Rushed: Part III

Rushed: Part III
By: Mia L. Hazlett
3/4/08

My girlfriends offer me comfort like only girlfriends know how. I know they are holding back and allowing me to let everything sink in. I look around at their faces and this moment is so surreal. I watch my friends talk and laugh, but I don’t hear anything that they are saying. The only thing that echoes through my head is his wife’s words, “Don’t call here again, we are happily married and about to have our fourth child. He told me all about you and you are not going to wreck my happy home.” She hung up on me and that was four days ago. Since then, his cell phone and “home” have been disconnected. I never knew where he worked or lived for that matter. I’ve fucked up. I’ve really fucked up.

The coulda, woulda, shouldas run through my head. I coulda gotten to know him a little better before I slept with him, not family tree get to know you, but last name, where do you work, type get to know you. I shoulda used protection and I wouldn’t be in this predicament right now. And if I had known he was happily married to his pregnant wife, I woulda never gotten involved with him in the first place. But how was I supposed to know all of this. I mean if he was cheating on his wife, than he is the liar that deceived me. Isn’t the goal of a liar to get you to believe them? Why would I have reason to doubt what he was telling me?

Well coulda, woulda, shouldas won’t get me through this pregnancy and raise this baby. I have to deal with the here and now and the reality of this situation. And the reality is; I got played by a liar that I can’t track down. He might as well been a one night stand. I mean that would even make more sense than the situation at hand. So I am snapped back into reality when faced with the question by my friend, “What are you going to do?”

I can’t even answer her because this is not how it worked in my fairytale book. This drama is for the television talk shows. The shows that are geared to be pure entertainment for people like me, because I would never allow myself to be one of “those” people. “Those” people don’t care about their self-image. “They” are common trash that deserve what they get. Right? Wrong. Not only am I one of “those” people, but I am the dirty pregnant mistress that has wrecked the home. I am the one they are going to surprise, when the secret guest is the happy pregnant wife. I am the one the audience is going to boo. They won’t have any pity for me…and really, should they?

What am I going to do? I have $133.00 to my name. Maybe some more in change, but one thirty-five would be stretching it. Only one of my six credit cards isn’t maxed out, which leaves me with debt of over twenty thousand. I don’t qualify for any sort of state subsidies with my thirty-one thousand a year. And with all these pity-party calculations, I only have myself to blame. I remember hearing one of my girlfriends tell her sister “Don’t have this baby if you can’t support it all by yourself. Ask yourself, if that man leaves you, can you still support this child?” I thought my friend was so mean for doubting the commitment of her now brother-in-law. But now I understand her reasoning. And had she asked me the same question, I would answer no. I can’t support this child all by myself. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. But I have to.

(to be continued)