We're All Insane - Teen Mom & Attempted Murder

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Abby opens up about the unique challenges she faced as a teen mom in the midst of a challenging relationship , from juggling school and parenting to dealing with societal judgments. Abby's story involves real struggles, heartaches, and triumphs I've faced on this unpredictable journey. If you have a unique story you'd like to share on the podcast, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/ZiHgdoK4PLRAddiB9 or send an email to [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, it's me Devorah. I just dropped an all new bonus episode inside my new subscription channel, We're All Insane Plus. This week's bonus episode is called My Brain was slipping into my spine. Listen now by subscribing to We're All Insane Plus inside your Spotify or Apple Podcasts app or go to we're all insane.com. Hi, my name is Abby. I am 25. I'm from Northeast Ohio and I I got pregnant when I was 15. Before I get into everything, I just wanted to give a quick disclaimer because a lot of the people that were involved in my life around this time are still involved in my life. And I am just going to tell my truth and tell my story.

And mental illness is very real and people can change. and I hope that they were able to get the help that they needed. And I'm just going to start from the beginning. I want to talk a little bit about my childhood just to kind of give a little bit of a background. I have five siblings. I consider myself the oldest out of all of them because I have one older brother, but he is my half-brother on my dad's side. And I didn't really see him very much growing up because my dad wasn't really involved in his life.

And I haven't actually spoken to him in about four or five years now. So I grew up with my mom and the rest of my siblings are my mom's kids. I share two sisters with both parents. And I was always the oldest in my household. My parents had me when they were really young. My mom got pregnant with me when she was 20. she grew up in a very cult-like religious household and she had an abusive father and so as soon as she was able to become her own person and experience what life was like out of high school she met my

dad and got pregnant and married him because that's just what she thought she needed to do um so my parents had me and then they had my two sisters. and when I was eight years old, my dad got a job two and a half hours away from us in downtown Columbus and he took the job. And this was when my parents were still together. We were just like, okay, he said, I'll see you every other weekend. His parents, our grandparents lived right down the road from us and he was going to come up every other weekend and see us.

And then very shortly after that, they sat, my sister. and I down and said, we're actually separating. And I was like, oh, definitely didn't see that coming. And so all of my friends, their parents weren't together. So I didn't really, didn't bother me, but my sisters were very upset about it. And I don't know what exactly triggered this because we had just been to a new house and they were separating. but that was a few months after I started having really bad anxiety when I was in second grade.

I had a lot of life changes happened directly after it, and I don't know what caused it in the moment, but I remember the day it started. I was just doing the Pledge of Allegiance, and I started having a panic attack, but I didn't know it was a panic attack. And I told my teacher, and she was like, oh, let's take you down to the office. see if you're okay and they're asking me what's wrong and I don't know and I'm like I'm shaking I'm crying so I just came up with something and I said my mom is supposed to be here coming for lunch today the parents are supposed to come and go to recess with us and I don't know if my mom is coming and I did know but I just didn't know what to tell them so they called her she confirmed she was

coming I still didn't calm down I was like I don't know what's wrong with me it continued and it got worse and I kept having panic attacks and obsessing over my mom, my dad, my sisters. I wouldn't let them leave the house. I wouldn't let them hang out with their friends. I wouldn't let them go to the store. I don't know why it was happening. But that continued on and continued to get worse over the next two years. I did go to therapy a couple times, but I was like seven or eight, so I don't really

remember it. And then they stopped. And it continued on until middle school. So do you think that that was just kind of like a fear of something happening to them? It was definitely because I was scared of something happening to them. The only way that I was even able to go to class in second, third grade was if my parents would write me letters and basically say, I'm alive. Like, I'm okay. Yeah. And like they would, I'd take them to school with me. And whenever I'd start to freak out, I'd pull them out of my desk and look at them. My teacher would send me to the office and I'd draw pictures of my mom with, like, the secretary. And she'd be like, look, like, she's here.

She's okay. It was, I, like, would hide under the bed and jump out of my mom's car while she was driving me to school. I, like, would not leave them alone. I was very. And my mom never knew what triggered it because I did have, like, my parents separate and everything happened right after that. But in that moment, nobody. There's nothing major. Yeah.

So that continued for a few years. And my dad was supposed to come and see us every other weekend. That was their plan after they separated. And it started to turn into him not being able to see us this weekend. And then it was he's not able to see us for a few weekends. And then it was we went a month without seeing him. And we didn't realize it at the time, but it was just my dad. dad slowly separating himself from us because he did not want to have like he didn't want to have

that family life and he didn't want to be a dad in that moment he was happy living on his own and we were very attached to him and looked up to him a lot and so as I've gotten older I have realized that the some of the issues that I have now definitely stemmed. from my dad just not being there when I thought that he was the greatest person on the planet. And my mom was the one who got blamed for everything because she refused to tell us the crappy things that my dad was doing and she never really told us what kind of person he was. So we thought that everything was my mom's fault and she just kind of put up with it so that we didn't have to know about him.

When I was 12, we moved to a new house in the same city, same school district and everything, but it was the summer between when I went from like elementary, intermediate school age to middle school. So I started middle school as soon as we moved into the new house. So after we moved to this new house, I started middle school and my mom remarried. and had a baby with him. She had my brother. And I did not have a good relationship with my stepdad. And it really wasn't anything against him.

It was just because I was a preteen who thought my dad was the best person on the planet. And he wasn't there anymore. And now this guy was. Yeah. So I kind of was able to push my anxiety and everything into the back of my head for a while. because when middle school started, my brain jumped to boys and things like that. And that was when I started a little rebellious phase. I was a very good student my whole life.

I was in gifted programs. I got straight A's. Like I was barely missing school. My sisters and I were all like that. So when I started middle school and was dealing with my mom remarrying and having a baby and moving to a new house, all of that combined made me feel like I needed to act out. And so I started sneaking out and smoking weed and hanging out with boys. And I was always very into older guys and very much needed male validation, which my mom

is exactly the same. That's why she ended up marrying my dad. And then as soon as they split up, she found my stepdad. and she got pregnant with my stepdad, married him because they got pregnant. And it seems that that just happened to pass on to me. So I, like when I was 12 years old, I had my first kiss with my best friend's older brother. And he was in high school, like 15 and almost 16 years old. And I was like, this is fine.

I just thought that that was what was normal. And so when I was 14 near the end of my eighth grade year, I got caught sneaking out to go to a boy's house. And my mom went to the police station and basically filed a police report against me. But since I was 14 and it was the first time I had been caught doing something like this, I was put on this youth program and I was on probation. So pretty much all middle school going into my freshman year, I was seeing a probation officer and doing things I shouldn't have been doing and kind of slipped out of my straight A, like gifted child phase of life.

But then when high school started, I got off probation and I realized that I should focus on my grades more. So I started to do better at school, get back into getting straight A's, everything like that. The beginning of my freshman year, I met a boy and his name was John. and I actually started dating him because my ex best friend was dating him and they broke up. I wanted to make her jealous. So I DMed him on Twitter and we started dating. I had never been in a serious relationship before and our relationship got very serious for me, very fast.

Like we were meeting each other's parents and going to each other's houses and going on dates and I had never done any of that before. I was 14 and he was 17. We went to the same school. After about a month or so, I started to notice some red flags in our relationship, except that I didn't think that they were red flags because... You were so young. I was really young.

And also, the only relationships I had ever seen were the ones my mom was in. And these things seemed normal to me. I liked him a lot. and I had a couple of boyfriends in the past, again, like nothing really serious, but he was not happy that I had boyfriends in the past. And he would get very jealous about the guys I dated in the past. He would get jealous when I would hang out with my friends. He would get jealous if I texted him anything that he didn't like the way that I was saying it. And it turned into him realizing he could just ignore me or threaten to leave me.

and drive me crazy. And I think it was because he felt so hurt by my past relationships and me being with my friends, even though he shouldn't have felt hurt, that he wanted me to be hurt. So he would do those things to me to make me feel how he felt. And we had discussed at the beginning of our relationship because we were both virgins at that time, which I, at that time, virginity was just such a huge thing for me, but now I, virginity is a social construct and I don't think that you're losing anything. And I, and I really hope that no one, you know, takes that from this. But when I was 14, that, and that was

just one of the biggest things that I could give someone. So we discussed that since I had been, like, used in the past and had bad break. and had trust issues that we were going to wait until we were together for a year before we had sex. And he was on board too. And then when everything started happening about two months into our relationship where it had been a few weeks of him using the ignoring and threatening to break up with me, I started to get scared that he was going to leave me. And one night, I went hung out with my friend and at that time I didn't have a phone.

I only had an iPod touch and I didn't have Wi-Fi. So I couldn't text him for a while. And when I got home, he had not sent me any messages. And so I texted him like, hey, I'm home. And he was still ignoring me. And I could tell he was mad that I hung out with my friend. And I was getting so upset that I was like, you know what? I'm going to text him and just tell him that I'm ready to lose my virginity because then

he'll answer me for one. And two, he might finally trust me that I don't like these expectations. boyfriends anymore. I only want him. I'm not going to leave him. And so I texted him. He immediately answered me. And I was like, yep, like next time we have an opportunity, I'm ready. And I wasn't ready at all. I just really wanted him to stay with me. So a couple weeks later, after it happened, I did not make anything better like I thought that I would because he just continued doing the same things but now I felt very trapped because I had just lost my virginity to this person and now I can't leave him because I was barely 15. I had just turned 15. And did you do you feel like

you felt more, I guess attached to him because of that? Yeah, I felt well not only did I feel more attached to him, but he would constantly remind me that I was freshly 15 and no one was really going to want to be with someone who wasn't a virgin. And I believed him. So I felt like I had to be with him forever. I was like, this is it. Like, I didn't know if anybody else would, basically he was convincing me that nobody else would want to do.

It was a form of manipulation. Yeah. So throughout the first year of our relationship, there were a lot more red flags and a lot of things that happened. And I do not have time to get into all of them. But I wanted to tell one quick story that kind of sums up the manipulation part and also where his mind was at. I had a few ex-boyfriends, but he told me he only had one actual ex-girlfriend. And her name was Kayla. and she was older than him and was his older stepbrother's friend.

And he said that they dated for a while, like a year or two. They were really close. He did so much for her. She had her own place. Like they did so many things together. And I did, I mean, I was like, oh, that kind of sucks that, you know, you have trauma from being in a past relationship that didn't end well because he said that she cheated on him. but it was an ex.

So I was like, let's move past that. And she lived an hour and a half away because that's where his dad lived. And one day after school, a few months into our relationship, I told him that I was going to take a nap and that I'd text him when I woke up. And when I woke up, I texted him and he said, I have to talk to you. And I was like, okay, what's up? And he said, Kayla shut up at my house. And I opened the front door and she was sobbing.

And I didn't want my mom and sisters to know. So I told her let's go outside and we got in her car and she was bawling her eyes out saying that she really missed me, wanted to be with me again. And she kissed me. And I was like, well, did you kiss her back? And he was like, no. And I was like, oh, okay, well, that's upsetting if she knew that you had a girlfriend. But if you didn't kiss her back, we'll move on from it. And then I found her on Twitter and she was engaged.

And I started thinking maybe I should reach out to her or her fiance. but then I was like, I really don't want to get involved. It was just a one incident. Like, hopefully it doesn't happen again. And then a couple months down the road, which I had in the back of my mind been upset about this for a while. And it came up a few times, but I wasn't really blaming him for it. It was just a worry, like, is she going to come back? Are you going to want her again?

And there used to be, I don't know if there still is, but we used to use something called Ask FM. Okay. And I would use it on my Twitter and I posted my link and it's basically where people can anonymously say things to you, ask you questions. And then when you respond, it tweets out their question and your response. But they can stay completely anonymous. So I started getting these anonymous questions and things on AskFM saying that it was Kayla and saying, you know, John wants me and he doesn't want. want you. He kissed me back. I know he told you about it, all these things. And so I call John and I'm like, Kayla is messaging me. I'm going to DM her on Twitter. And he's like, no, don't do that.

Like, I'll handle it. And she's saying really nasty things to me. And as I'm on the phone with John, I start to realize that when I'm waiting for Kayla's response, he's getting quiet. it and the way that she's typing to me doesn't really seem like a 19 year old girl would be typing and it was kind of the way that John typed. So I got off the phone with him and I like continued to talk to her for a little bit on there and then I convinced myself that he was pretending to be her. So I just texted him and said, are you pretending to be Kayla on Ask FM right now? and he completely came clean because he knew that I was going to reach out to her something if he didn't. And he said, okay, yeah, I am also.

Kayla has no idea who I am. We never dated. She is my older brother's friend, but we never hung out. I just picked a random person because you had ex-boyfriends and you would, you got to do things with them. And I didn't get to experience that. I wanted you to hurt the way that I did. and that just to me was a little bit of the turning point when I realized that I might be dealing with something that's bigger than what I thought because that was serious mental illness

and I didn't I didn't know how to handle it so as the rest of our first year went we started to fight and then break up and get back together we did it for like a month and a half into the beginning of my sophomore year and he'd do this thing where he would break up with me and then when I would go to somebody else, he'd beg for me back and then when he'd have me back, he'd break up with me and it just kept happening. And one of the times that he broke up with me and then begged for me back, we were in school and he came up to me and asked if he could drive me home that day. And I was like, I guess, like we can talk. And I had started to convince myself, I didn't need him. I was finally starting to be like, you don't need this, you can move on,

it's going to be okay. And he started crying while he was driving me and saying that he really wanted to be with me and that he wanted me back. And I basically told him, we should not be together anymore. And he really did not like that answer. And there was a glass cup in his cup holder that didn't have anything in it, like he used to have a drink in it. And he picked it up and smashed it against his head and then we both just got silent and he continues driving and he's driving towards his mom's house because while we were arguing he was like I'm taking you back to my house and we're going to finish talking about this and I didn't have any control over where we were going and he turned onto his mom's street and I feel something on my left hand and I looked over it and there's blood just pouring

down his face and it's all over his face all over him all over my arm his car and I'm like turn around go to my house because my house is like five minutes away. So he turns around and drives my mom's house and I get out of the car. I walk inside and my mom is like, what is going on? And I was like my boyfriend or my ex-boyfriend, I said, my ex-boyfriend is a psycho, which I was very upset in that moment. But I grabbed paper towels and I went outside trying to clean him up. He comes inside.

It's a huge gash. I'm like, we have to go to the emergency room. We take him there. I leave. 15 minutes later, his mom. calls and says he needs to be admitted to the psych ward to the psychiatric wing of the hospital but he had just turned 18 and they couldn't force him to go and he refused to admit himself unless I came back and talked to him so I went back and I talked to him and he made me promise him that I

would get back together with him when he got out or else he would not admit himself so I promised him and he went to the psych wing of the hospital and when he got out, I continued to talk to him and help him through it and then ended up staying with him, which obviously when I look back on a lot of this now, I do not agree with a lot of the decisions that I made, but I was extremely young. I was 15 when this was happening and I didn't really know I had another choice. I didn't have really a support system that knew what was going on around me. So I got back together with him. And a couple weeks later, he got into a fist fight with my ex-boyfriend at a football game when he was 18 and my ex was only 17.

And they were going to arrest him because he was an adult. And he claimed that he wanted to kill himself to the police. And so instead of arresting him, they took him back to the psychiatric part of the hospital. And I felt like that was my fault because it was my. X that he got into a fight with. So I stayed with him because I felt so guilty about him going through that. After that happened, it seemed like our relationship started to become more stable and get better when actually I think it was because he was with me 24-7 for the next few months. His mom kicked him out of the house. I don't really remember why, but I just remember that my mom basically said that he

could stay with us until like Thanksgiving until he like found another place to stay. And so he stayed with us, which meant that he was with me like all day and night. And my mom did not know that we were having sex. My mom, I had convinced her that we weren't. My dad, I did not see or talk to very often. Again, he tried to come up like on weekends sometimes. But because he didn't have to deal. with the repercussions of my actions and my mom did, I felt like I could tell him more because

he wasn't there to parent me about it. So I told him that I was having sex, but I did not tell my mom. And I was begging my mom to put me on birth control, begging her. I said, I have horrible periods. They were really bad. I mean, I would like throw up and have to leave school all the time and get horrible cramps. And I was like, please, like just, and she said, nope, I'm not putting you on birth control because then you'll have unprotected sex. And it was either I don't go on birth control and continue to date my boyfriend or I tell my mom I'm having sex and I don't go on birth control and I don't get to see my boyfriend. So I kind of just picked the one that was the least bad out of the two. But I thought that our relationship was in a really good place, but really it was just because

he knew that it wasn't doing anything else. So he could emotionally, manipulate me and he couldn't go anywhere and so I thought that it was normal and he knew that I wasn't off talking to other boys or anything even though I wasn't but he was convinced that I was so I thought that we were doing really well he ended up moving back home I believe at the end of 2013 and I turned 16 on the last day of the year a couple of days after I turned 16 I was supposed to start my period and my period was always on time and the day that it was supposed to start, it did not.

And I said, I think that I'm pregnant because we had not been using any kind of protection because we were young and stupid and didn't have anyone to teach us to do that because I couldn't talk to anyone. And when I told my dad,

he, again, didn't have to deal with the parenting side of it so he was just like, don't get pregnant. And I was like, Okay, and then that was the end of it. So that day, I had him go to the store and give me a pregnancy test, and I took it in the bathroom of his mom's house, and it came back positive. And as soon as it came back positive, I wasn't even that concerned because, first of all, I knew I was pregnant because my period was never late, so it wasn't a surprise.

And second of all, we had mutually agreed immediately that I was going to have an abortion. And we went into his bedroom. We even started like Googling abortion clinics and he was calling them. And then we realized that I'm 16 and I'd have to have a parent come with me. So we decided to put it on the back burner for a couple of days because I was going to have to tell my parents. And since I knew I was getting an abortion, I didn't want to tell them yet. And so I decided to lose my life a little bit first. He told his mom and his sisters.

And his mom really did not want me to have. have an abortion. And she made that very clear to me. She kept telling me that she would be there for me and the baby. Her whole family would be there to support us. And that, you know, she, she wasn't really, like, pushing me to not have one. She didn't say, like, you can't have one. But she was making it very clear that she did not want me to have an abortion. And as the days went on, and when I say days, I mean like five. It was not that many days. I had convinced myself that I did want to to have the baby. So I started talking to John about it and we agreed mutually that we wanted to have the baby. We thought we were at a really good spot in our relationship and that this was going to be

really good for us. And I always wanted to be a mom. Like growing up, I was like, I knew I wanted to have kids and I didn't know it was going to happen at this point, but I thought that this is the universe talking. It's going to happen. So the time came when I had to tell my parents and I, I was a I was supposed to go to my dad's that weekend, and I was going to tell my dad first. The day before I went to my dad's, my sister was playing Minecraft with him and talking to him on the computer, and she knew that I was pregnant because I told my sisters. And my sisters were young. Like, I was 16, and they were 12 and 10.

So they didn't really know anything. But my 12-year-old sister said to my dad, Abby's got a boy. bun in the oven, like jokingly. And he immediately called me and was like, are you pregnant? And I was like, no, I'm not pregnant. And he's like, oh, okay, well, if anything like that does happen or you have any scares or you need help with anything, like you can talk to me. And I was like, oh, okay, thank you. So then I felt a lot better about it, but I wanted to tell him in person. So that weekend, he came up and we went over there. But then Friday happened, Saturday happened, Sunday happened. And I was too scared to tell him. So we all got back in the car for him to drive us to my mom's house and my

my sisters were like, you have to tell him. So then one of my sisters just yelled and was like, Abby's pregnant. And he pulled into my mom's driveway and parked the car and he turned around. He was like, are you really pregnant? And I was like, yeah, and I'm not getting an abortion. And he locked us in the car and started freaking out on me. He was screaming. He was like, I'm not even telling your mom. I'm taking you right now. You're getting an abortion. You're not having this baby. You're too young. All of this. And I was like, nope, I'm not having an abortion. We decided. And he tried. and I was crying and there was a lot of screaming.

And eventually he was like, go inside. I'm talking to your mom. So I went inside and he talked to my mom for like 40 minutes. And then she came up to me and she goes, I don't want you to have an abortion. I said, I'm not having an abortion. And the reason she didn't want me to have one was because of her religious views because she still had a lot of religious trauma from her childhood. And she genuinely was against that.

And so my reasoning was. different than hers, but both of us agreed. So she made me a doctor appointment. I went to the doctor. They confirmed that I was pregnant. And then came the part where my whole family had to find out. I didn't tell anyone except for my mom, my dad and my sisters, my parents told everyone, but they were all very disappointed, very embarrassed, not supportive, which getting pregnant, like when you're 15, finding out a couple of days after you turn 16. And it's obviously, something that a lot of people are not going to be supportive of. And I don't think that it's something that that is a very good decision.

Looking back on it, I mean, I love my son more than anything on the planet, but I do not think that getting pregnant at that age was a good decision, especially with the relationship that I was in. So a few weeks after I found out, I started having flu-like symptoms and feeling really sick and it was worse than morning sickness it was fevers it was shakes it was fatigue so i went to my o bgyy n and they did blood work and i tested positive for something called parvovirus b19 which parvovirus is something that's heard of in dogs but it's not yeah it's not the same thing it's actually called fifth disease which is a really common virus that 50% of people get um and it's usually like

it looks like you have like a rash on your face and you get like cold like symptoms or flu like symptoms. And it was not harmful to me at all, but it could have been harmful to the baby. My chance of miscarriage went up 10 to 15 percent and I had to go to the doctor a lot and get a lot of ultrasounds and they'd hook me up to the machines that they'd check the heart rate and everything like that. Did they put you on antibiotics? No, so antibiotics couldn't have done anything.

The only, like, because it was viral and not bacterial. And so the only thing that they could do is monitor it and make sure that it didn't cause fetal anemia. Okay. And if they saw anything happening, then they would have gone from there. But nothing did end up happening, thank goodness. But I did have a high risk pregnancy. So I was always at the doctor. I had a million ultrasounds.

But I was sick. I was really sick from it. So I took about a week and a half off of school because I was so sick. And while I was gone, I started hearing from my friends that John was hanging out with, eating lunch with, and driving home. This girl that I had used to be friends with, not the one he dated a different one, every day. and he wasn't telling me about it. And I confronted him and he was very annoyed and he was like, you know, you shouldn't be wondering what I'm doing. I'm at school.

And anyways, I asked him to stop. And the first day that I went back to school, he basically ignored me the whole day and was still talking to this girl, eating with her at lunch. So I confronted him at school. It turned into this huge scene. He was screaming at me. My mom was having a scare because they found a lump. that they were checking to see if it was cancerous. It ended up being benign, but at the time,

I was going through my pregnancy and the parvovirus and being scared by that, and he was in the middle of the lunchroom screaming, like, I hope your mom dies of cancer and all of this stuff. And I just remember I ran to the guidance counsel's office, which was not like me because I was a quiet, like, straight-A type of girl, even though I was pregnant. I did not like attention being brought to me. So I went there and went,

home and that was the beginning of our relationship going way downhill after that. A few months into my pregnancy, I ended up catching him cheating. He would, it started with, I think, like, Tinder and then it went on to like Kick and all the other dating apps, ones I had never even heard of. Um, it almost seemed to me like it was some kind of like addiction. Like I felt like I, there wasn't anything I wasn't giving him and he was still seeking it out elsewhere. And I think that he just needed to be talking to other girls. I genuinely don't know why it was happening. But it started and it continued throughout my entire pregnancy.

And then there was a lot of emotional and verbal abuse. And then a little bit of physical abuse started. It was mostly like throwing things and grabbing me. And I was pregnant the whole time. I wasn't going to go anywhere. I didn't have a job. I didn't have a license. I, you know, no one was going to want to be with a 16-year-old girl who was pregnant.

And so I was like, this, I'm just going to have to put up with it. And I got to the point where, like, I would catch him cheating and he would, like, look at it and just laugh. And then we'd just never talk about it again. It was at that point. And I was so worried that I was going to, like, go into labor from how stressed I was. It was not great. I'm Anna Garcia, host of True Crime News, the podcast. Every week we bring you in-depth coverage on cases making headlines, as well as those that go under the radar.

Tune in for murders that defy explanation, mystery seeking exploration, and shocking secrets that will leave you breathless. Each week we honor the victims by going beyond the salacious in our search for justice. Crime never stops, and neither do we. Listen to True Crime News available now wherever you get your podcasts. I do have a quick question. When you were going to school pregnant, did you feel embarrassment at all about that? Yeah. So my sophomore year, I went to school up until I was about five months pregnant because summer started. And I was so tiny, you could not tell I was pregnant. Okay. So I was wearing tight clothes, no baby bump. That summer happened. And a lot of my friends,

kind of stopped talking to me. I did tell people in my school that I was pregnant around four months, but I had a lot of friends and he had a lot of friends and they all seemed very supportive. And it was also, you couldn't tell I was pregnant. So it was just like, oh, she's got a baby in there somewhere. Like it was just kind of like the idea of me having a baby. Then the summer happened. A lot of my friends stopped because they were doing fun 16-year-old stuff and I was sitting

at home pregnant with a baby. and John was cheating on me so he was off with his friends and doing whatever he wanted with other girls and I was not with them ever so I kind of stuck to myself during the summer and then when my junior year started I was very pregnant I was eight months pregnant because I had him at the end of September and I remember it was it was like more embarrassing to me for my teachers to know than the other kids because the teachers obviously felt very uncomfortable. And also they needed to be prepared for if like my water broke or I went into labor in the middle of their classroom.

And the school district and city that I lived in was not a place where teenagers got pregnant. It was a suburb of, you know, a place, a small city in Ohio with a small population and a lot of people that had money and if their kid got pregnant, nobody ever found out about it. So it was definitely not something that anyone was used to. I do remember one time walking out of my Latin class and I turned to the corner and I would always wear like camis with cardigans over them and I'd like close my cardigan up and I'd hold my books in front of it and these two boys behind me, I heard one of them go, she's so

fucking big. And I just remember being like, I'm pregnant. baby like of course i'm big it's a baby like i was able to just like talk myself out of it but i was like i'm glad i'm big i'm about to pop out a baby like who cares he's healthy and inside of me you know it's all good so um yeah i definitely felt embarrassment but because i was able to have like those five months of my sophomore year being pregnant without showing it helped me and then i only had to go to school for about a month before i had him my junior year okay one of the things that really bothered me when i was pregnant was my mom's friends and like other adults or families that we knew really didn't want me

around their kids because they didn't want to have to explain to them like why I was pregnant. You looked like a bad influence. Right, exactly. It's like they were like, oh, like there's some like 12 year old that's like, um, she's in school. The thing I don't like about that, like I feel like from a parent's perspective, I guess I can see it. but at the same time I think we live in a world where that happens often. So instead of hiding it from your kid, and I think in a way that that's a form of like shaming someone and why would you want to do that?

Like it's even if you don't want your kid necessarily to see it, it's like how do you think that's going to make the person feel? Right. I hate that. Yeah, it was very difficult because part of me understood it. But another part of me was like, do you know how many people my age are having sex? You know how many people I know that are sexually active that have had abortions have been pregnant and they just didn't have the baby? Like I just have something to show for it.

And so I am the bad influence, which, yeah, that is how I was seen by a lot of people. Right before I started my junior year, I had my baby shower. And the day after my baby shower, I went home from John's house and I brought all the gifts I got from the shower, spread them all out around my living. room and was talking to my mom, showing her everything that I got, and she looks like white as a ghost, like, while she's listening to me. And I'm not really noticing it. Like, I'm kind of noticing it, but I'm like, just look at the gifts I got. And my little sister, one of them, walks up to her and whispers in her ear. And I'm like, what is going on? And my mom goes, I have to tell you something. And I'm like, what? And she goes, I'm pregnant. And I did not know how to do. And I did not know how to

how to react. So I put my hands in my mouth, started screaming the top of my lungs and bawling my eyes out, like, because there's just so much emotion. Like I was like, I don't know what I'm supposed to think about this, ran into the other room. And John was in there and he's like, what's wrong? What's going on? I'm like, my mom is pregnant. And he's like, I thought someone died. Like, why are you acting this way? And I'm like, I'm pregnant. I'm eight months pregnant. My mom is pregnant. And so that became a thing. She did not mean to get pregnant, but she did. And she was due five months after me.

So that was very weird, living my life with my mom pregnant the same time as me. She was 38 or 39 when she got pregnant. I cannot. I think 38. But yeah, it was really weird. Like we had both had pregnancy cravings. And we'd both be like, let's go get some food late at night. Like we're both pregnant.

Super weird. But yeah, so I had to deal with that. And then I went back to school. And I had an induction date at 39 weeks because I had a high-risk pregnancy. So I went to the hospital, the day of my induction. And they induced me at like five in the morning. I had him at 6.13. And it was actually one, like so easy.

It was crazy easy. And all the doctors and nurses were like, don't tell anybody about this. They're going to be so jealous. And like, you're made for making babies. I'm like, it's because I'm 16. Like I'm like, I'm just, yeah. But yeah, he was small. He was six pounds, three ounces.

And he was perfectly healthy. I pushed for like five minutes. It was very easy. And then we took him home two days later. it was very weird because I was not allowed to be driven around, like, without asking by my boyfriend because I was only 16. I wasn't allowed to have sleepovers with him. I wasn't allowed to be, like, in my bedroom alone with him. With the baby?

No, I'm sorry. No. With John. Who, whose rules were that, was that? My parents. Okay. Yeah, well, my mom and my stepdad. Okay.

So your parents said that you couldn't. Yeah, they were very, which I was like, what am I going to do? Like have another baby. I was like, I'm not like, I, but yeah, they were very much, the same rules they had before I got pregnant are the same rules they had while I was pregnant and after I had the baby. Okay. It was, you're too young for that. I don't trust this.

I don't trust that. I don't want you guys alone together. Like, it was, that, that's just how it was. And I was not happy with it because we had a baby together. and it also meant that I had to do everything by myself because my mom was pregnant. She was tired. She wasn't going to get up in the middle of the night. She, you know, she helped like around when she could, but she couldn't help very much.

No, what about John's family? They were supportive. Okay. For sure. But it was really only his mom that, I mean, his sisters were young. Again, he had younger sisters and his mom. And his mom worked full time. And I didn't, I couldn't drive yet.

I didn't get my license until I was 18. So he would take me over there to his house sometimes. And she would help out while we were there. But then it was very much like, this is your baby. Like take him home and raise your baby. So. And how was John with everything? He, he was good.

Um, he definitely stepped up when I first had him. He got a new car. He got a new job. He, um, yeah, he definitely was putting in the effort. Um, it did not take him very long to start cheating on me and everything again. So that, uh, you know, it didn't last for very long. But, um, it was just hard. It was weird because I was at like my house.

He was at his house. And we did want to be together. But again, we couldn't be together at night. we couldn't be like he had to work he worked second shift so he would watch the baby while i went to school and i had um late arrival and early dismissal i also breastfed him until i was eight or till i was till he was eight months old and so i that was how long did you stop going to school after you had six weeks okay yeah it was like a six week maternity leave it actually wasn't again i was i was pretty good at school. So I, the teacher would, my teachers would put all my papers together. They'd have

at aid, like, drop them off in my house. And then, like, every Friday, I'd go to the school and, like, take whatever tests I needed to and drop off my homework and then come back. Okay, nice. And then after the six weeks, you went back. Yeah. And I was only at school for, like, two and a half or three hours a day. So, like, I didn't have to pump there or anything. Yeah. It was, it was weird because, like, I was going to school with, like, nursing pads in my bra, but, and I was a junior you're in high school, but yeah. I had really bad postpartum depression, which I feel like anyone that has a baby

when you're 16 is going to have something like that because my mental illness already, like the anxiety and stuff like that was there. And so then when I had a baby and had my body back and was a 16 year old again, I realized that I couldn't really do any of the things my friends were doing because I had to raise a child. So that fueled into it,

and it was really, bad and then also like being in the relationship that I was in. John and I started breaking up again and getting back together and I was trying to live out my junior year and the summer between my junior and senior year as the 16, 17 year old that I was while also being a mom. And there were definitely a lot of times combined with the postpartum depression where I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I wanted to do it. I was like, should I? Should I? let John's mom just take the reins. I was like, should I not be a mom anymore?

It was like three or four months of going back and forth with that. And then John and I broke up for most of that summer. We ended up getting back together. And when we got back together, everything was really different because we had never broken up for that long and we kind of realized we could live without each other and we were really getting back together like for the baby. And so towards the end of... 2015, which I was a senior in high school, he started saying that he didn't want to be with me

and I started saying I didn't really want to be with him either. And we actually mutually agreed to break up. That happened. And then I tried to move on, tried to be a single mom. I actually was doing really well. Then I turned 18. And I met a new guy. We started dating. And as soon as I had a new boyfriend, John decided he did not like that. And it turned into the begging me to get back together with him thing again. And he actually lured me to a hotel room. He told me that we were going to take our son to his doctor appointment, which he did have one,

took me to the hotel room that he had paid for. I don't know why. But he took me to the hotel. I couldn't drive yet. still didn't have my license. So I got out. We got out with our son and I'm like, why are we here? And he's like, I've been staying here. I don't want to be at home. We just need to go inside. He convinced me to go inside. I really don't remember how I was not thinking in this time. And as soon as we got there, he goes, my mom's here to take our son to his doctor appointment and just leaves with him.

So I'm sitting in the hotel room and I start texting my boyfriend. And I got texted my mom. and I was like, this is where I am. And he comes back and he is like, he's got like a bottle of wine and he like pours two glasses and he's like, I just want to talk. Like, I really want to be with you again. And he notices that I had a hickie on my neck, which I didn't know was there. And he freaks out, freaks out, starts smashing glasses, starts throwing things. And then he goes into the bathroom and he just starts bashing his head against the counter.

And I was so scared. I didn't know what too. So I just left the hotel room. but the door locked behind me. So I called 911 and they came and I was as I'm waiting for them to come the whole time, I'm like banging on the door and he's not answering and I'm just assuming he's dead. So I'm like living these 10 minutes thinking that and I'm like, this is going to look like all my fault.

Like I'm the only one here. This is going to be horrible. And then the police get there and they knock and they knock one time and he just opens the door and he's got blood all over him, but he's fine. And they take him to the psychiatric unit at the hospital again. And this time when he gets out, we don't get back together because I have a new boyfriend trying to move on. And this continued for a few months. And it got to the point where I was so scared for my safety and my son's safety that I started just telling him that I loved him and that we could maybe be together again.

And my boyfriend knew I was saying these things. He would sit there and watch me type it and he hated it. But I was like, I'm so scared of him. I don't know what he's going to do. He'd show up in my boyfriend's house and like, ask the neighbors and be like, my girlfriend and my son are in that house and she's cheating on me and you need to go tell them. And then my boyfriend's mom and be like, there's this guy walking around saying this.

And I'm like, that's my ex-boyfriend. And I would have to just try to brush it off. But I was so scared that if I didn't keep that hope alive that we could eventually be together, that he would do something horrible. And at the time, I thought it was the good thing to do. I thought it was the right idea for me. It was not. I definitely, not only was I fueling a fire, but I was also causing him trauma because he was

very mentally ill and he thought that he was going to be with me. And I was just telling him that he was and stringing him. him along all these months because I thought it was best for me, but it wasn't best for me or him. So one day near the end of my senior year, he is blowing me up and I'm spending the night in my boyfriend's house. And I don't have my son. My son is with him, but he lives with his mom, so he's with his mom. And I trusted John's mom a lot.

So whenever he was with his mom, I felt comfortable because she wouldn't let anything happen to him. And he was spending the night there, and I never spent the night in my boyfriend's house with my son. It was only when I didn't have him. So I was like, this is a night to myself. I'm going to go do this. He was going to take me, my boyfriend is going to take me to school the next day.

John would not leave me alone, blow it up my phone. And he was like, I'm at your mom's right now. I want you to come out and talk to me. So I told him that I was at my dad's. And he, I think, was more scared of my dad. So, oh, and actually my dad, which I forgot to say this, my dad ended up moving back to the city that we lived in when he found out that I was pregnant. and finding out that I was pregnant, even though he moved back and was closer, you'd think

we'd be closer, but actually it ruined our relationship for a long time, especially after he told me to get an abortion and then it didn't go well. But he was living in the same city as my mom. So I was like, I'm staying at my dad's tonight. He's going to take me to school tomorrow and like, don't come here. He doesn't want you to come here. And he started texting my sister, and she texted me and said, hey John's blowing me up and I was like block him and I was like I'm done with this I'm blocking him

so I blocked his number she blocked his number I said I'm sleeping here I'm going to school tomorrow I'm not dealing with this anymore and then the next morning I was leaving my boyfriend's house with him we got into his car started driving and I noticed a car behind us that looked like John's car and I said something I was like kind of looks like John's car and he was like it's not him why would be him. And we stop at a red light and all of a sudden John pulls up next to us and gets out of the car and starts banging on my window screaming at me like, you're a whore, I can't believe that you lied to me, all this stuff. And then the light turns green so we get on the highway. And I'm freaking out. I don't know what to do. I'm like, take me to school. Like just take me to the

school. What can you do there? So we're driving and John's chasing us and we get off at an exit that's not the right exit to try and lose him, but he ends up getting out behind us, gets out of the car behind us, gets out of baseball bat, starts smashing the back of my boyfriend's car. Light turns green, we start driving again. I call my dad. My dad was actually on his way to my high school to drop off my other one of my sisters. And so I was like, I'm coming to you.

I'm heading your way. And also, John is chasing us with the baseball bat. And then we finally get off at the exit. where we're supposed to get off at to go to my school and John pulls up next to us, gets out of the car, gets his baseball bat, and smashes my window in my face. And I just remember like turning to the side and trying to make it so that he didn't hit me with the bat. And I look up and he's getting back in his car and he turns right and starts driving down

the road. And my boyfriend, who was an okay person. But during this and after this, I came to realize that he was not a great boyfriend to me. He called 911. And I was freaking out and screaming to my dad the whole time. And he is like telling me to shut the fuck up the whole time. He's like, shut the fuck up. I can't, they can't hear me on the phone, like talking to me so mean.

And the reason I point that out is because later I ended up having to sit in front of a grand jury and listen to the 911 call with all of them while my boyfriend at the time was screaming at me to shut the fuck up the whole time. and I'm just super embarrassed, like, I'm super embarrassed, like, having to sit in front of all a roomful of people while they listen to my boyfriend, like, verbally abuse me. So that was really awkward. But at the time, I wasn't focused on it. I was just focused on not dying. We turned down the same way that John did, and I don't know why. And then he turned down a side road and parked his car to talk to the 911 operator. And I'm screaming.

I'm like, you have to go. He's going to come back. And all of a sudden, John is driving down the opposite direction of the road we're on. And my boyfriend is able to pull into someone's yard so that he hit the back driver's side of the car and not us head on. But it made us do like a 180. And I took my seatbelt off and started opening my door. And I, this is on the 911 call too. I'm screaming to my dad.

And I keep saying, Daddy, I don't want to die. And it was so sad. Like, listening back to that. And my dad talks about it all the time about how. like it was just the most traumatic thing that he's ever had to listen to. And I am not realizing at this point that I'm going through one of the most traumatic things of all time and I'm going to have to deal with it forever. But I just don't want to die. So I'm trying to get out of the car, but then we're back on the road. So I put my people back on. And we get to the police station,

ambulance gets there. They have to pull some glass out of me, but it really wasn't that bad. I ended up being okay. Car was not okay. We have to give our statements. We go to the courthouse, I get a temporary protection order against him because they immediately found him. He just went back to his mom's house. So that was the end of my senior year before my prom and my graduation and everything. And I did end up getting to the point where I could go to my prom and graduation. But my son's father was in jail. He did end up getting out on bail like a week later, I think.

And he was out until his trial, which was in November. My boyfriend and I stayed together for a few months. I ended up finding out that he was cheating on me with his ex-girlfriend. We did not last. We were only together for like eight or nine months. And we broke up. John was out of jail and awaiting his trial. And I hadn't talked to him in a few months.

And I was having that trauma, PTSD, like, this is all my fault. I feel so guilty. And he reaches out to me, which he had a, I had a protection order against him. And so he could have got an, a lot of trouble. And for some reason, to me, that was like, oh my gosh, he wants me so bad that he'll go against a protection order. I should talk to him. So I did. And then he basically, like, kind of apologized for it, but also kind of was like, that was your fault. Like, you know that, right? And I was like, it was my fault. And they really convinced me that that was all my fault.

He's like, you were telling me you loved me. Like, how can you do that? And then go to his house. And I was like, you're so right. And so I started like secretly. dating him again. That was how warped my mind was at that time because I genuinely was like, I thought that it was all my fault. I thought I was going to get, I thought they were going to go through his phone and see what I was sending him and be like, well, you were leaving him on. So this deserved to happen to you. That's what I thought was going to happen. Then his trial started to come up and he started to not want to really be with me anymore and I could tell. And he was getting distant, but I wanted to be with him so bad. And I think him getting

distant made me want him even more. But I think he was stringing me along mostly because I had to send a letter to the judge about if I thought he should go to jail or not. And he did not want me to send a bad letter to the judge. So he kept making it think like we were going to be together. And I was holding on to that. And then finally, I ended things on my own because I didn't like how he was treating me. And right after I did that, I found out that I was pregnant again. And I could not be pregnant with him again. There was no way I could have a baby with him again. I had just gotten over dealing with the postpartum depression.

I had just gone through that traumatic event. You know, I mean, so much stuff had happened. I was like, I cannot bring another baby into this world. You were 18 at this point? Yeah, I was 18. And I told my parents about it. And my mom was very against abortion still. She did not support me wanting to get one at all.

But I knew that if I did not get one, I probably would have ended up doing something horrible to myself or killing myself. I was in a really bad mental state. It would have been bad for everyone. And especially for my son because he was about to turn two. And I already had him really young. I was like, I can't do that to him. Like I, so I decided that I wanted to get one. My dad and his girlfriend at the time helped me with it.

And I ended up getting an abortion. It was extremely traumatic. I had to get a surgical abortion. There's a few different kinds that you can get. And I was awake for the whole thing. and I just remember it being something that I never wanted to go through again. Did it hurt? It hurt really bad.

They have different options. You can do like, you just take some ibuprofen beforehand or you can take a Vicentany beforehand or they can literally pump you with like fentanyl and make it so you don't feel things. And I chose that option and I still was in excruciating pain. It didn't last very long. It lasted like 20 to 30 minutes. I was very out of it. They put me in a room afterwards, gave me some water, an antibiotic, and then someone had to

drive me home. But the physical, like, distress from getting an abortion can be just as bad, if not worse, than the mental. And my mental health was actually a lot better afterwards. I was miserable. I was throwing up all the time from being pregnant. Miserable didn't want to be pregnant. It was just thoughts of being with this abusive ex-boyfriend of mine.

and then I had to deal with the physical parts of it. And it ended up being okay, and I'm still very happy I made that decision. And it was definitely what was best for me, my family, everything at the time. So that happened in September. And then in October, I start talking to another guy. And this guy is one of my childhood friends, actually, and we've known each other for a really long time. And we start hanging out. starts getting a little bit serious and I'm feeling a lot better about stuff and then John's trial

comes up and the guy friend who I'd been talking to was planning on asking me to be his girlfriend on it was November 2nd 2016 and there were a few things happening that day and he was like this is just a perfect day we were really big baseball fans and the they were the Cleveland Indians at the time they were in the World Series it was the last game of the World Series they were playing that day he's like I'm going to ask you be my girlfriend we're going to go to my house we're going to watch the win the world series it's going to be an awesome day um it was also the day of john's trial and i did send a letter to the judge begging him not to put him in jail i was like i even used excuses like i want him to give me child support i didn't not care about child's sport i was just like

anything that he would think is a good reason to not put him in jail don't do it and i wrote that letter before I started talking to this guy. And then I started to realize that maybe I shouldn't have written the letter the way that I did, but I did it. November 2nd came. And because it was the day of the trial, the night before John and his mom had my son overnight, just in case, you know, he did end up going to jail. She dropped him off really early in the morning so that she could take John to trial. And I was hanging out with one of my friends the night before, and she spent the night and my house, we were both really exhausted. So I, oh my gosh, I did I forgot to say one thing.

Go ahead. I was living with my dad at that time because my mom actually kicked me out of the house when she found out that I was talking to John again. Kind of rightfully so because he was probably a threat to my family. But my dad and his girlfriend had bought a new house still in the same city as my mom. So I was living with them. And I was living in their basement, but it was a split level. So it was kind of just like another floor of the house. It was carpeted everything. But there was access to the backyard, a garage, and then there were steps that went upstairs. And I brought my son inside and we laid down with him and he fell back to sleep. We all fell back to sleep. I woke up a couple of times and sometimes he was sleeping. Sometimes he was sitting up,

like watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the TV, whatever. And like an hour. had gone by since I had gone back to sleep and I woke up again to like get up for the day and I noticed that he wasn't in my bed with me and my friend was I had a day bed so there was like a bed that pulled out on the ground and she was sleeping on that and he wasn't in the bed with her either and I was like where did he go and so I started looking around and I had a gate at the bottom of the steps that all the doors were locked so I was like he's got to be somewhere and I can't find him and then I see the gate is pulled down and so I start walking upstairs and I'm like calling his name.

I see that our pantry is open, which he loved to go in there. I'm like, oh, he went in the pantry. I'm like, is he in the closet? And then I walk into our kitchen and our sliding glass door is open onto a deck, which is above, it's like a second story deck. So there's like 12 stairs that go down to the backyard. And there's a gate that closes and that gate is open too. And so the back door is open, the gate is open.

And I run outside. He's not on the deck. I fly down the stairs. He's not in the backyard. and I'm like, oh my God, he ran away. He left my house. He had just turned two years old. He was a tiny little two-year-old boy.

So I just start, I'm in like cheetah print, pajama pants and a big t-shirt. I don't have my phone on me. I left it in my house. I'm running around and calling his name, screaming his name. And my dad's girlfriend's dog comes running from like blocks over. And I'm like, were you with him? Like, I don't know what's going on. I'm freaking out.

I go back inside. I wake my friend up. I called the police. They come. They have to call the police from like three other cities around us because they're like, how long has he been gone? I'm like, I don't know. Another thing is my dad had a very expensive security system at their house.

And every time a door opened, a noise would go off. And we had a very heavy back door that he could not open and a lock on the gate that he could not open. So my dad's girlfriend, let her. dog outside to go to the bathroom before work, left the back door open and left the gate open and the security system wasn't set. And all of those things had to align. It also was my two-year-old somehow pulling down my gate that I had up. And he left my house. So the police are looking for him. I'm like, he's gotten hit by a car. He was abducted. He found a body of water and drowned.

All of these things. I am blacked out, like so scared. And probably about 45 minutes goes by, of them trying to find where he is. They set out on Amber Alert, everything. I have to call my dad and tell him. I have to call my mom and tell her. I'm like, I couldn't even like say the words to my mom. I'm like, he's gone. I don't know where he is.

And my, like another one of my friends came over. Finally, we're standing on my back deck and one of the cops is like, we found him. And I'm like, are you sure you found him? What does he look like? What is he wearing? And they're like, we found a little blonde boy who's wandering around your neighborhood by himself. An older couple found him in their backyard, like, played on their swing set. They called the police. He's fine. And I was like, I, I was convinced that the day that his dad

was going to trial to go to jail, I had just killed my son. Like, I was convinced that that was what just happened. And I just kept thinking, what am I going to tell him? When am I going to tell his mom? Like, I, it was horrible. And my, I couldn't drive. I was delirious. I could. I could not drive. So my friend, my two friends that were there, they drove and got him and brought him home. They literally put me, like, they put me in his arms. They took like a statement. The police took a statement and they were like, well, like, hopefully it doesn't happen again. And then they just left. Like there was really nothing that came from it. And so I was, I guess that was good because I was worried I was going to get in trouble. But I was like, I did not leave my house. Like, I would never

leave my house open. It wasn't me. And I, they put him in my arms and I'm like hugging him. bawling my eyes out and I put him down, he just starts walking towards the road again. He has no idea what happened. He's just like ready to go on another adventure. And I'm like, well, at least I didn't cause him trauma, but definitely caused me trauma. So I hadn't really looked at my phone yet that day and then I pick up my phone and my ex-boyfriend who was in the car with me when everything happened with John had sent me a text and I hadn't really been talking to him because we had broken up a few months before.

he sent me a text and said, John got two to three years in prison. And I was like, oh my God. So I just went through losing my son and then finding him. And I found out that his dad is going to prison for two to three years. And then I text the guy that I'm talking to and I tell him everything that happened. And he's like, I'm going to come over. So he comes over. And he's like, I still think that you should come to my house.

Like you need you need to relax. Everything is okay. And we walk outside. and before I get in my car, he asked me to be his girlfriend. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, what a crazy day to ask me to be your girlfriend. What a crazy anniversary to have. And good thing he asked me out because I've been with him for seven years now.

And we're married. And we have another kid together. So it ended up working out. He went through all of the crazy stuff with everything that was going on. So that was awesome. But then we went to his house and then had to watch out. our favorite baseball team lose the world series. So November 2nd is the most eventful, traumatic, horrible day of my life.

And it's also the day that I started dating the love of my life. So that's really fun. But he went to prison. He ended up getting out after six months. I don't know exactly how all that works. I just know that that's all he ended up having to spend in there. and he got out after six months and then I would not let him see our son when he first got out because I didn't know how things were going to be while he was in jail he wrote me letters all

the time poems love letters things like how he just wanted to be with me he would use the money that he had on his account to call me and try to talk to me and tell me he wanted to get back together with me and part most of me I was doing a good job at telling him no but part of me was still like I felt guilty for him being in jail because I felt like it was my fault and I also was scared to tell him no still like because he was going to get out eventually and I was so scared to make him mad even though he was in jail so when he got out I wouldn't let my son see him and I got subpoenaed because him and his mom went to our county and they filed something where we had to go to the courthouse and meet with a bunch of other parents who were having custodial issues and

watch this movie about basically it doesn't matter what your parents are going through as long as you see them. And after we watched it, they stood up in the courthouse and they were like, if you're having any issues, you have any concerns about domestic abuse or drug use, you can bring those up to us at the end, but what we're most focused on is that your child sees both parents. And I was just like, what do you mean? I mean, I understand him seeing his son, but I was, I was scared to be in the same room as him. And I had to fill out of paper and I had to put on there that he went to jail because he hurt me and they pulled me aside and they were like, are you scared to be in a room with him and a mediator? And I was like, well, no, he's not

going to, like, hurt me in front of a mediator. So we went in the room with the mediator to talk to try to figure out some kind of custody agreement. And another thing that he would do a lot is he would always try to tell me that he wasn't his kid, which he looks just like him. And we all knew that it was his kid. I knew it was his kid. I'd only been with him. It was just that he wanted to hold something against me and try and make me feel like he knew something that I did it. And so when we went back there and we started talking, he was like, I will waive all of my rights to get a paternity test. I agree that he's my kid. I will pay child support. I want split custody. And the mediator talked to us. And they were like, well, if he lives with his, if John's living

with his mom. Do you feel safe with him there, with your son there? And I was like, I mean, yeah, I trust his mom. And he's, the mediator was like, well, as long as John tells you when he leaves to go live somewhere else and notifies you where he is, is it okay if he's over there? And I was like, I mean, I guess that someone's there that I trust that's watching. And she goes, okay, well, then I'm going to give you guys split custody. And I didn't, I could not stick up for myself. I was, Jake, who is my husband now, he was with me, but he couldn't come back in the room with the mediator, so he wasn't there to help me stick up for myself. And this was one of the first times I had seen John since he went to jail for literally trying to kill me.

And so I just was like, okay. And we had to go in front of a judge, and we had to have an agreement put in writing, and we had to swear we'd follow it. and I left with split custody with my abuser, and I was super stressed out about it. Definitely caused some issues with us throughout the years, but my son is nine years old now, and I have a five-year-old also with my husband, and I do have a decently okay relationship with my son's dad. He has grown. I can tell that he has. has and I definitely think that we were not meant to cross to cross paths. I don't think that we should have ever ended up together. It was very toxic, very abusive, traumatic for both of us. But now we have

a son out of it and he is so smart. He's in gifted programs. He is, you know, straight-A student. He plays sports. He's so sweet. I mean, he's just one of the best kids. I'm so happy that I have him. I can deal with putting up with everything else and I can deal with having to have a relationship with his dad now. It's been a long time. But it's definitely hard. And I mean, sometimes my son will do things that will remind me of John and I will start to feel like really uncomfortable and I hate that.

I don't want my son to do things that makes me feel uncomfortable, but it'll remind me of him. and it'll remind me of the way that he talks to the way that his mannerisms are and it just like brings me back to when I was with him and that is very difficult for me but I am very happy with my life now and you know it all probably had to happen for everything to fall in place so he my husband coaches my son's baseball team and this past season his dad started to help coach he's starting to get more involved he's it's definitely gotten better But yeah, it's been difficult.

But I mean, yeah, everything really crazy happened before I met Jake. And then ever since then, I've had someone stable in my life finally, someone that's good to me. And it's made everything so much easier. And now I am really happy with where we're at. That's great. And I was going to say, too, I think obviously, like I was saying before, your story is nuts.

I mean, it's like, I feel like when something happens, you think, okay, like it's going to come up and then something else happens again. But no, and you're such a great storyteller, seriously. I mean, thank you. Very good. I always say, if I can like picture it in my head as someone's telling it, that's how I know they're a good storyteller. But no way, I also think that your story is so relatable because for so many different reasons. I mean, there might be people watching this that had a child at a young age and can relate to that aspect. There's probably people that have been in a, in just an important.

abusive relationship and can relate you to that. And then there's people that like you have a mix of both where they had a child with someone that it was toxic and it wasn't healthy and they had to deal with a lot of the things that came with it. Right. So I think that's the most important part of sharing your story because there's so many different aspects that even if somebody wasn't in the same boat as you or isn't in the same boat as you, they can relate to so many different parts of your story. Yeah.

You know, and I just think that's wild. And I am glad though. Like, you know, it's very important that you had the support that you had because having a child that young is never easy. I mean, I feel like even having, if I had a child now and I'm 26, it still wouldn't be easy. So I can only imagine and balancing that in school and coming out where you are now. Like, kudos to you. That's amazing. Seriously, you should be proud of yourself.

Thank you. Of course. Yeah. I really, like, my plan was always to go to college after high school. I mean, I was on track to get a graduate with an honors degree. and I was really prepared for all that. I wanted to be in like finances, accounting. And then I graduated high school and dealing with my son and his father and everything that was going on.

And then with everything happening with the trial and stuff right when I graduated, I was like, I'm going to take some time off. And then I took more time off and more. I ended up getting my insurance license and then ended up taking a different route. And I never had to go to college. But it was just, it definitely set me on a different. tracks that I thought I was going to be on my entire life leading up to that point. And there are a lot of things I wish I could have experienced.

But then I'm like, I got to have all these experiences that a lot of people don't get to have. Right. And I think too, it kind of pushes you to grow up a little bit faster. Oh, for sure. Which isn't the worst thing. You know? Yeah.

It definitely prepared me for a lot that I didn't know I was going to have to be prepared for. being the oldest sibling in my house also made me grow up a little bit faster. So that's another reason why I think when I found out I was pregnant. I was like, I can do this because, I mean, I've helped raise all of my siblings. And I mean, my little sister who's five months younger than my son now, like, they're best friends. They're in the same grade.

Like, it's super strange. They go around. He's like, this is my aunt. That is funny. It's super funny. But, I mean, they're best friends, like the best of friends. and they wouldn't get to have that. And so, yeah, there are definitely a lot of good things that came from it.

And I just really try to not dwell on the things that could have been. And I try to focus on the things that are. And that is really what gets me through it. No, absolutely. And like I said, I really think you did such an incredible job. And I'm so glad that you wanted to come on and share your story. Seriously, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

And like I said, you should be proud of yourself because that's a lot to go through. And then it's good. I think the best thing is being able to come out of something and be like, well, I'm happy where I am now and it all worked out and, you know, everything happens for a reason. And sometimes it can seem like it's one thing after another, after another, but there are so many positives to your story and not only for yourself, but now you're on a platform where your voice and your story is going to help other people not feel so alone. And that's a whole other form of positivity from it. Yeah, that's really what I wanted. Yeah, of course. And it'll definitely do

that. Like I said, you did amazing. So thank you so much.