Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

I’m not the type of girl to keep journals or anything like that but I have no one to talk to and so much is on my mind. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the past and what should have been. I know it’s pointless to backpedal and relive what can’t be changed but I need to get this off my chest. Maybe then I won’t have so much regret. So here it goes.

My teenage years were something to be proud of. I was the Winter Court Queen. I had good grades. I danced ballet and had more friends than I could count. Plus lots of boyfriends.

Hmm, the boyfriends…looking back, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were  my downfall. I loved the fact that so many boys wanted to date me. How could they not? My body was sleek and graceful from years of ballet dancing. My ebony hair was long, thick and it complimented my honey complexion perfectly. See Diary? Even now I still hold a thin strand of conceit despite my lackluster appearance of today. I guess some things never change.

Ricky was the boy who got the snowball rolling in the wrong direction. He was a stereotypical high school Adonis: star quarterback, popular, rich and oh, so gorgeous. He always had a flock of girls in every corner but he only had eyes for me, and like a fool I fell right into the trap.

We only dated for a month before I gave into him. He wanted sex from the very beginning but I held out. Oh, I fully planned on sealing the deal but I wanted the illusion of being his “girlfriend” before I gave up the goods and got passed over for the new flavor of the month. I wasn’t stupid. Even back then, I knew how things worked.

Or maybe I didn’t. He stuck around after we had sex the first time, much to my surprise. He even stuck around after I got pregnant.

Of course, pregnancy wasn’t a part of the teenage dream but was a part of teenage reality. It had happened to a couple of my friends and they managed to deal with it fine. So I wasn’t worried at all when I told Ricky I was carrying his child. We both agreed to get an abortion and continue on with our lives. He would go off to play college football. I would become a famous prima ballerina.

Too bad my parents didn’t see things that way.

Mom and Dad were livid to find out I was pregnant at sixteen. I can still feel the heat of shame and embarrassment that flooded my face while Dad yelled at me. Mom just sat at the kitchen table with tears flooding her eyes and streaming down her face. Her whole demeanor read “disappointed” and the only thing I could do was hang my head.

They made me keep the baby. I was too young to have an abortion without parental consent. I had made a mistake so I had to pay for it.

With their help (and Ricky’s occasional contribution) I managed to carry on with the pregnancy and everything was fine at first. I was eighteen weeks when the baby became too much for my small body to handle. As the weeks went on, I watched in horror as my body morphed into something large and grotesque. I was no longer graceful; I was clumsy and slouched on the best of days. I was sick all the time so school was out of the question. My blood pressure would shoot up just from me walking across the room. How many days did I spend in the hospital? I lost count.

Baby Sarah was born a week behind schedule by C-section. As soon as I heard her scream with her lungs full of air for the first time, I knew I loved her. But in the months following her birth, resentment began to settle in. My body was foreign to me; the weight I had gained with Sarah stubbornly remained attached to my body. I had no time to practice any stretching exercises to keep my muscles limber or to take classes. My dream of becoming a ballerina quickly slipped away from me.

All my life I had been a ballet dancer. It was my dream to get accepted to The American Ballet Company after high school and I worked so hard to transform my body into a graceful work of art and perfect my technique. If only I had said “no” to Ricky…if only I had been smarter with my decisions…

Sarah is four years old now and I’m not as bitter as I used to be. I just received my G.E.D. and soon I’ll start taking classes at the community college here in town. Ricky still comes around whenever he has the time. Sarah is the apple of his eye and he does what he can for her but he’s usually preoccupied with his college football training. After all, he is still a star quarterback.

As for myself, I still daydream about being on a stage in leotards with adoring fans admiring the fluidity of my movements to the ballet music that floods the auditorium. But the reality of that dream is gone.

So long ballerina. Hello Mommy.

Prompt: Write a story or poem about a missed opportunity
Word count: 892 (excluding prompt explanation)