My new parents got legal guardianship of me at the beginning of January my 10th grade year.
That February I met my friend's new boyfriend. He was a really sweet guy. On Valentine's Day, of all days, I convinced him to break up with my friend. I then asked her immediately if it would be ok if I dated him, and she said whatever. And so we began dating.
Somewhere in those first few months I ended back in the hospital's adolescent psych ward for about a week. I had been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, and they were having trouble regulating my medication, and it made me very suicidal.
When I got out, I went back to my guardians, and back to my boyfriend.
Things moved way too fast with us. Within months we had decided we wanted to get married. At 16. My guardians were furious. They knew we were moving too fast and that I would ruin my life.
We both knew our parents would never sign for us to get married, but we didn't want to wait. And so we found a loophole. In our state, if you are pregnant, you can get married without parental consent. So we decided that's what we were going to do. Looking back now, THANK GOD that didn't work! He is not the guy I would want a child with.
But just before school ended that year, I got into a fight with my guardians over him. We decided on a whim that we should ask his parents if I could move in with them. And it worked. So I lived with them for a few months. But then things got really rough. I started getting really depressed. I knew this wasn't the life I'd wanted for myself. I told my therapist I thought I needed to go back to the adolescent psych ward. They sent me to a different hospital that time. This was the summer between 10th and 11th grade.
I stayed there for 8 days that time. When I got out, I was sent to live with my mother at my oldest sister's house. I had to transfer schools to start 11th grade. I didn't have my own room. At first I slept on the couch. Then I slept on the floor of the spare bedroom that had become a storage room. My boyfriend and I tried to stay together long distance for a few weeks, but it didn't work out.
I started liking a guy at my new school. But he didn't seem to like me except for sex. But I was so desperate for someone to love me and pay attention to me, that I would take whatever I could get. So I kept sleeping with him and kept trying to get him to date me.
About half way through the school year I found out the guy that I was so desperate for had slept with one of my new friends behind my back. I was already in a deep depression because of the living situation, and that was the tip of my iceberg. I went home from school that day and tried to kill myself. I took 81 pills. They were a mixture of 3 different medications I was on for my bipolar. I tried to cut my wrists, but I was way too drowsy and it ended up just being tiny scratches.
And then a friend from school called me. He could tell something was wrong. I told him what I'd done. He started telling me how bad it would be if I died in that room and my little nephew found me. So I went and told my mom what I'd done.
I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. They made me drink charcoal. I threw it all back up. They mixed it with Pepsi of all things, and made me drink another batch. I threw up even worse. So they put a tube up my nose and down into my stomach. I remember begging them to just let me die. That third time I only threw up a tiny amount, and they said they would just wait and do it one more time if my blood work didn't look good. Thankfully they didn't have to do it a third time, and I was moved from the ER to the ICU. 2 days later I was sent to the adolescent psych ward again, for the 4th time.
Sometime around the end of February I met the man who is now my husband. I met him through a friend. We chased him through the Walmart he was working at. We talked on the phone a few times. And shortly after we hung out together with my friend and her boyfriend. We started dating after that.
He knew that my living situation wasn't good, and he wanted to get me out of there. I was 17, and he was 19, almost 20.
As soon as I was done with 11th grade, I moved in with him and his parents. I didn't even tell my mother I was leaving. I tried to sneak out but we got caught by the neighbors. So then I told my mother, as we were leaving. Just a month or 2 after living together I got pregnant with my son. For privacy reasons and future reference, lets call him Bubs. That's what I call him sometimes.
I flip flopped from being excited to being really scared and back again. My boyfriend and I planned our wedding. I felt like I had to get married because I was pregnant. But deep down, I was terrified. I couldn't see myself settling down with one person when I was so young. So a week before our wedding, I left, 3 months pregnant. I moved in with my guardians again.
I was there for a few months. I went back to my old school for 12th grade. I had enough credits that I could graduate a semester early, and I would be done with school before the baby was born, because he was due in March.
I lived with my guardians from August until the middle of December. Then it got to be too much for them. They said they weren't prepared to help me raise this baby. They couldn't handle the baby daddy momma drama. And the woman couldn't handle seeing me pregnant living there when she had always wanted a baby of her own.
I went to visit my mother at my sister's house for Christmas break. While I was there, my guardians told me I needed to stay there, I had to move out of their house.
I didn't know what to do. My mother didn't want me. They didn't have room for me, and it definitely wasn't a fit place to raise my child. My mother told me to look into homeless shelters for pregnant woman.
I had become very good friends with a guy from school before I went to my mother's house, and had started going to church with him. I told him and another girl from our youth group what was going on.
One day the guy asked me if he could pick me up and take me to lunch. I agreed, because I had a huge crush on him and thought maybe he was going to ask me out.
But instead he surprised me by saying that his aunt and uncle, the leaders of our youth group, wanted me to move in with them. They would help me raise the baby. It was the last thing I expected, but I was so happy.
But when he took me home, things changed. I told my mother where I was going. She got really mad at me. She said I was never going to grow up, I was going to depend on other people my entire life instead of standing on my own two feet. Like she had room to talk, living with her daughter, mooching off them, while she sat on the couch and didn't work. But she kicked me out and told me to figure it out for myself.
So I went to a homeless shelter. I never told anyone where I went. It was a horrible place. I was there for a week and a half before I was able to get ahold of my guy friend and his aunt and uncle and arrange to move in.
And that brings us up to date as of January 2009. More to come soon.
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