The Beginning of Life

I met a girl in the summer of 1998. I was 18 and she was 17. We dated for a while and things were pretty good. It was the first girl I dated continuously for any length of time. At that age, I didn't want to get too serious with anyone. We had fun together at first and things seemed good. About six months into the relationship, things started to change. I guess the "real" person was starting to come through. We had what started out to be a little fuss and it quickly turned into a major argument. At that time in life, I didn't like to argue and fuss and fight. She did most of the arguing. She yelled to the top of her voice and got really angry. I remember feeling shocked because I had not witnessed that type of behavior before. I just sat there and listened in amazement thinking how crazy the whole escapade was. It finally settled down and things went back to what was normal at the time. It didn't take long to realize that this wasn't what I signed up for. I started thinking to myself that I needed to go ahead and end this relationship because it was going nowhere. The fits of rage became more frequent and the violence slowly increased. I have never been the type to be violent toward women so I just sat there and took it. I was finally at the point where I had enough and I decided to end it. I told her that I thought we should take a break for a little while and let things cool off. We could see where it went from there. As you can imagine, that didn't go over well. I spent time away from her. I decided to go on a date with another girl, really just to see where my heart was at. After a little over a week of not talking much or seeing each other at all, I got the call that would change my life forever. Yep, she was pregnant. We talked about the pregnancy and about how everything had gone over the past couple of months. She made me believe that the behavior she had been displaying wasn't her normal behavior. She claimed that she just didn't know how to deal with her feelings that she had developed for me and she was scared. To this day, I don't really know if that was true or just a line. At any rate, we were going to give it another shot. Since I had been raised in a Christian home, with Christian values, abortion was not option. We sorted out our differences and carried on with the relationship. Over the next 7 months or so, there was quite a bit of happiness shared between us. We were excited about the baby coming and we were discussing all of our future plans for our baby. There were some stressful time as well with the anticipation of becoming a parent, especially at that age, but for the most part, we covered those feelings with feelings of joy and excitement.

Then the time came. My little baby girl was born. She was so precious and so sweet. I held her non stop. I didn't want to put her down. I was so proud to be a daddy. She was the sweetest thing I had ever laid eyes on at that time in my life. I was so happy. We were happy. New parents, struggling, but making the best of it. For the first nine months of my baby girl being in this world, I was so happy and felt so good about where my life was going. There was only one problem, I had a minimum wage job and with the new baby, I had to find a way to increase my income. At that time, all I had was a GED. It was hard to find a job that paid enough to pay the bills and take care of my little girl. I didn't want my daughter to have to settle for just the things she needed, I wanted to put myself in a position that would afford me the opportunity to give her what she wanted as well. I wanted the "good life". I decided to take a big step. What I did next would change my life forever..................

Stay tuned to the next chapter in my life. I will talk about how making a career change would change my path in life forever.