“My first true love went to jail, and I became a small-town girl with an over-sexualized reputation. Teachers hit on me. Dads from the daycare I worked at stalked me. I was ridiculed, taunted, labeled easy. Enter more boys.”
‘There was a catch. This boy was technically a man. At 20-years-old, our sexual relationship was illegal. After hiding our meetups, I came home to find a police officer on my couch.’
‘It’s fine. It’s fine.’ His words replayed on a cruel loop after he left. I sat on a table in a dark room, bleeding and trying to make them mean something like comfort. This stuff did not happen to ME.’
“He told me to follow him to a section of the warehouse I had never been in. There was nothing necessarily violent about it, but it was forceful. My ‘no’ was not an angry scream, but it was repeated several times.”
‘Hey, Grace. A baby girl was abandoned at the hospital. She doesn’t even have a name. Can you come pick her up in an hour?’
“I open the fridge, over and over, to prove to children there is always food. I attend IEP meetings and I advocate for kids. But you know what else I do?”
‘This is DFS calling. His name is Baby Boy (he hasn’t been given a name). His mother abandoned him at the hospital. He is currently in the NICU ready to be released.’
“Just that morning I was sad I wouldn’t have a ‘baby’ anymore because mine was turning 3, and now I was picking up a baby.”
‘You abandoned me, but I’m only stronger now.’
“I realized why I hadn’t given up on someone so toxic for so long. I just wanted to be loved by a man. I wanted to feel acceptance from a man.”
‘He didn’t have to take on the father role. But he was certain from the start this is what he wanted.’
“After my relationship with the biological father didn’t work out, I thought I had failed my son. I had no clue that the person, who I thought was too good to be true, would come into our lives and love us both unconditionally.”
