You Made It

“WHY WON’T YOU JUST LISTEN TO ME?!”

“No, you’re making me look like an idiot and I’ve fucking had enough,” he said, as he walked towards the door.

“PLEASE JOHN, JUST TALK TO ME!” I yelled, tears were now rolling down my face. “PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, I CAN’T DO THIS ALONE.”

“I’m not making you do this on you’re own, I just don’t know what you want,” he argued.

“I JUST WANT YOU!”

“THEN WHY CAN’T YOU JUST SHOW THAT?” he shouted.

“I LOVE YOU SO MUCH JOHN, WHAT MORE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?” I asked, my voice starting to get weaker. “Please, I just need you right now. We’ve been through so much and we still have so much to go though together.”

We had been shouting at each other for at least fifteen minutes now. We’d get louder for a bit, then we’d go quieter, then raise our voices again. We knew everyone around us could hear us, but that didn’t stop us.

John was on tour with his band and I had gone out to join them for three shows. Before I’d arrived, we all thought this was a good idea. Garrett’s girlfriend, Falyn, was also joining them so I knew I’d have someone to hang out with while the guys were doing band stuff, and any other time I could spend with John. But instead all we had done was argue. And everyone heard.

Tonight, it was backstage at the show in a dressing room. Yesterday it was on the bus in the back lounge. And when we argued, we really went for it.

It had started three months ago. It was like I already knew. Something was already different about me. The arguments started and now we just couldn’t stop them. It was every other day and they lasted longer all the time, never really getting resolved.

“I JUST DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE ENOUGH FOR YOU ANYMORE,” he continued. “I just want to be enough, but I don’t know how, I want you to have an amazing life but I don’t know if I can give it to you.”

“I HAD AN AMAZING LIFE!”

“And then that happened.”

“Yes,” I told him flatly.

“I didn’t want this.”

“You think I did?!”

We stared each other down as I moved my right hand to my stomach. It was growing fast now. There was no hiding it much longer. We were going to have to start telling people.

“It’s too late now, what we did is done and now we have to deal with the consequences,” I told him. “We have this new life to think about and if it’s pulling us apart, then so be it, but I want this baby to have a father, it’s real father so you need to decide if you’re going to stick around or how you’re going to handle this situation.”

“Don’t put this on me. I told you, I will be here, for you, for the baby, for everything,” he claimed. “I just-I don’t know how to change. And I don’t know if I want to.”

“I mean, I get it, you have this life on the road with your friends,” I added. “Why would you want to quit that? And I’ve never made you before. But we’ve been through so much, John, why can’t you just accept that this has happened and be happy that we made this great thing and look at it that we are moving forward as a couple?”

“Because I never thought this would happen to me. I never thought I would be the one who got a girl pregnant accidentally. I never thought I would be a father in my mid twenties,” he sighed. “I love you, but I didn’t want this.”

He sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands and for the first time since things got bad, I felt sorry for him. He was right. Neither of us wanted this. We had our lives pretty much planned out, in that we didn’t want to get married and have kids until we had finished having fun while we were young. That was out of the window now.

I sat down next to him and put one arm on his back and held onto his arm with my other hand. “I know...I know,” I said, quietly. “And I’m sorry.”

“What are we going to do? What are we supposed to do?” he asked, lifting his head and looking slightly helpless.

“We just have to adjust our plan a bit,” I told him.

“I feel like that’s all we ever do. Nothing ever goes how we want, it never has in 3 and a half years together.”

“But baby, that’s OK, because we’re both still here and that’s all that matters.”

After a few minutes of silence, John turned his head and looked directly at me, “how did I get you? You’re so understanding and forgiving, even when I’m a dick. I don’t deserve you.”

“Don’t say that, you must have done something right to deserve us,” I smiled. He laughed slightly and shook his head, looking away from me again. “What?” I asked.

“For someone who doesn’t want a baby, you just referred to yourself as ‘us’,” he went on.

“Oh,” was all I could say, as I looked down to my stomach. Maybe my own conscious was trying to tell me something.

And that’s when I really started to realize. I may not have wanted a baby, but I became a mother as soon as I became pregnant, whether I liked it or not. It was on John whether he wanted to be a part of it or not.

At 25 years old, I thought I had my life figured out, for the most part. I worked as a first grade teacher and lived in a decent apartment with my boyfriend of 3 and a half years. I had a great group of friends and all my family around me.

But now I wasn’t so sure it was all figured out. Like John said, all we ever did was adjust our plan. Whenever we wanted to do something for us, something with the band would come up, or I had something with college or school. It never worked out for us.

“We can do this,” John suddenly said.

“Huh?” I asked, as he tore me from my thoughts.

“Me and you, we can do this, we can be parents,” he confirmed.

“I don’t really think we get a choice.”

“No, we don’t really, it’s out of hands, I guess,” he nodded. “But it is our choice to be good parents, and that we can do.”

“Well done, John, you made it,” I smiled up at him. “You made me believe in you again.”