Twenty-Five and Shocked Pt. 1

The New Year had begun pretty uneventfully. I had already started stressing about my second semester of graduate school and was only mildly concerned with the missing period that I was supposed to have had a week or two prior. My period has always been irregular and since I had been on birth control successfully for roughly the past decade without incident, I thought little of the fact that it had been a while since Mean Ol’ Red Headed Aunt Flo’ had come to town.

It wasn’t until I was talking to a co-worker about his significant-other might be pregnant that I even thought to pick up a grocery store test. I got off the phone and headed to Safeway for my clandestine mission—my boyfriend and I live together and if he knew I thought it were even a possibility that I might be pregnant he’d probably have a heart attack.

I strolled down the aisles of Safeway looking for the cheapest name brand test I could find—I’m a graduate student after all and we aren’t made of money. I took that and some of the other items I needed up to the counter. When I returned, he was out coaching a student.

Having been familiar with taking pregnancy tests—due to the irregularity of my cycle—I went in the bathroom, locked the door, and peed on that stick with all of the confidence of a non-pregnant irregularly cycled individual.

I watched the window anxiously for the next few minutes as something strange started to happen. Not one line, but two appeared in the window. One of the lines was faint—my saving grace!! Until I read the box that said, “Even a faint line is indication of a positive test.”

My immediate reaction was, “Shit.”