not Jeremy (the father of the baby and my boyfriend) supported me and my decision, we were about to become parents.
  
  Those nine months were hard. They were emotional and difficult. The only friends who seemed to stick by my side was Jeremy and Jason and my family. I got ahold of my birth mom for the first time since I was ten. At the moment I realized that I was going to be a mother, I needed my mother more than ever. I transferred to a school for young mothers and cried every night for months because I didn't think I'd make any friends. Turned out I did make friends and they are some of the best and strongest people that I know. Jeremy and I decided to get married and he decided to join the army. We were married on February thirteenth and he left for basic training on February seventeenth. Because I was induced and the skin on my stomach was starting to split open and bleed, he was allowed to come home for the delivery. The epidural didn't work on my back or my left hip so I felt contractions there the whole time. I thought I was dying. It still amazes me that a body can go through that much pain and come out fine. After almost a day of labor, our beautiful, perfect baby girl was brought into the world. There is no moment in my entire lifetime that can compare to that day or to the moment when they finally laid her on me, all covered in blood and guts, and I'd never seen anything so perfect or beautiful in my life. Seeing her and realizing that me and the man that I love were able to bring a perfect little piece of heaven into this world changed my life. My heart swells up with love and a sort of awe and disbelief every time that I see her. There is nothing in the world that can possibly compare.
  

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