This is a severely risky post from me on many levels- for my self-respect, self-image, integrity, and the like. But it is one that will better all of these once these truths have been freed. Buckle up.
If you watch the show, "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," you will know exactly what I'm referring to in this post, or rather whom. If you don't know the show and could care less about it, just be a good sport and pretend.
As we all know, the show starts with Amy finding out she is pregnant after being coaxed into having unprotected sex at fifteen at band camp by the hot guy Ricky. Ricky beds all girls even though he has a girlfriend Adrian (who is my current TV girl crush). As you can imagine, this show is like a common day version of "Young and the Restless" which my mom used to watch faithfully every afternoon. This show is so yummy my mouth is watering right now.
Continuing on: Amy doesn't tell Ricky or her parents until the baby is almost born (slightly exaggerating here). She does tell her best friends, who have loosey-goosey mouths (duh, don't all high school girls!). Everyone finds out and treats her like she's a slutty weirdo and she goes through a painful year feeling lots of shame. She plans on adopting, then decides to keep the baby, who she ends up naming John. The rest of the episodes basically fast-forward to Ricky coming around, stopping his sexual rampade that were burying a painful abusive past, and steps up to be a great father to John and eventually fiance to Amy. Or something like that. They are currently fake married. Sorry if I ruined it for you.
In between the Amy/Ricky chaos (or Ramy, I hate that pairing), best friends backstab each other by sleeping with the others' girlfriends/ex-wives/boyfriends, another couple gets pregnant/married/divorced/miscarries, and lots of real hurtful things happen. Parents can't even keep their lives together in this show. It's chaos. But the writer is amazing, and the show is beautiful.
Cut to the chase. I didn't get pregnant as a teenager, but I did become pregnant after sleeping with the first guy I ever slept with. He's now my husband, but that didn't happen for a few years later, and after baby #2. Anywhoo, I had SO much to work through when I found out I was pregnant. My dad wanted to kick me off the insurance, I was a senior in undergrad, my music trio and I were bumping heads about our future now that this pregnancy popped up, a teacher reprimandingly (or maybe it was concernedly) told me this was going to "change my life" and "what happened to being Ms. Virtuous Woman 2005" (this pageant I entered and won pre-sex and pre-pregnancy) and I felt like horse poop. I was ashamed, embarrassed for my family, and...happy. I was experiencing new life in the making. Maybe I would forever be thrown into the pits of hell for experiencing something that was freeing and amazing and fun and physically rejuvenating with someone I really liked/then loved and now had grown his spawn in my belly and wasn't joined to him under religious standards, but I was happy. Forget the religious crap. Other Christians I knew were having sex, it was just protected. So they were enjoying the sin without the consequences. At least the consequences that had two arms and legs. And made your belly big and obvious that you had had sex. I call that faking it.
So like Amy, I went through school (although it was grown up school) with conflicting feelings all the time. I would be excited about my new baby, happy I had the ability to reproduce and happy that I could have a child and keep it. I was adopted when I was young, not a baby but young enough to barely remember any of it. I had good times and bad times, like anyone else, and who knows if it would've been better or worse with my natural parents vs. adoptive parents. Everyone did their best, and no one was perfect. I survived...hurting and angry, but alive nonetheless. Healing had to be taken into my own hands once I was free, and having my baby and being in a relationship with his father forced me to take responsibility for this. But that's jumping WAY ahead. That'll be in part II.
When I told my birth dad, his first response was "but I thought you weren't having sex!" Well, I explained to him, that wasn't completely a lie; it's just that since I had told him that, the sex-ing actually occurred. That is actually completely true. Just looked like I was lying. But anyways, obviously the fact that I was pregnant showed that unless forced or inebriated, I had willingly and mindfully engaged in the type of sexual activity that produces humans. Gotta love him.
One of my now-best-friends shook her head and smiled in disbelief; she DID just tell me a few days prior to my pregnancy test that there was absolutely NO excuse for anyone to get pregnant EVER because of the availability of birth control. This to a girl who once thought you could get pregnant from hugging a guy, due to her strict upbringing and the huge taboo of all things POSSIBLY leading to things leading to sex. Silly me. So, I didn't "fake it" and I got pregnant. That's what sex is literally for, ya know. That and intimacy.
Unlike Amy, I only had to change a little bit. I needed a job. Until then I had been sustained by scholarship. A music scholarship, American Indian Tuition Waiver, and an academic scholarship, the coveted Medallion Scholarship at WMU. I was already, like Amy, a dedicated student, hard worker, musician (although not a French hornist), and "good girl." Hey, good girls get pregnant too! In fact, I'd like to bet there's as many good girl pregnancies as bad girl pregnancies...we just expect the bad girls to get pregnant. Great expectations, society.
This is going to get even longer, so I'd better cap this and hail it as Part I. See you in the next chapter!
If you watch the show, "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," you will know exactly what I'm referring to in this post, or rather whom. If you don't know the show and could care less about it, just be a good sport and pretend.
As we all know, the show starts with Amy finding out she is pregnant after being coaxed into having unprotected sex at fifteen at band camp by the hot guy Ricky. Ricky beds all girls even though he has a girlfriend Adrian (who is my current TV girl crush). As you can imagine, this show is like a common day version of "Young and the Restless" which my mom used to watch faithfully every afternoon. This show is so yummy my mouth is watering right now.
Continuing on: Amy doesn't tell Ricky or her parents until the baby is almost born (slightly exaggerating here). She does tell her best friends, who have loosey-goosey mouths (duh, don't all high school girls!). Everyone finds out and treats her like she's a slutty weirdo and she goes through a painful year feeling lots of shame. She plans on adopting, then decides to keep the baby, who she ends up naming John. The rest of the episodes basically fast-forward to Ricky coming around, stopping his sexual rampade that were burying a painful abusive past, and steps up to be a great father to John and eventually fiance to Amy. Or something like that. They are currently fake married. Sorry if I ruined it for you.
In between the Amy/Ricky chaos (or Ramy, I hate that pairing), best friends backstab each other by sleeping with the others' girlfriends/ex-wives/boyfriends, another couple gets pregnant/married/divorced/miscarries, and lots of real hurtful things happen. Parents can't even keep their lives together in this show. It's chaos. But the writer is amazing, and the show is beautiful.
Cut to the chase. I didn't get pregnant as a teenager, but I did become pregnant after sleeping with the first guy I ever slept with. He's now my husband, but that didn't happen for a few years later, and after baby #2. Anywhoo, I had SO much to work through when I found out I was pregnant. My dad wanted to kick me off the insurance, I was a senior in undergrad, my music trio and I were bumping heads about our future now that this pregnancy popped up, a teacher reprimandingly (or maybe it was concernedly) told me this was going to "change my life" and "what happened to being Ms. Virtuous Woman 2005" (this pageant I entered and won pre-sex and pre-pregnancy) and I felt like horse poop. I was ashamed, embarrassed for my family, and...happy. I was experiencing new life in the making. Maybe I would forever be thrown into the pits of hell for experiencing something that was freeing and amazing and fun and physically rejuvenating with someone I really liked/then loved and now had grown his spawn in my belly and wasn't joined to him under religious standards, but I was happy. Forget the religious crap. Other Christians I knew were having sex, it was just protected. So they were enjoying the sin without the consequences. At least the consequences that had two arms and legs. And made your belly big and obvious that you had had sex. I call that faking it.
So like Amy, I went through school (although it was grown up school) with conflicting feelings all the time. I would be excited about my new baby, happy I had the ability to reproduce and happy that I could have a child and keep it. I was adopted when I was young, not a baby but young enough to barely remember any of it. I had good times and bad times, like anyone else, and who knows if it would've been better or worse with my natural parents vs. adoptive parents. Everyone did their best, and no one was perfect. I survived...hurting and angry, but alive nonetheless. Healing had to be taken into my own hands once I was free, and having my baby and being in a relationship with his father forced me to take responsibility for this. But that's jumping WAY ahead. That'll be in part II.
When I told my birth dad, his first response was "but I thought you weren't having sex!" Well, I explained to him, that wasn't completely a lie; it's just that since I had told him that, the sex-ing actually occurred. That is actually completely true. Just looked like I was lying. But anyways, obviously the fact that I was pregnant showed that unless forced or inebriated, I had willingly and mindfully engaged in the type of sexual activity that produces humans. Gotta love him.
One of my now-best-friends shook her head and smiled in disbelief; she DID just tell me a few days prior to my pregnancy test that there was absolutely NO excuse for anyone to get pregnant EVER because of the availability of birth control. This to a girl who once thought you could get pregnant from hugging a guy, due to her strict upbringing and the huge taboo of all things POSSIBLY leading to things leading to sex. Silly me. So, I didn't "fake it" and I got pregnant. That's what sex is literally for, ya know. That and intimacy.
Unlike Amy, I only had to change a little bit. I needed a job. Until then I had been sustained by scholarship. A music scholarship, American Indian Tuition Waiver, and an academic scholarship, the coveted Medallion Scholarship at WMU. I was already, like Amy, a dedicated student, hard worker, musician (although not a French hornist), and "good girl." Hey, good girls get pregnant too! In fact, I'd like to bet there's as many good girl pregnancies as bad girl pregnancies...we just expect the bad girls to get pregnant. Great expectations, society.
This is going to get even longer, so I'd better cap this and hail it as Part I. See you in the next chapter!
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