Perpetual Unbalance

The plan was for me to stay with my best friend until my mom got her own place. I liked living there. Her mom was so cool. I really think this is where my life took a big turn. Not to say that I didn't make some unwise choices even after moving in with them. But I believe it would've been much worse. Think back to when you were growing up. While at your friend's house, would you ever disrespect or talk back to their parents? I know I wouldn't, and I didn't. That was a change for me. I learned to respect her mother and admire her. She never resented the extra burden of having another teenager in the house. She never asked my mom for anything. Everything she did for her own daughter she did for me. She was by no means financially well off. However, we never went without the things we needed, nor many of the things that we wanted. She took over the responsibility for me as if I had been born to her. I fell in love with her as a mother over those next 3 years. I love her with a passion that can only be felt for very few people in life. She loved me when she didn't have to, she made a choice to. I saw from an outside view the struggles she faced raising now 2 teenage girls. She showed me compassion and unconditional love and taught me to see it in my mom. It was so easy for me to get into a self-pitying mode with my mother because I wasn't in a position where I could take a step back and really look at the situation.

So eventually I did start to rebel in my own ways. My best friend got pregnant when we were 14 and I ended up pregnant at 15. My best friend's daughter was only a few months old when I found out I was pregnant. I saw how much my friend's mother struggled to care for her new granddaughter as well as us and decided to move back with my mom. I really wanted to be with my mom during this time and so off I went.

My mom was living in Missouri at the time.