Home. It felt weird to walk through the familiar streets. Nothing had changed. A lot had changed. Old buildings were gone and new modern buildings were domineering the street. I hadn’t been home in ten years. Nothing had been waiting for me here. No one. When I left for college fifteen years ago, I had kept in touch with Cody and Cameron and Scott, but as life turns, we drifted apart until all that was left were Facebook friend requests and a sporadic message on Christmas or on birthdays. My family had shunned me when I came out. That relationship had never been mended. I had learned to live with the loss of them. Still, my unconscious want to see them must have been immense because when I looked around, I was standing in front of my old home. It hadn’t changed at all. I had the urge to push the stroller up the driveway and introduce my little girl to her grandparents. But again, I didn’t give in to any urges that were set to get me hurt.
I am sure you want to know how I ended up being a single parent. The story is short and uneventful. I met Dobson Dawson – yes that was his real name, during my last year at college. I fell for him hard and quick. He reminded me of my first love. Maybe that had amplified those feelings. We moved in together and we married the same year. Everything happened very fast. And we were euphoric. Dawson became the first man with whom I had a real adult relationship. We had our own apartment, we shared the bills…. We were the perfect couple. He made me laugh with his dry wit and he made me angry with that too. There were times when he couldn’t be serious and real problems seemed to be a joke for him. Still, after having been married for a couple of years, we decided to try out adoption. By then, I worked as an interior designer and Dawson worked a steady job as an accountant. Sounds grown up, doesn’t it? Well, he wore his suits to go to work, and he looked good in them too, but the moment he came home, he morphed into a belching slob who was wearing tank tops and ratty sweatpants. At the adoption agency, we didn’t stand a chance. The primary concern was our age. We were too young. Oh, we were devastated. I think me more than him. More determined than ever, we decided to save up all our money to pay a surrogate. I ended being the sperm donor because… I don’t even know why, but I preferred it that way. We had several tries, but it never went well. It put a strain on our marriage, to say the least. I was preoccupied with the thought of a baby and I think that during that time, Dawson began to retreat and have enough of it. He didn’t say it out loud, but I think that somewhere along he realized that he didn’t want to have a child and the costs to have that baby were growing more and more. We didn’t fight at all. We still slept together and we still had sex, but the passion was gone. Maybe I had grown bored too. I don’t know. But everything came together. I quit my job to be a stay at home husband and dad. I didn’t feel valued at all and Dawson kept going like always. Going to work in his suits that I had ironed for him. He went to after work parties and I stayed home, dreaming about a more fulfilling life. Somehow I had the idea, that a baby would change all of this.
Then came that day when our surrogate went into labor and she gave birth to a little girl. Ava. I had my first ever girl crush. Needless to say that our lives did change drastically with the baby. Dawson was a loving father, but he never got up at night and he never changed a diaper. He rarely fed her, but he sang to her all the time. I think he hadn’t realized that a newborn can’t actually interact and he became frustrated with the whole situation. I didn’t see our relationship going wrong back then, but now, in hindsight, I know that I was ignoring the facts. Up until the day when Dawson took my hand over dinner and said the dreaded words “We need to talk.” He told me that the situation was too much for him to handle and that he didn’t feel that he was ready to be a parent, after all. We screamed, we cursed and we cried. Then we hugged and agreed that our marriage was over. We were both thirty-one by now. Young enough to have a future. Old enough to have a past. It was Dawson’s idea that I should have sole custody of our girl. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. I am sure he did, but he didn’t have a relationship with her and he worked full time while I was her primary caregiver. Within a couple of months, we were divorced. It had been easy because we had split amicably. Dawson paid monthly child support, he still does. I looked for a job that allowed me to take care of little Ava as much as possible, but I couldn’t find anything in our area. In my desperate state, I checked out the job offers back home. And that’s how I ended, here again.
I found a job and a home at Ritchie’s café. He had a small apartment above the café and he offered it to me and Ava. Gratefully we took it. Ritchie allowed me to bring Ava to work and it wasn’t a rare thing to see me with my little girl strapped to my front, serving coffee and pie to customers. And that was how I glided back into my old life. With a baby and a low paid job.
reflections of an unquiet mind 