Sometimes I wonder why some people seem to be more sensitive to and affected by people's opinions of them than others. When you were a kid - or maybe even now - did you ever worry to the point where your stomach hurt whether or not people would like you? Ugh, I hate admitting I was like that but it's true! And, as long as I'm telling the truth, I might as well tell you that I was that way for a long, long time. So much so that I let it govern about 90% of what I've done for most of my life.
I lost my virginity when I was 17 years old to a boy I'd been dating for a year. Two months later, he broke up with me. You know what's so sad about it? I wanted to save my first intentional sexual intercourse for marriage (I was molested by my biological father at age 3 so I can't really say "lose my virginity" but, hopefully, you know what I mean) and the only reason I finally did it was because we had seriously talked about getting married right out of high school and going to university together. All in all, I didn't think it was a bad plan. I still think it wasn't but our parents hit the roof when we told them what we wanted to do and that, I guess, was that. I often think about how my life might have turned out if we'd just gone ahead and done what we wanted instead of chickening out simply because our parents said "no." Instead, I cried buckets, sang my heart out to every break-up song that came onto the radio, and decided that sexual purity was an utter farce.
I'd told my parents that I wasn't ready to go to university and that I wanted to get an apartment and a job in Chicago for a while before deciding what I wanted to do in life. My parents vetoed that idea in a hurry and told me that college was not optional - that, with each passing year after high school, I would be less and less likely to get a degree. So I went. And hated every minute of it. In fact, I'm truly embarrassed to admit this but, since I was too scared to openly defy my parents and simply tell them, "No. I'm not going," I did the next best thing: I intentionally flunked out. Isn't that awful? Ask me how many classes I attended my first semester. Go ahead... ask. Want to know? I was registered for 5 classes - the typical 3 classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and 2 classes on Tuesday and Thursday schedule - and, after attending classes for the first week, I never went back to any of them for the rest of the semester. Not once. That's right, my friends; I ended my first semester at university with an impressive 0.0 GPA. Somehow, at my mother's urging, I managed to talk to the dean of undergraduate students and he let me come back the following semester. Much to my chagrin.
My second semester was a little better. I did attend classes, joined the Little Sister program of a fraternity, and met a boy in the fraternity. I wouldn't say I was overwhelmingly attracted to him but he was nice and, for once, I felt like I sort of belonged somewhere at the university. I never really intended for it to be a long-term relationship; yet somehow, we became known as one of "the couples," which definitely held a status of some sort. We began sleeping together and by the end of the semester, unbeknown to me, I had gotten pregnant. I say "unbeknown" because I was still getting my period (later, I found out that I simply spotted throughout my pregnancy but when you're 18 and no one you've ever known before has ever had a baby, this is stuff you just don't know about) and my stomach never grew much, although my jeans became a tiny bit snug after about 5 months.
Summer came, I'd passed my classes and, somehow, managed to stay in school. I worked, went back to university in the fall, and resumed my relationship with the frat boy. By October, I was thinking about breaking up with him; nothing personal, I just wasn't really interested in dating any longer. And then I got a cold. A bad one. So I went to the university's health services for some medication. While I was there, the nurse asked me if I had any other questions. Now, by this time, I'd started noticing that my periods were a little off and, come to think of it, they'd been sort of strange for a while now so I asked her about it. When I told her how long I thought things were a little odd, she took one look at me and said, "well, it's just not possible that you're pregnant, but let's take a test just to be on the safe side." So, I went into the bathroom, peed into the plastic cup that had been handed to me, slid it into the little two-way door thing in the wall, and promptly forgot about it.
Until the next morning at 7:00 when I received a phone call from the nurse. "Miss Farrell? Can you come in this morning at 9:00? The doctor would like to see you." Now, let me tell you here and now that when you receive a phone call like that, it can only mean one thing. Shit. Shit, shit shit!!!! My stomach dropped to my toes as I hung up the phone. I got up, showered, trudged across campus in the blustery weather to the health services building and, when I arrived, changed into the paper gown folded on the exam table. The arrival of the doctor is one of those moments in life that I will never, ever forget as long as I live. His name was Sun-San Lin, from South Korea, and here is our very first conversation:
Dr. Lin: "Herro Kerrey, how-ohh ahr you today?"
Me: "Er... hello, Dr. I'm fine thanks, how are you?"
Dr. Lin: "No, Kerrey. How ohhhh ahr you?"
Me: (blushing) "Oh sorry. I'm 19."
Dr. Lin: "Okay. I cannot require you to tehr yohr parents that you ahr pregnant but I must encourage you to tahk to them."
Me: *blink* "Uhm. Okay." inner dialogue: shit! shit-shit-shit!!
Dr. Lin: feeling my stomach "Judging from position of abdomen, I say you ahr in yohr six oh seven months of pregnancy."
Me: "Oh. Right. Okay." inner dialogue: what?? shiiiiiiiit! shit-shit-shit!!!
Dr. Lin then left while his nurse handed me a large bottle of prenatal vitamins - if you've never taken prenatal vitamins before, let me tell you something: they look like horse pills. They're gigantic. Gi-GAN-tic. And then she set me up with regular bimonthly appointments. Since, you know, I'd already gone two whole trimesters without even one freaking prenatal doctor's visit. SHIT!
I felt like I was walking to my own funeral as I left the health services building. First stop: my boyfriend's class. I went and sat outside his classroom door and tried my best to think about what to do. To say my head was spinning would be a huge understatement. I was going to break up with him! Now what? Now what??!! Finally, he came out of his class and, as I told him the news, his first response was, "I love you but I'm not marrying you." Nice. But it didn't really matter because marriage was the last thing on my mind. So I said, "that's okay; I love you but I'm not marrying you either!" From there, we decided that giving the baby up for adoption seemed like the smartest move to make, since neither of us knew the first thing about babies.
So when I went to my first official prenatal visit, I told the doctor of my decision. Although he strongly tried to discourage me, my mind was made up. He gave me information about private adoption and, eventually, told me that he had a family - patients of his - who desperately wanted to adopt a baby and so, after learning about them, I decided that they would be the perfect family for my little one. And then something happened. Never, ever did I expect to start bonding with my unborn child. When you're 19 and no one you know has ever had a baby, you don't really hear about this stuff. But my baby started kicking. And at night, I would lie on my back and watch my belly shift, thinking, "oh my God... that's a real, live baby in there. And it's part of me," with wonder. I tried not to think about it too much because the thought of giving birth and then having to say good bye gave me a big lump in my throat.
...and I still hadn't told my parents. December came and I called my mom to tell her that I was needed at my job and that I wouldn't be coming home for Christmas (nice one, Kel. *insert eye rolling here*). Now, my mom isn't stupid - she knew something was up and immediately asked if I was "shacking up" with my boyfriend and was I pregnant? Naturally, I vehemently denied all of the above and stuck to my "I have to work" story. Which my parents totally did not buy. Eventually, they talked me into coming home for a couple of weeks... by this time, I had gone from a size 8 jeans up to a size 12 so I thought, "well, if I wear baggy sweatshirts, I can probably claim the 'college 20 lbs' and get away with this. I can be back down right after New Years Day, have the baby, hop off the delivery table, head back to my apartment and nobody will be the wiser." I mean, really. How stupid can you get? I actually thought exactly that. And so I headed home for Christmas.
Well, my parents didn't say anything for a couple of days. But one day, my mother asked. "Kelley, are you pregnant?" I denied, denied and denied again. A few days later, "Kelley, are you certain you're not pregnant?" More denial. And then, on January 2, 1985 (a Thursday), my mother woke me up, handed me a vial and said, "get in the bathroom and pee into this cup right now." My response? "No." Now, my mother is not used to being disobeyed by anyone, especially not me. "Excuse me? This is not optional. Get. In. That bathroom. And pee. Right. NOW!" So in I went meekly, my mind racing, trying to figure out how to throw the test somehow because, dammit, I did not want her knowing the truth!!! So I peed into the cup. And then I added some baby powder. And some Scope. And whatever else I could find in the medicine cabinet that I thought might confuse the little pregnancy testing kit. What I did not know was that, if your body is producing the pregnancy hormone, nothing but nothing will keep you from having a positive result on a pregnancy test. So I came out, handed my mother the evidence and held my breath while she did the test. "please God, pleeeeeeeaaaaase! pleasepleasepleasepleasePLEASE don't let it come up positive!" but, of course, the incriminating little positive symbol appeared within seconds. Damnit.
Well. My mother put her head in her hands then looked up and said, "You're pregnant." She then poked my stomach and said, "You're what? Three months pregnant, aren't you? Or is it four?" I smoothly said, the picture of utter honesty, "No. I'm not." Again, she poked my stomach. "Oh. My. God! Will you stop with the charade, Kelley Jean? Yes, you are! I'm going to guess you're between three and four months pregnant! Now quit being such a god damned ninny and face up to the truth because you need to be under a doctor's care!" Smooth as silk, I said the following: "No. I am NOT three OR four months pregnant. I know this for a fact because I am nine months pregnant, I've been under a doctor's care and the baby is due on Monday!!!" I have to give the woman credit for not fainting on the spot. I cannot begin to imagine what in the world she must have thought in that moment but I imagine her blood first ran cold before it began to boil.
After the truth was out, a battle royale ensued. I told my mother of my plans for adoption. She insisted that, if I refused to raise the baby myself, she would intervene and adopt it instead. A tiny little light bulb went on in my head: for the first time in my life, I had something that I had absolute control over and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. So I played that card to the hilt. And then finally, my mom wised up. She talked to my dad. She talked to my grandparents. She talked to my aunts. And finally, she and my dad said, "We hope you'll change your mind but, whatever you choose to do, we'll support you."
What?? That's not how it's supposed to work! We're supposed to fight! I'm supposed to win! That's how it goes! But instead, in that moment, they said the one thing my heart truly needed to hear: "we support you, no matter what you decide." And then the dam broke. I finally admitted to myself that I really wanted to keep this baby. I had no idea what to do and I was scared to death but the thought of giving birth to a child and then never seeing it again, never seeing it go to school for the first time, take its first steps, never seeing what kind of person it would become... gave me a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.
And so I made a decision for which I will always be grateful. I decided to keep the baby. My wonderful, amazing, kind, gorgeous son Jim is now 25 years old. How about that? And he is an awesome dad of the most beautiful little redhead you've ever seen, Lilly Snow, born on 22 December, 2008. How cool is THAT?
So what happened with Jim's dad? That, my friend, is a story for another time. It's nearly 4am here in Chicago and I think it's time for me to get a little more sleep before I have to get ready for work. Good night, whoever you are... sweet dreams.
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