These Last Moments

Chapter 0 ~> Epilogue

I remember when my life was, well, normal.

I remember when my greatest concern was how many likes I got on my last Instagram post, or whether I'd drawn my eyeliner wing perfectly. I know that makes me sound like that kind of girl, but that's exactly what I was. I was a girl. And now I feel so... indifferent.

When I think back to what my life was like just a few months ago, I realize how oblivious I was. I feel like a completely different person. I don't even feel like that was me, that all those memories belong to someone else and I'm just an observer. I guess that's how I feel now too.

My name is Emily Young. "16 and Pregnant". Pretty fucking cliche isn't it?. Teenage girls seem to get pregnant all the damn time. At least that's the commonly held thought. You could blame it on the state of our country's sex education system. You could blame it on a bad decision. Laziness. The mindset of 'it will never happen to me'. But that isn't always the case, especially not with me.

I could have been the girl who forgot to take her pill that morning. I could have been the girl who was so careful, but caught by the 2%. I could have been the girl who took no precautions, was caught in the moment and didn't think. But I wasn't any of those girls.

Yes I got pregnant at 16, I was pregnant at 16, and now I'm 17 years old- and a mother. When you're a pregnant teenager, you get this label. Walking down the street, you get looks of disgust and people muttering judgements under their breath. Mothers holding their daughters close, telling them to never end up like 'that girl over there'. Regular people staring at you, looking at you like a dirty rag.

The judgements people hand to you over your protruding belly and youthful face don't make the hardship any easier to bear- 'You've ruined your life', 'should've kept your legs shut'. Being called a dumb slut by a seemingly kind old woman in the cereal aisle at the supermarket -Those people don't care about how the girl came to be in that position. They don't care whether it was a result of her own decisions, or if she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They only care that she is the way she is. That's all they see.

As for me, I didn't know what it was. I didn't know whether I'd drank too much and was so hammered I never remembered it. I didn't even know who the father was, whether it was my own boyfriend, whom I'd never slept with- after that I did doubt that fact- or maybe this was like Jane the Virgin and I got accidentally artificially inseminated last time I went to my gynecologist. In short, I didn't know. I thought I did, I thought I had it all figured out. But I didn't. I never knew the truth- until the very end. Truth is, you can't trust the people closest to you.

I didn't know until everyone else did.

And even when they knew.

I was still that girl.

The pregnant 16 year old girl.