Twenty-Five and Unaware

I sat on the porch chain-smoking Nat Sherman Hints in the early morning hours of the first day of the New Year. The year two thousand and fourteen was off to a great start. In the weeks prior, my boyfriend and I had been fighting and spent the start of the New Year separately. I decided to head to the beach to spend some time with friends and he decided to go to some overpriced party in San Francisco with people who did a pretty decent impression of being friends.

As I sat on the porch, I reflected on the last few weeks. I was pretty damn near my wits end with him. As the only one of the two of us who had been gainfully employed in over a year, I was irritated that he had spent $200 on some pretentious party in the city and even more pissed that he had the nerve to not mention anything until he had already agreed to go—solo, and frustrated with the fact that my feelings weren’t even a consideration. I sat there fuming with every intention of breaking up with him, but lost the nerve after hearing how awful of a time he’d had—this is one of those instances where I felt no shame in saying, “I told you so, buddy.” I was angry at the situation—incredibly angry—irrationally angry (at times) and I couldn’t understand why this singular instance had made me so incredibly angry. Maybe it was a result of all that had gone on in the past year, or maybe the preceding weeks of fighting and having to defend that I was not—in fact—cheating with the person that looked nothing like anyone I had ever dated before, who was a co-worker therefore making even the thought of maybe cheating with that particular person an awful idea, or the fact that this rumor was coming from ominous unknown source that he wouldn’t disclose.

Pregnancy hormones were definitely the furthest thing from my mind since I’ve been on birth control since the age of sixteen and that hadn’t failed me in the past. I mean sure, drinking that night just sounded awful, but I’m not much of a drinker anyway so that wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary. Looking back, maybe my body was trying to tell me something . . .