If I Had Known Then...........

Often, I am asked if I have any regrets. It is something that I think about frequently. I do have regrets. If I had known then what I know now, I would do a vast number of things differently. Wouldn't most people? I don't know. It seems to me that I am one of the few people I know who admits to having made some of the embarrassing and stupid mistakes in my life that I have made. I know that each experience teaches you something different. You learn each time, and I guess if you don't you are a complete and total moron.

If I could go back in time to the age of thirteen and start over, I would ask a lot more questions. I would trust my Grandmother more. I wish I would have had enough courage to ask her when you are supposed to have sex, and who you are supposed to have sex with. Instead, on a dare, I lost my virginity in the dirty cab of an old pick up truck to an eighteen year old boy that I met that day. I thought that was how you got boyfriends. I thought that was how you fell in love. I was so stupid, that I literally thought, once you slept with someone, you were with that person forever. I never asked any questions. No one ever talked to me about sex, love, losing your virginity, ect. If someone had, maybe I would have waited. If my father wasn't such an absentee loser, maybe I would not have spent the next few years, seeking out older boys and negative attention. Doing absolute mortifying things, to simply make them like me.

I had no clue what sex was supposed to be about until I met my son's father and he refused to sleep with me, why? Because he liked me. It took me forever to wrap my head around that. Then when we finally did sleep together, it wasn't the same as all of the others. I wasn't being banged like a jack hammer in someone's car, basement, parent's house, or tent. Imagine some one liking me enough to take my socks off! It was so unusual to me, that I cried. Then I fell insanely in love with someone who was insanely bad for me. I finally smartend up and broke up with him. We had an apartment together and I moved back in with Grams and Gramps. Two weeks later, after incessant sobbing, my Gram (mother of four herself) told me she thought I would be wise to take a pregnancy test. Sure enough I was preggers! Preggers and single and nineteen years old. I was devistated. I was devistated at the thought of having to go back to the crappy drug addicted boyfriend. So I waited a while to figure out what to do. My grandparents helped me. I decided to keep the baby.

So I delt with it day by day. It was surreal honestly. No one tells you about pregnancy. The real stuff. The constant never ending vomiting, I was literally sick morning, noon, and night. Be that as it may, it did not stop me from eating or gaining weight. I gained about eighty pounds! No one, not a doctor,family member, or friend told me I was gaining too much wieght. To the contrary they stuffed me full of food every opportunity they got. I ate ice cream sandwiches by the boxful, I ate taco kits galore, and every opportunity I had, I ate fast food. People loved to watch me eat, especially old people! Not one person told me how unbelievably hard it would be to lose the wieght after the baby was born. No one told me my boobs would quadruple in size, that I would get awful stretch marks, and at the end of it all still be single and have to date again some day!

In May 2001 I trotted into the hospital, wieghed in at 215 lbs and had an absolutely beautiful 6 lb 11oz baby boy. I loved him at first sight. It was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life. Not the labor, honestly that was no big deal. The pain I felt when I looked at him was almost too much to bare. I realized from now on, that this kid could literally end me. If I lost him, if someone took him, if he died, I would die too. I still feel that way. When we are children, we really have no clue just how much power we wield. My grandmother and I took him home to my new apartment, me wieghing in at 203 lbs, still looked like I was pregnant! I stayed fat until Gavin was about two and I could no longer say "I just had a baby." I still wiegh 20lbs more than I did before I had Gavin.

If I could do it all over again, I would have waited until I was much older to have Gavin. I would have enjoyed Gavin more. Girls stupidly think that when they have a baby, they now have someone to love them forever. WRONG! Babies, do not, I repeat, DO NOT LOVE ANY ONE!! Babies NEED. That is what babies do. They need to be loved, they need to be changed, clothed and fed. They do not give you much in return until they are a lot older. So because I was young, I had to work extra hard to provide Gavin with the things he needed and being his Mom wasn't as fun or rewarding as it should have been had I been older and married. Now that I am older and married, I can see all of this, nice right?

One thing has always been certain to me and still is. I still love that boy like crazy. Even now that instead of screaming like he's on fire morning, noon, and night for days, he is fresh mouthing and nasty to me on occasion. In our darkest hours together, we have come through it all closer and he is the greatest gift I will ever recieve.