When I was 18 years old I found myself pregnant. I had just started my first semester of college and had just broken up with my boyfriend the day before; the timing couldn’t have been worse. I was now being faced with a very difficult decision. Do I place this baby for adoption or do I try to parent him on my own? I wrestled with this decision for a long time. I researched my options and eventually came to the decision that I was going to parent him. His father and I married about a year later, and two years after that I found myself in yet another very difficult situation. I was now a single mother again and watching that sweet baby suffer because of that decision.
Even though my choices were not the ones that led to our divorce I still felt incredibly guilty. My baby was suffering for something completely out of his control. For the first time in his life, I was questioning whether I had made the right decision. I loved him more than anything in the world and wanted to spare him the pain he was going through now. If I had placed him would that have saved him from having a broken family?
So often we look back at our decisions and wonder what would have happened if we had done things differently. But as mere mortals, we have no way of knowing what could have been. Who’s to say that the family I placed him with couldn’t have gone through the exact same thing? Would he have been in a better situation? I will never know. As much as I hate watching him hurt like this, I will never regret that decision I made when I was 18. That little boy is incredibly loved and has touched the lives of so many people. I wish more than anything I could take the pain away. I would take his place in a heartbeat, but I know that he is learning from this experience, and so am I.
