Secrets

It was a cold day in February 1969, as I stood at my mother's bedroom window. Gazing out at the neighborhood that lay before me, I saw nothing. I may as well have been a million miles from that room at that moment.  What was going to happen to me after today, and what did my future hold in store?  Frightened, I was afraid to contemplate too much on any one question.

17 years old and two short months before my 18^th birthday, I was a senior in high school and would be graduating in June.

My mother's hopes were of my becoming a registered nurse. I so wanted to live up to her expectations. It was doubtful that was going to happen right now, if at all.

My mother and father were in the middle of a bitter divorce. My father had met the proverbial "other woman", and left his wife of 18 years. Turning his back on his family, he sauntered in and out of our lives as he pleased, barely giving my mother enough money to pay the utility bills and buy food. My mother was in and out of a dark depression, often drinking her sorrow and worries away with gin and vodka. I had never seen my mother like this before. She cried and drank deep into the night, stumbling off to bed in the wee hours of the morning. She always made sure she was awake to see us off to school in mornings though.

I had a habit of manipulating the situation and staying home with my mother. I'm not sure why she allowed me to stay home with her. Perhaps she wanted the company during the day, or maybe she was just too tired to fight with me about it. I invented headaches and sore throats at the drop of a hat. We become closer during this period of time than ever before.

I worried about my mother and felt so much empathy and compassion for her, that sometimes I couldn't stand it. Often times my feelings would turn into anger against her because I thought she was giving into all the hurt and depression. I felt she should fight for what was rightly hers. Instead she withdrew. She had invested 18 years of her life in a relationship with a man that she loved deeply, and now another woman was tearing her world apart.

Standing at that window that cold day in February, I wasn't thinking consciously about any of that though. All I could think about was the overwhelming feelings of anxiety, failure, shame and loneliness.

I was pregnant.