Baby Daddy #1

We met and got together in circumstances that weren't nice. In fact, they were just plain heartless. At the time, you were with one of my good friends and swoosh, I pulled a robbery right under her nose. It is something I will never forgive myself for, but in some ways, something I can't regret, because it gave me our son.

I don't know what we thought we were doing, except that you were seventeen and I was eighteen and our brains clearly weren't fully developed and we somehow thought that an unplanned pregnancy at our age, and in our life situation, was exciting. We planned on getting married.

We were living with your brother, his wife, their children, and another adult. They were all heroin addicts. Or ex heroin addicts. They were scamming the welfare system. It didn't bother me at first, but once I had the knowledge that a baby was growing inside of me, everything in my life seemed very, very wrong.

I changed, and I changed fast. You stayed exactly the same. Morning sickness hit and you pulled out a bottle of whiskey from underneath the bed, thinking it would help. You were suicidal, manic, depressive and completely emotionally unhealthy. I loved you and I loved you hard, but I loved my baby boy more.

I left and it was dramatic and angry and resentful and terrible but when I eventually heard that you were found shooting up in the bathroom, I knew with great certainty that I had made the right choice.

You claimed that I pushed you out of the pregnancy, and maybe I did. I called you when the ultrasound revealed that we were having a son. I visited you. I tried to include you, in ways that were fair but safe for me, and safe for Aidan.

In my last month of pregnancy, you called me late at night and told me that I should give Aidan up for adoption. "Give him a real mom," was your exact words. I was enraged. I had moved into my first apartment, all by myself. I was working two jobs and going to school. I had quit smoking very early on in the pregnancy. I was doing everything right. I was working my ass off and trying to build a life for my child.

Even after that phone call, I phoned you as soon as I went into labor. You were living in California at the time, but you came up to visit a few days after Aidan was born. You came over to my apartment and wanted to drive me and Aidan around to show off to all of your friends. I was exhausted and full of stitches and suffering from blood loss and still, I acquiesced to your requests. When we returned home again, you said you were going to pick up a few friends to come over and see the baby. You left and I waited for five hours. When you got to my place with your friends, it was late, and everyone was high. There were boys crashed out on the floor of my apartment while I was pacing the halls with a screaming newborn in the middle of the night.

I invited you to Aidan's first birthday party. I let you take him for visitation when your mother was around. But when you wanted regular, unsupervised visitation, I fought it. You thought I was selfish bitch. I explained the situation to the mediator. "I don't know where he's living, if his home is safe, and he hasn't bonded with his son. Aidan doesn't even know him!" The court ordered you to complete supervised visitation twice a week for six weeks in order for you to have your son with you overnight and unsupervised. You came to a few visits but you were mostly hours late or wouldn't even show at all. Eventually, you stopped coming, and you disappeared into thin air.

A friend called me and told me that you had said that you'd "get custody of Aidan, whether legally or not." I was paralyzed with fear. I immediately called Aidan's daycare provider and explained to her that no one was allowed to pick him up but myself. She promised me that she would never let him play in the front yard. For many years, I lived with the terrifying fear that Aidan would be stolen from me.

And still, even after all of that, I tracked you down and found you and asked if you'd like to see your son. I wanted to make sure that I had done everything in my power to include you in his life. I never once wanted to hear Aidan say that I kept him from his dad. I drove down to your house, a state away, to see where you were living and check things out before I allowed you to take him on weekends. You were sober and friendly and I completely trusted your girlfriend. You should be thankful to her because she is likely the only reason you ever were allowed to spend time with your child.

He spent some weekends with you and then you moved to California. Again, I called you, and asked if you'd like Aidan to come down to visit for a few weeks in the summer. It was arranged and everyone in my life thought I was making the biggest mistake by letting my child cross state lines to stay with you. Sometime during the visit, I realized that he actually wasn't spending much time with you at all, but mainly being taken care of by your mother. I was so angry that I had given you another opportunity and you couldn't even care enough to spend two weeks with the child you had barely ever made the effort to know.

When Aidan came home from California, safe and sound, I knew I was truly done with you. As a courtesy, I began to email you photos of him every year. You never once responded, although I could tell the messages had been opened.

I hear you're in a bad way now and I'm still sorry your life is such a wreck. Aidan is thirteen and old enough to hear the truth. I refuse to hide it from him.

Without you, I have raised a sensitive, smart, funny, polite child. And you...you have missed out on all of it.