No. #28

"I was sitting in my parents’ house and had gotten a call from her. She said she was feeling some symptoms like morning sickness. She had gotten the test, but she wanted me to be on the phone with her for it. It was weird, I kind of already knew. I just felt a pit in my stomach and I knew what was going to happen already. Sure enough, she said she was pregnant. And it was the weirdest mix of emotions that I’ve ever really had to date."

I met somebody on a mission trip, when I was 18. It kind of turned into a long distance relationship for a while, and I came out to visit one time. And the rest is history. It sprung up on us about a month later. And it has shaped my life a little bit ever since.

I was sitting in my parents’ house and had gotten a call from her. She said she was feeling some symptoms like morning sickness. She had gotten the test, but she wanted me to be on the phone with her for it. It was weird, I kind of already knew. I just felt a pit in my stomach and I knew what was going to happen already. Sure enough, she said she was pregnant. And it was the weirdest mix of emotions that I’ve ever really had to date.

On the one hand, I was completely defeated. I’m 18 years old, I’m a child. I don’t know how to take care of myself, let alone take care of and teach another child how to take care of themselves. Hell, I’m 30 years old now. I’m still trying to learn about how to take care of myself and be financially responsible. Yet at the same time, I’m about to bring life into the world, which is the ultimate form of creation that a human being can do. So I had conflicting feelings. Personally, I feel as the man in the situation, I don’t get to make that choice. It’s not my choice to make, and it’s not my body. The only choice that I can make is to either be there and be supportive or run for the hills. I initially chose to stay there and be supportive whatever she decided was the right thing to do.

She came from a very religious background. Right off the bat, there's no option of abortion and having this kid is what's going to happen. It was settled. And I was like, “Well, that's gonna happen.” So how do we take care of this from here on out? It’s this big thing. Laying out all of the assets that we had for us. What her parents, my parents, and friend circles can do to help us. My family and friends could help us in more ways than we needed. But what if it just broke down really quickly? We were in this together, but at the same time, we were fighting against each other. In the end I felt like I was just along for the ride. We later found out that there were identical twins. And she said, “You’re going to live here with our kids. This is your life. This is what you’re going to do.”

And it happened for a period of time. My kids were born two and a half months premature. But there was a lot of stress between the two of us, constantly fighting and trying to establish a life together. It became clear that raising our children one parent at a time was going to be healthier for them than two parents at a time, constantly fighting. It was a hard decision. It was brutal to deal with.

Unfortunately, I’m not involved anymore. When I decided that I had to leave, it became very clear that she didn't want me to be a part of their lives at all. She was actively working to try and find a way to force me out. She tried to create physically violent situations, trying to push buttons to rile me up. In hindsight, I fucking get it. We were both kids and neither of us were doing anything that was healthy or helpful to each other. It came to a point where death threats were made. Her father was heading over to my place with a gun. And luckily, I didn't die. But that situation didn't go very well. So I just had to leave.

So my dad took a flight the next day. The next morning, I filled a two door coupe with everything that I had and drove 44 hours across the country to get back home. Just to get away. It took me about six years to really come to terms with and grasp what had happened emotionally. When I came back home, the first thing I needed to do was assess my feelings about the whole situation. When I came to terms with that, I called her up and I tried to have a conversation. But it wasn't a conversation that was really ready to be had between the two of us. It ended with her saying that she’d rather me just keep the child support money if that means I never see the kids again. And I just hung up. Those are the last words she's ever said to me.

I'm trying to make contact. I used to send letters every couple of months to her parents’ house because I knew her parents weren't moving anywhere. Just letting them know if anything changes and she wants help, or wants me to take them for the summer, or find a way to do something back and forth. Or if she just wants to give up. I just want to be in my kids’ lives. whatever the way it means. I mean, just hearing my kids’ voices would be great. I haven't seen them since they were two months old. All I've seen were occasional pictures on Facebook. But my kids are getting older. And then the next thing you know, they're talking, and next in school, and now they're 10 years old.

And I still have no idea what they're like, who they turn out like. They're identical. But even then, for some weird reason, I can still tell the two of them apart. I guess all I'm really left with at this point is just stories that I can create in my own head about what my kids might end up being like. How they might be as people. It's something that after a while, I just kind of pushed down and just didn't talk about very often.

I hope my kids are good natured. Caring. I just hope that she will raise the kids to be a little bit better. You always just hope that the next generation of people end up being a little bit better than yourself. It’s all you can ever ask for.

The hardest thing was missing their firsts. Missing their first Christmas, the first steps, the first word. The worst one was missing their first Easter. I don't come from a religious background. But Easter was always a big moment for us, especially for the kids. Hiding the eggs. That was probably the lowest point for me was knowing that my kids were out doing this and I wasn't a part of it. I somehow couldn't be a part of it. I obviously could always push for a court date. But at that time, I was using cannabidiol cannabis for my epilepsy treatment, which they didn’t acknowledge in Pennsylvania. So as far as they knew, I was just a drug addict. And would have been treated as such and wouldn't have seen my kids either way. Other than missing all the firsts, the hardest thing is learning how to let go of something and know that you can always control every situation. Sometimes it's not going to turn out the way you want it to.

The ridicule was always there. Always present, especially when she started to show. You can't walk outside the door without getting judgmental looks. The neighbors that live next door didn't get used to it. They never changed that heated look. Pennsylvania is a very devout Christian community, where with children out of wedlock you're a sinner of some sort. You're an outcast of society. So everywhere we went was this uphill battle. Mostly, it was just getting to a point where your friends and your extended family are probably going to drop you for some perception of what's acceptable in this world. The only people that you're really left with are each other. And when the two of you are already under so much pressure in the first place, you kind of feel like you're at war with each other. You just feel truly utterly alone at the end of the day.

I realized that having kids is not a thing I’ve wanted to deal with. Sexuality has changed completely for me, just the way I perceive sex. I mean, I still enjoy it but there's a sense of fear that comes along with it, now. It's pretty easy to ignore the things that don't happen to you. But once it's happened to you, you can't really take that back. It’s something that's ever present in your mind. I think because of that, I've just become a lot more, a lot less focused on sex in general, which I think is probably good for the male population to begin with. I feel that at this point, I can at least be a good uncle to my sister's kids now. I’ve learned that there are things you never really get over; you have to learn to live with it. It takes a long time because you have to find your way through it.