Page 100 of What if It's Us

I would do anything to protect her like she’s protecting the baby inside her.

Inside her.

Our baby is in there.

Ourbaby.

It still doesn’t feel real. Not even after seeing that tiny flickering heartbeat on the ultrasound last month or watching her turn green at the smell of toast this morning. All these symptoms, the tiny beating heart…fuck. There’s a whole other life inside her right now. A life we created together.

A new life with a completely clean slate and that should feel like the world’s biggest joy.

Like the biggest victory.

Bigger than winning The Cup three years in a row.

Bigger than being the season’s MVP.

And while it does feel like those things, it also feels like a ticking clock. Like pressure building in my chest with every passing moment.

What if I’m not built for this?

What if this baby looks up at me one day with wide eyes and asks about monsters and bedtime stories, and all I can give my child is more fear?

What if something in me breaks like it obviously broke in my father?

I clench my jaw, keenly aware of the quiet surrounding me.

It’s fucking suffocating.

My mind flashes, uninvited, to the last time I think I saw my parents alive. To my mother’s lipstick. To the way my parents were holding hands. At least I think I remember it. Maybe I’m remembering a picture from a happier time. One of the only pictures I was given of them. The scent of coffee mixed with something I can’t recognize floats across my nose and then I remember a swarm of people around me.

I didn’t know any of them.

I had no idea what was happening but I remember not being able to see either of my parents.

And that’s the last memory I have.

Or at least a piece of a memory.

I was too young to understand what it meant to lose my parents. Too young to understand any kind of adult life as it moved around me.

I spent years hearing one story after another from people who didn’t give a shit about me, about what my father did tomy mother. Of course, I believed every word because why would anyone lie to me about what happened in my past?

My dad has been in prison for more years than I can remember and I’ve never once gone to visit him.

Never once was I interested in his side of any story. In fact, once I was old enough to do so, I wasn’t even interested in doing my own research. I wasn’t interested in facing my father even though I would have conversations with him in my dreams. I used to dream that Dad would apologize for everything and tell me what I had been told wasn’t the truth. I used to wake up believing Dad was just trying to keep me safe.

That he sacrificed himself for me.

Like a real goddamn hero.

But I hadn’t been safe. I was alone. For years, I was tossed between homes like a bag of gear no one wanted.

I wasn’t good enough for any family.

No one wanted to love me.

And after two or three moves through the system, I couldn’t behave long enough to even consider what it might be like to let my guard down around another family. What it might feel like to love or be loved.

---