No. #8

"It's funny. I still get the pregnancy bulletins on my email, cause they keep you updated on trimesters and stuff like that. I never unsubscribed so it just kinda keeps coming."

I met her at a nonprofit organization that helps the homeless. Youth, teenagers, young adults. I walked in and she was there. We started talking and then we started dating. Within, like, a month, she was pregnant. She had missed her period, took a test, and it came back positive. She seemed excited.

Nothing in my life was positive at that point. I wouldn't have wanted to bring a child into that life. That was not an environment for a child to grow up in. She had her kids taken from her already. For me to put a child in that position again, watching them be ripped away from their family, and then go to the whole CPS court thing would have been a hard thing to swallow. I'm not a neglecting person, but if I can't provide for even myself then how can I provide for a child? It's not that I don't care about a kid; I would love him or her with all my heart. But I'm nowhere near ready for that.

She ended up miscarrying. She didn't care. She was so caught up in getting high. I just recently found her overdosed at my place. She had broken in.

It's been a long road with her. She he was cheating on me at the time. In my bed, while I was sleeping on the floor. I didn't care enough about myself to do anything about it.

It's funny. I still get the pregnancy bulletins on my email, cause they keep you updated on trimesters and stuff like that. I never unsubscribed so it just kinda keeps coming. It's kind of interesting. It's still not kinda real. I don't know if it'll ever be real. There's a certain point where it becomes a human, and I don't know what that point is. I never went to a doctor's appointment. I never went to any ultrasounds. There was no connection yet, so I don't know if it's as real as it should be. I've been through so much trauma in my life that I kinda disassociated.

I got pretty heavy into my drug addiction and I just didn't care. I came out here to get away from it, and it's worked so far. I'm four and a half months sober. It's pretty cool. The hardest part is the actual work I did and treatment. I had to bring everything back up and relive all that crap. Having that therapist bring it all back up and drill into me was probably the hardest thing I've ever done.

I actually did wilderness therapy, so I did nine weeks of backpacking. It's kinda why I got the idea to just be homeless and backpack around. I had a job, and my mom was helping me pay for a place to live. I just decided to come out here and do things on my own. No one really pushed me to do this homeless thing. I've been homeless before. It's kind of my decision. I want to humble myself.

My mom and I have made a deal that if I save up a thousand dollars, then I can do this program called NOLS. It's a Wilderness EMT. I'd get that certification and then go back to the treatment that I went to and work there next year. I'm also a musician, so I'd like to bring my music out there. I would love to be in a band and play live. That would be the dream.