Every Corner of My Life

I believe being a birth mother is an amazing blessing. I have learned so many things through my journey, and it has made me the person I am today. I also believe in some ways, it makes some things harder. Obviously there are all the emotions and pain we go through, but I also believe being a birth mother affects the relationships we have. In my life I see this, particularly in new relationships (ones who didn't know me before I was a birth mother). I do not think these relationships are harmed in any way, and often they are nourished because of my journey, but they are very much affected. These people never knew the person I was before, and they cannot understand the journey I traveled to get to where I am today. Without the experience of those very formative months of my life it is hard to fully understand me. 

I have recently been very aware of how my husband (and I'm sure others) pay for some of the things I went through during my pregnancy with my son. I had a very difficult time with the birth father and his entire family. There was very little respect or concern for what I was going through. When my son was born they showed a sense of entitlement to this baby which they had not done anything for or seemed to care for in any way. I was this pawn for them in their game, and only useful when they were getting something from me. 

As I have gone through other pregnancies I have experienced similar feelings with

my husband's family. It is in no way the same situation, and there is not the same hatred and disrespect surrounding it all. However, there is enough that the feelings are the same for me, and because of my experience with my son's birth, I am thrown right back to that time six years ago. 

I know in many ways this is not fair, and it is very hard for people to understand when they did not walk that path with me the first time around. For me, it is real. The feelings hurt all over again and the fear of a repeat is clear in my mind. It brings it all back in the form of flashbacks and memories which feel as if they are occurring at that moment. 

It has become important to me to set boundaries. I know that I have certain triggers which make everything harder, and unfortunately, just giving birth is one of them. While the experience with each child is different and special, it also puts me back in that place. Being in the same hospital going through labor once again, it is impossible for me to completely separate the situations. I know this is hard for others to understand, but for me it is my reality. So I try my best to help others understand and I work very hard to prepare myself for these feelings and prevent what I can.  

Being a birth mother is such an incredible gift. It is part of my story, and whether people realize it or not, it reaches into every corner of my life. It can pop up at any time in any way imaginable. I don't have it all figured out yet, and I probably never will. What I do know is that those people who are worth having in my life will take the time to try and understand, and still accept me when they cannot understand. It's all part of the journey. 

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The Dating Game

Okay, before I start into this piece, let me be as clear as possible: this is not a man hating piece.  The majority of my close friends are men.  I have known many good men in this life, including the father of my child who is still my best friend.

That said, dating, when being a birthmother, can be terrible.  After having my son, his father and I broke up about a year later.  Not really due to our son and all that happened.  More due to a matter of distance (we live in two cities over a hundred miles apart) and time and being in different places in our lives.  As I said, we are still the best of friends.  And maybe one day we'll be together again.  Just neither of us are certain at this point.

Since then, I have dabbled on a dating site, although my profile is set to "only looking for friends."  That's about as far into the dating realm as I have gone.  And I know it's partly due to fear.  It's hard enough for me to explain to new friends about my son and all the things entailed with him.  Trying to explain this to someone who I might be dating and when in the world to do that in the course of a date or a relationship, ugh, just sets my head spinning.  As I've said before, Ms. Manners did not write a chapter on how to best approach any of this.  But some days I really wish that she had.  I'd have some idea of what to do.  But like most every birthmother I know, I do the only thing I can: whatever makes sense at the time.

In the past month, I have had two birthmother friends have problems with their significant others.  The problems, while unique to us, were easy for my others friends to understand.  One shouldn't have to hide away another part of their life because it makes the significant other feel uncomfortable.  One shouldn't have to explain why they are still in contact with their children.  One should never be put in a position where essentially one must choose between the child they still love and the man they are dating.  And I hope one never has the fact that they are a birthmother thrown out at them in anger by their significant other when in the middle of a fight.  It's unfair and it's uncalled for.  And in the end, it most likely has absolutely nothing to do with what the fight was about in the first place.  It's just taking a part of ourselves and using it as a weapon against us.  This is something I hope no one ever has to experience.  But I know that others have, and will have it happen.  I just hope that if any of this does happen to you in a relationship, you are willing to leave that person.  I know it might break your heart.  But I know it would break more to cut off communication with your child (if there is any) and even worse when who you are is used against you because we cannot change who we are.  We are birthmothers.  And anyone who wants to be in our lives has to accept that fact or, unfortunately, walk away.

In my anger and confusion, I turned to a couple guy friends of mine.  I know that may sound a little odd, but what I really wanted was an outside perspective.  So I talked to them and asked them a couple important questions: Would you date a birthmother?  Would the fact that a woman is a birthmother and still in contact with her child bother you?  Both of them did say that while they would wish that the first time they were a father it would be the first time for their wife as well, sometimes it's simply not possible.  And in this instance, obviously, it wouldn't be possible.  But that would not be something that would bother them and by no means would be a deal breaker when getting into a relationship with someone.  As one of them said, we all come with baggage.  The only thing is whether or not you can deal with the baggage someone comes with.  If you can't, you should move on.  But if you can, then you should stay and see what happens.

All this said, I know it is disappointing when trying to get into a relationship with someone and it turns sour because they cannot accept who we are.  But my guy friends also agreed with me that if you want to be in a relationship with someone, you need to accept everything you are.  Certainly, some things can change.  But this is not one of them.  And any person worth your time, should be able to make peace with everything you are.

There are good guys out there.  I know several of them.  So be brave, keep looking forward, and know that, whoever you are, you are an amazing person.  Don't let the stupid boys get you down.

Families

Sorry for the silence past couple of weeks.  The holidays have been a little bit rough.

If you're reading this, congratulations, you survived the holidays and have made it (hopefully) safely into the new year.  I do believe that everyone deserves a round of applause for that.  After all with travel, weather, various kinds of insanity, there are a great many things that can, and sometimes do, go wrong.  The one thing that I have found is constant in life at those times is family.

When I say family, I don't always mean the people that you are related to by blood.  I have a few different families.  Most would call them social groups, and that's a valid name.  But some are close enough that I do call them family.  I spent my holidays with my parents and we had a very nice, calm, relaxed Christmas.  Exchanged a few presents, made some great food, and had good and hilarious conversation.  I learned of problems in our extended family and in particular one of us that I'm going to try to reach out to as much as I'd like to just let her go.  But she is family.

Before I left though, I was in attendance at a party with friends.  A few of these friends I have grown very close to over the past year.  Close enough that soon I will be giving one a ride to pick up her car and then having dinner with her.  This is the family that I've formed here in Athens.  They're the people that I hang out with, go to dinner with, have late-night philosophical conversations with, and the ones that I whisper my secrets too and let them whisper their secrets to me.  They're as close to me as the people I grew up with.  They're the family of friends that I have gained here in Athens.

I hope that I will get to visit my family of friends in Columbus this summer.  I spent nine years of my life there and the connections made there have refused to fade over time.  One friend, who owns a book shop, almost never leaves my thoughts.  And I know when I step into his shop we will probably pick up the conversation we were having the last time I was there.  Sometimes it feels like I have never left once I find the people I knew for years.  Recently, we've suffered a tragedy in our little close-knit family.   And like all families, we are reaching across the lines of communication and assured each other that we are all still here.  We are still family.

Later this month, my son, J, and his parents will be coming over to my parents' house for the "Christmas visit."  It's been pushed back a little because of illness and problems in their family.  But his mother assured me that they are looking forward to seeing us, and I do believe her.  They have just had a difficult year, and I know it.  My son lost two grandparents this year.  And I know one was a much tougher loss than the other.  I know one was expected and one wasn't.  But like all families, they have bonded together to see each other through.  His father and I have talked every month at the poetry readings.  We hang out together afterwards and I get to hear how my son is doing on a very intimate level.  And this is the family I have made with my son.  I'm very lucky in this, and I'm no idiot, I know this doesn't always happen.  But sometimes it does.  It's different from every other family I've had.  They're closer than friends.  Yet not as close as family.  But we share a life together.  We share one life, J's life.  We both watch him grow and am amazed by it every day.  We are learning together what to do and what he may be one day.  And this family I believe will always be a part of my life just as my blood family, my Columbus family, and my Athens family always will be.

Here's to you all and your families wherever they may be.  Hug them tight, let them know you're there, and I hope you all know that no matter what happens in your lives, you are loved by someone.

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The Grief Cycle Part 4: Depression

If I was honest, I'd say that I've been struggling with depression on and off since age 13.  It's hereditary in my family.  And my life hasn't been a cake walk.  Granted, no one's is.  But when one is already genetically predisposed to this condition, it doesn't take much to trigger it.

So you would think that having been through it before, I would know when I was in the middle of it and how to get out of it again.  And you and I would be wrong.  I didn't figure out that I was sunk hip deep in the middle of a depression until I was sitting in a room with about twenty other birthmothers staring at a simple diagram of the grief cycle in May of 2013.  But it did make me realize what had now been going on for the past five months.

So now I drove back to Georgia with the knowledge that I was hip deep in a depression and not sure what to do about it.  I'd tried counseling.  It's worked for me in the past.  But now money and health insurance and one friend who is a psychologist trying out a few until I found the right one just discouraged me.  I do still think that counseling is a very good way to understand and cope and should definitely be utilized.  I just lost patience.  So I decided to take the summer and just drop into the thick of it.  If I was going to be depressed, fine then, I would be depressed.  I went to work every day on time.  I wrote a few things here and there.  I watched a good bit of Netflix and YouTube.  I drifted rather listlessly through life not really trying to do anything other than keep breathing and keep walking, always trying to believe that sooner or later the way out would reveal itself.

I would talk to various friends online.  But I didn't really have any friends in the city that I hung out with on a regular basis or really even knew.  I had a few friends and acquaintances from work.  But most of them were married or older than me.  Not really the people you call at ten o'clock at night hoping to go out for a pint.  And for some reason I was paranoid that I would have to cut ties and leave this city just as quickly as I had left Columbus when I was pregnant.  I had no basis for this thought in the rational world.  It was just my own paranoid brain making up something so I wouldn't have to deal with anyone and wouldn't have the chance to find friends just to lose them.  Most of all, I didn't want anyone new to have to be exposed to this half-human version of myself that I was at the time.  But sometimes the universe has other ideas.

I had met a guy in June.  His name is Rob.  I didn't speak to him again until August.  And a year ago this week I ended up spending almost all week with him at various functions and parties.  He became my first friend in Athens outside of work.  With him came others.  People that he introduced me to.  One of whom is named Kristin.  When the three of us met, we were all recovering from terrible points in our lives for a variety of different reasons.  I can honestly say that this time last year was the turning point for me.  This was the moment where I found people I could relate to; people who didn't mind where I had been or what I had done; people who understood depression and understood sinking into that ugly blackness in order to get to the root of it all and understand why it was there.

Rob pulled me into the writer's group that we are both members of.  And because of that, I started writing more.  I started writing more stories and more poetry.  One of his friends was the reason I went to the open mic poetry reading where I found my son and his adoptive parents that wild night in October.  My son's adoptive father is the leader of that poetry group and I still attend every week to read and listen to more and more poetry and hear what others have to say.

Because I was writing so much, it was only natural that eventually I would start to write about my son and what I had just been through.  I began to take Ernest Hemingway's advice to heart: "Write hard and clear about what hurts."  I wrote blistering and blazing poems that described in gory detail just how much I hurt.  And it was luck that the few times the poems were said in public, either Rob or Kristin were there to hold me after saying everything that there was to say about what was wrong.  They didn't question or judge.  And I am forever grateful that they have been there.

Writing, it seemed, was my path out.  When I wrote, I finally released everything in my chest that I had stored up there.  I was starting to understand the root of it all.  While what I had done was something good, something that I should have done, something that I shouldn't be ashamed of, and something that was the best decision for my son, what I had done was incredibly painful.  I had given birth to a son and then placed him in the arms of others.  I had given birth to a son and then sent him away.  I had given birth to my first child, and now he was gone from me.  In my attempts to try to settle with what I had done, I had never quite acknowledged the pain that I was in.  The pain that, of course, anyone would be in after having to do something like that for the sake of one's child having a better life.  And finally, finally, I was venting that pain and wrapping bandages around the wounds and coming out of the dark.  I had finally gotten to the point that I didn't want to be in the dark anymore.  I was finally starting to climb out towards the light.

The way I got out isn't for everyone.  There were some very dark days in the midst of this and there were days that I didn't want to get out.  Like I said before, I have nothing against counseling or psychotherapy or even medications used to treat this.  I've done them all.  Find what works for you and use that to your advantage.  These treatments are tools that you can use to get out of your depression.  So is writing, art, music, and talking with trusted friends or clergy.  Whatever you need to get out, please don't ever be afraid to ask for it and don't ever be afraid of what someone else thinks of you for needing it.  This is your life.  Do what you need to do.

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Disapproving Friends

How do we express our boundaries when a friend disapproves of our actions? Recently I was having a conversation with a rather good friend. She has been supportive of my writing endeavors and I told her about some recent events. She then asked me if I had told my mother about all I was doing. I said no and was shocked by her disapproving look. I started to defend myself but then thought better of it. Shouting at her over the roar of the bowling alley is not my style, so I chose to wait until I got home and link her to some of what I've already written about that most difficult relationship.

Later that night as I was reflecting on the day, I started writing in my journal. Apparently I had a lot to say! My reasoning goes something like this. The closer I grow to God, the more myself I become. It's not about being anything other than who God made me to be. My friend thinks I'm wrong to do the blogging that I do without first talking to my mother. I guess I can either live what's left of my life for my mom or I can live it for God. I'm trying my best to honor her, but I won't let fear dictate how I live or what I say or do. I feel like I kept my mouth shut for so long because she didn't want me talking about 'it'.

But that's not who I am anymore. I have a brain and a mouth and I know how to type and as long as you, God, give me words to say and an audience, I'm going to keep talking and writing.

So who is it in your life that is holding you back? Who is it that despite all your efforts and hard work still calls you names? We've been talking about boundaries a whole lot here, and I believe this is more of that same theme. Because she is my mom and I love her, I continue to fight to find a way to have a relationship with her. But I can't do that without knowing what my limits are and how to express them in a way she can understand.

This life is exhausting girls. I'm so glad I am not on this path alone.



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Tell Your Story

Historically, birthmothers have been a population of women who have been bullied into silence.  And there were always reasons that at least seemed important at the time.  Mostly they were attached to how the community and society would see the woman and her family.  Women were supposed to be good and pure and polite.  Talking about an unplanned pregnancy at tea time would mostly likely make the older women in the room faint.  Even if that pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, there was still shame and fear heaped upon the women in these impossible situations.  While today unplanned pregnancies aren’t met with anywhere near the shame and societal pressures they were once met with, somehow, when one is a birthmother, we are still expected to keep silent.

I’ve been thinking about this a good deal of late; mostly because I've gotten more comfortable with telling my friends and co-workers about my son.  For a time there I only spoke to family, the small handful of friends I had who knew, and the birthmothers that I met through a support group run by the adoption agency I placed through.

My family didn't know really what to say.  My parents were also trying to understand why I had made my decision and what it meant about them.  I had to tell them at one point that in the end, this wasn’t about them.  This was about me, my boyfriend, and our son.  I had to make this decision for the three of us.  My parents’ age and health was a factor.  But it was not the only, nor the deciding factor.  It took us a couple of years before we could get to a point where we could talk to each other about it.  For a time there, it was painful on both sides and it was easier at times to just not talk about it.

My friends also didn't really know what to say.  I didn't expect them to.  I had suddenly apportioned myself off from everyone my age.  Anyone I knew who had gotten unexpectedly pregnant before had either terminated the pregnancy, had a miscarriage, or chose to give birth to and parent the child.  What I was going through, none of them ever had.  No one was sure what to do or what to say to me.  In the subsequent years, I have told others.  I have found a couple of birthmothers and a few adult adoptees who have helped me and have made me feel less alone.  My current circle of friends knows everything there is to know.  These friends have been the closest friends that I've had in a while.  We've gotten good at reading each other’s tone and each other’s mood.  And they know that I am going to my son’s birthday party tomorrow afternoon.  And I've been invited to one of the circle’s birthday party tomorrow night.  He’s declared that if I don’t feel up to it, he won’t be upset or insulted if I don’t appear at his party.  I told him I would let him know one way or the other.  Right now, I think I can do it.  But this kind of empathy I don’t find with every one of my friends.  So I count myself lucky when I do.

The other birthmothers that I have met and have become friends with are the ones who have almost understood everything I am going through and everything that I am saying.  Now and again a situation will come up that no one has faced before, but they make me feel less crazy when they say, “Oh honey, I would have no idea what to do either.  I’m so sorry.”  One birthmother in particular, K, has been a good close friend and a great support to me over the past few years.  Her daughter is several years older than my son.  Thus things like my sadness over missing the first steps, the first words, and the stake to the heart that is hearing him say “Mama” for the first time to someone who isn't me, were always met with understanding and kindness from her.  I saw her for the first time in months last week and it was a relief to speak to her since my son’s birthday was coming up so soon.  Hopefully I will be seeing her next month.

I have told my story and talked about being a birthmother in one other venue, and it is almost always to a room that is at least half strangers.  I have told stories.  I have read poetry.  I have called attention to the fact that birthmothers are out there and have stories to tell.  We shouldn't be ashamed of what we did and we shouldn't let others make us feel ashamed.  There are those who are shocked by my story.  There are those who gain a better understanding of me.  There are still others, I’m sure, who judge and dismiss me.  They wish that people like me, and the other birthmothers I know, would be quiet and keep shameful things like what I did to myself.  I’m not ashamed of what I did.  Most days I’m at peace with my decision.  Some days are harder than others.  I know that my son is where he needs to be in order to have the best life that he can.

My hesitance to share my story at times comes solely from my fear of how others will treat me and how they will react to my story.  While I know I did the right thing for my child and no one can tell me different, it does still sting when someone tells me that I abandoned my child.  It does still burn when they stare at me like a monster who left their kid on some street corner to be picked up by God knows who.  And it does make me feel about two inches tall when they tell me that surely with my family and my boyfriend and his family there was a way to make it work.  There was.  But that way would have been extremely difficult for everyone involved and my boyfriend and I knew better.  We knew that our son would suffer.  And that was something that we could not allow.

Our stories are stories that need to be told.  Our stories are important and should be acknowledged for their importance.  All of you have a story to be told and everyone’s is unique.  I encourage all of you, tell your story.  Write it, talk it, act it out, whatever you have to do, but please, tell your story.  Don’t be scared of it or ashamed of it.  It’s part of who you are and you should honor it.  If people judge you for it, that’s their problem.  There will be so many others who will love you for it and still others who will gain bravery and strength from it.

Extracting Humor and Joy

"Henry."

"Henry?"

"Yes, Henry.  You have a problem with Henry?"

"Why do you want to call him Henry?"

"Because then I can call him Indiana!"

Realization hits me.  My son's biological father is actually arguing for fan service when trying to decide on our child's name.  The child who ten minutes ago we decided we should place for adoption because that's the best thing that we can do for this kid still living in my belly.  We're famous for doing things backwards.  So, of course, we decide to place our child for adoption and then we start arguing about the name that he should have.

"We're not naming him Henry!"

"Then we're naming him Indiana!"

"No!!  This is not happening!"

This argument went on like this for about ten minutes before his mother came out of her bedroom to determine what we were shouting and laughing about.  After adding her disapproval to the pile of objections I had just spouted, he finally asks,

"Okay, fine.  What do you want to name him?"

"The only name I've ever had for a boy is J. P."  He thinks for a second.

"Why do you have that name?"

"Because every girl has done this at some point and because that was the name I was going to have if I was a boy.  J. P. is my great-grandfather's name."

"I like J.  I just don't like P."

"Okay, fine!  We can compromise on this.  What's his middle name then?"  He looks to his little brother who is slumped in a recliner after laughing at us for the past twenty minutes.

"Why don't we name him after my brother?  His middle name is N."

"J. N.  Okay.  Yeah.  I like it."

"Alright, there.  We have a name."  He sits down on the couch next to me and for the tenth time that day rubs my swollen belly trying to feel our kid moving around.

"What about a girl's name?"  *sigh*

I'll save you the suspense and tell you that the hilarious part is that we decided on a girl's name in about a minute flat.  But we had a boy on our hands.  So the girl's name was never needed.

About two weeks later, I was sitting in a room at the adoption agency with my boyfriend, my boyfriend's mother, my mother, my birth counselor, J's future parents, their adoption counselor, and I believe at least one other birth counselor.  All of us packed into one tiny room with a tiny fountain that didn't work.

"We have a name picked out for him," I say with some trepidation.  "It's up to you if you want to keep it.  But we do have a name."

"What is it?" they asked.

"J. N.  It's a combination of family names; one from mine and one from his."  They surprised me immediately when they liked the name and kept it.  At the time, his future dad said,

"If we had gotten pregnant and had gone through the whole process, we probably would have thought of something.  But I like that name.  It's good.  It's a good name."

A few weeks prior I had said to my mother after a particularly long and insane wait at the car rental place,

"Mother, you have to extract joy from life where you can!"

So, after making the most painful decision of our lives, we laughed as we argued over a name.  When meeting the people who we would give our child to, we found that they were happy to keep the name we had so hilariously argued over two weeks ago.  It is still his name.  It still reminds me of a hilarious twenty minute argument and it still makes me smile.  In situations like this, you must find joy and humor where you can.  It may look crazy to those on the outside.  But when shared with those closest to you, it will bind you together and comfort you when you just feel like busting apart and sending everyone away from you.

So, yes, his name is still J. N.  And it still makes me smile.

Unique and Special

In my last post, Bonding, I talked a little about how good boundaries are rooted in strong, steady relationships. And that without strong relationships and a safe place to land, it is hard or nearly impossible to keep good boundaries.

So this week I want to review a couple more basics from the same book, Boundaries (Cloud &Townsend, 1992). The terms separation and individuation simply refer to our need as humans to identify ourselves as separate from others. This experience takes place in childhood, but as we grow up through different life stages, it's important to continue identifying ourselves as separate from other people even while being a part of them. Let me try and explain.

The hatching phase of this process is the time when as a toddler you recognized, sometimes suddenly, that you and mommy were not the same person. It's the time when you started crawling away from mommy and towards new things in order to touch them and explore them more closely. This is the beginning of us seeing ourselves as our own unique person designed with a special plan and for a special purpose.

In the practicing phase, we felt invincible, that we could do anything with no bad consequences. Of course that's not true, but it's also important that toddlers learn for themselves the fun side of this phase.

Finally, there's the third phase, called rapprochement, where we learned that we can't do everything. It's like a reality check. The toddler comes back to a relationship with her mother, but comes back having had her own experiences and thoughts. And so essentially she comes back as her own person, not simply as an extension of her mother.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because as adults, we could be stuck in one of these areas even though we're all grown up. Sometimes peer groups can pull us back into one of these phases by making us feel that if we are not of the same mindset, we just won't fit in any more.

Sometimes we never fully separated from our parent or caregiver that raised us. It's hard to be your own person in this world. It seems to me that there are lots of voices on tv and the radio and the internet and other sources telling us what to be, how to act, what to think, what to look like, even what to like and not like. It's hard to be our own person. But if God would have wanted a world full of people who thought exactly alike, he would have created robots, not humans with the ability to think for ourselves.

You are unique and special and designed for a purpose. Don't let anyone tell you differently. You are allowed to think your own thoughts and have your own opinions and be your own person. That's exactly what you were created to do.

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Bonding

At the retreat, we enjoyed a breakout session on boundaries led by yours truly. And while an hour is not nearly enough time on such an important topic, it was a start.

For me personally, boundaries have been a struggle over the years. I don't feel like I got a good grasp on them growing up at home. I certainly didn't know how to draw lines in high school or college. It was only after I got out and away on my own that I really started realizing that I was in charge of myself. No one else was going to take care of me. It was hard when I started saying 'no' and doing my own thing. But it has been well worth it.

So where do boundaries come from? and how do we learn them? According to the book Boundaries (Cloud and Townsend, 1992) that I referenced in the breakout session, the very foundation of our boundaries is actually rooted in bonding. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, individuals need to belong. The need is so strong, in fact, that we see it in children who continue to cling to parents who abuse them.

God created us for connection. And many times when we draw a boundary, it can feel as though we are being 'mean' when in fact we are simply caring for ourselves. In order to have good boundaries, we need to have strong, healthy relationships that will support us in our quest for health. So stated simply, we cannot develop or set boundaries apart from supportive relationships with God and others.

So I challenge you to think through your family and friends. Who among those is truly supportive of your need to develop and maintain boundaries? Who among those is dead set on getting their way and making you do what they want you to do? Starting to recognize the difference is the first step towards change.

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Relationships After Placement

I don't know about you, but after I gave birth to Micah, all I wanted was someone to hold me in the middle of the night when I was shaking from crying so hard. Knowing that my son was never going to be laying next to me in my bed just made it that much harder feeling like I was all alone. I've been on a few dates since Micah, but nothing clicked like baby daddy and I did. Granted, we weren't dating, but it was the closest thing to it.

Bachelor number one: We'll just call him Mark. Mark and I went on a few dates over the summer of 2012. A mutual friend had set us up, so he knew I was headed off to college in the fall. He was a sweet guy, but dumb as a brick. I know what you're thinking, "Why is she being so harsh on the guy? He was probably just nervous!" I bet he was, but it didn't help his case when he walked to my door wearing a muscle shirt, offering me free tickets to the "gun show". And then he proceeded to tell me he was being scouted to play for the Baltimore ravens football team... while tripping over the sidewalk. Ladies, I wish I was making this up. Needless to say, things didn't work out. 

Bachelor number two: Let's call him Jason. Jason and I started hanging out at college in the fall of 2012. We had a ton of stuff in common, so I was really excited to go out with him! Our first date was pretty awkward, but aren't they all? We went to a pizza place and talked for hours. It was perfection. I was so happy to finally have someone I could talk to about Micah. He completely understood me. Now, I'm the kind of person that always has her guard up and is waiting for the other shoe to drop. But with Jason I didn't have to worry about anything. It felt like we were soulmates. We lived happily ever after, the end (I wish). It was right before winter break. I'd finished my final early, so I went over to his dorm room to surprise him and give him his Christmas present. We'd been dating for about 5 months, so I wanted to get him something special. I spent a months worth of paychecks to buy him a pair of Oakley sunglasses and tickets to an Eagles game. I walked in on him and another girl. To top it off, the girl was my roommate. 

I literally have THE worst luck with guys, and these are just two examples of the dates I've gone on and the douchebags I've met. How's your luck been since placement? Hopefully better than mine! Leave me a comment below and let me know!

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