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F95 new life with my daughter9/2/2023 Plants seemed to like to grow around him. He was creative and sweet, good at drawing and design, and at arranging things in the flat prettily. What did we know? She was emphatic, so we moved in together. She even gave us the address of one to look at. She said Chris and I had to move into an apartment together. All the boys I knew pretended they were the baby’s father.ĭespite having been a party girl that year, I did know who the baby belonged to: a boy I’d been sleeping with on and off since I was 16, named Chris. It was the beginning of life, which like death – wasn’t supposed to happen to people our age. It was proof that a strange rumour they had heard since they were children was true. I pulled up my black, ragged sweater and showed them my belly. It was so freakish to be having a child at my age, that as I grew bigger, my friends gathered around me to marvel. The baby was snuggled up in its space pod – on deep sleep – until its arrival at planet Earth. I didn’t have a single complication during my pregnancy. I remember asking whether it was OK to go to a Beastie Boys concert. I went to see a doctor, who informed me I was five months pregnant. And taking warm baths made me think about death. I couldn’t listen to the Smashing Pumpkins because they made me feel too much. I couldn’t remember my lines in theatre class. I didn’t think it brought new responsibilities. I believed that turning 20 brought all sorts of new freedoms. We usually went to bed at 5am, after getting high and laughing about philosophical conundrums all night. I shared it with six guys who were humanities students. There was torn wallpaper in all the rooms and columns with fauns playing pan flutes in the hallways. I lived in a huge, beautiful, rundown apartment. But while I was at university, childhood decided that it wasn’t done with me. Let’s just say it was difficult and that I was delighted to become a young adult and never to have to think about that phase of life again. As a result, I didn’t have much of a childhood, either. All I knew about motherhood was that it was so awful that my mother had run off when I was seven, not wanting to have anything to do with it. I didn’t have a mother when I was growing up. When my daughter became a little older and people began mistaking us for sisters, I went along with it because that seemed to help with our PR. Women would come up and ask, “Excuse me? Is that your baby? How old are you?” There was much tsking. In my leather jacket, miniskirt and Adidas running shoes, I probably passed for 16. Everyone looked at me as though I were a criminal. I was not prepared for all the judgment that comes with being a mother at 20.
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