Up, Down, and all around

An absolute first rough draft. Late at night writing. Would love feed back I have just begun to write. Thanks JS


It was just a normal day. Get up, drink coffee, smoke. Drop Bear off at school, go to work. I dont know what compelled me to stop and get that stupid stick. Perhaps a gut feeling, some instinct. Some wondering part of my brain that wanted to check "just in case". All the while in the back of my head laughing at the absurdity of it. I had no doubt in my mind I would get a chuckle out of it and then throw it away just like I had countless times before. It was a miracle I had had Bear. I had seen a negative so many times that it was just second nature to expect it. The unsurpassable pain and heart break that had come from the two times it had come up positive, only to learn how it felt to lose something before you ever really even had it.
So I went along with my life never worrying that any of them would come up positive. Why would it, Now that I was alone. When my life was in such a catastrophic spiraling downward spiral of drugs and alcohol. To have lost life hardly begun when it was wanted so bad, just to get it when it couldn't have been a more impossible time.
Im pregnant.
I sat in the recliner, motionless, holding a simple stick that told me my whole life had just imploded. It sucked all the air out of the room. No noise could be heard. I felt irrepressible fear. Blinking and rubbing my eyes hoping that when I looked again, hoping with all hope, that I had seen it wrong. Honestly I knew I didn't really have any right to be shocked. I knew what I was doing when I did it. Its not like it was some mystery as to how I got here. To say I had a very active sex life would be watering it down... a lot. Drugs, alcohol and sex. That was air to me. Yet I still sat there in complete shock as the words Pregnant stared at me from this stick. Not two lines, not a plus sign. No, I had splurged and gotten the digital reading pregnancy test. That way there was absolutely no doubt. No lying to myself pretending I didn't see the second pink line. I was 100 percent pregnant.

Looking at this stick in my hand... I simply couldn't breath. How am I going to do this... I am a single mom already and barely hanging on. Im doing the best I can to raise Bear and failing every single second of every day. I've failed at life in all ways you could possible think of, and now I'm PREGNANT". ( Maybe I will lose it, I thought. immediate regret strangled me. irrepressible guilt. An alcoholic, a 2 pack a day smoker... pot head. Pregnant. Hadn't life handed her a crap hand already. Yet, if I was honest with myself, no one had made me do anything. Each and every choice I made I made alone and for herself. Whether they were bad or good. "Just get rid of it" was the next sickening thought that creeped into my head. I immediately ran to the bathroom to be sick. How could a thought like that go through my head. I, of all people knew the gift that a baby was. In a span of just a few years had lost two babies before I even felt them kick. Almost died along with them. So how could these thoughts be going through my head. What I thought was impossible just happened. Not when I had cried and begged for it. Not when all life was always surrounded by the need to have back the two tiny souls I had lost. No, it was happening now. When I had no one. I was alone and scared beyond all belief.