Conquering Chaos (7 page)

My reaction was to brag about it with all my friends. I think I was trying to get
a reaction out of them to help me understand what to make of it. As young as I was,
I had some sense that what happened wasn’t right. But I didn’t have many ways to process
something so crazy. And my bragging didn’t work out. One day I was at a barbecue and
I started talking to two girls about it. They knew immediately that something wasn’t
right, and they went and told someone. When it got back to my mom, she freaked out.
She thought I was lying or saying dirty things to those girls, and I think it scared
her. That day she pulled me aside and smacked me for it.

After that, it turned into this very ugly, awkward kind of thing with other adults
hearing about it and being concerned. That’s what clued me in that what had happened
was wrong. My mom and I never talked about it again until much later, when I was older
and we went to counseling. I think she just didn’t know what to do. Neither did I.
Things are weird when boys are molested by girls. People think about it differently.
The message you get is that it’s a cool thing to happen, something to brag about.
Then on the other hand you learn adults don’t want you to talk about it.

It wasn’t cool at all. It made me think sex was something kids could do, which influenced
me to act too sexual when I was too young. Before long I was breaking up with my little
girlfriends because they were prudes. Prudes! We were ten-year-olds! It’s so messed
up.

I wound up finding a girlfriend who wanted to do it all the time. She was crazy, and
that was basically all we did. Going from her to Catelynn was a real shocker. But
I never thought about dumping Cate for holding back. There was something about her
self-respect and the way she just came right out and said “no” that almost compelled
me to want to get closer to her. Cate was really good for me in that way.

Catelynn:

Yes, I was a prude. I wasn’t having any of that. I was a little punk, but I was a
classy punk! I was a virgin when I met Tyler, and I didn’t see any reason to throw
that away for no reason. He’d obviously had more experience than me and had different
ideas about sex, but that was his deal. I had other boyfriends before him, but I didn’t
do anything with them at all. I’ve just always been the kind of girl who respects
my body. I never liked to show it off in skimpy clothes or anything, and I didn’t
feel like giving it up to some guy just because he wanted it that second.

Tyler really wanted to have sex, but I made him wait for about nine months. I never
worried that he’d dump me like he’d dump those other girls. Not because I was sure
he wouldn’t, but because if he did, that would just mean he wasn’t the right guy for
me. It was that simple. I wasn’t going to compromise my self-respect.

And it was worth it, because he waited. Instead of having sex we hung out and talked,
and talked, and talked. We built a really strong relationship without that one thing.
And then one night, when we were fooling around in his room, I just said, “Are you
gonna do it already, or not?”

Tyler was like, “What?” He was so shocked when I suggested it, all of a sudden he
was the one who wasn’t sure! He kept asking me, “Do you really want to do this? Are
you absolutely sure? Are you sure you want to?” So in the end I was the one saying,
come on, let’s just do it!

Once we’d done it once, we were doing it all the time! After waiting so long we turned
into crazy, horny teenagers. It was so bad. We would drink and party together and
fool around constantly, all the time.

Oh, the stories. Tyler’s mom had this camper parked by her house that we used to hang
out in sometimes. One night we went out there with some booze and started drinking.
Once we were good and buzzed, of course we ended up banging in his mom’s trailer.
We were having a good old time until we heard her come outside and yell his name.

“Tyler! What on earth are you doing?”

We just froze and stared at each other, and then Tyler jumped up and yelled, “We’re
just talking!”

His mom wasn’t fooled! “Put your clothes on and get out here!”

It wasn’t until later that we realized we were in the camper with the lights on and
she could see everything! Thank God we were drunk, or we’d have to remember that incident
sober.

Tyler:

All those months of waiting paid off, but unfortunately, we were not being safe at
all. We were using the pull-out method, and that was it. I didn’t wear condoms and
Cate never went on birth control. We just didn’t feel like we had to. My parents hadn’t
given me a real talk about it yet, and Cate’s parents hadn’t given her a talk. We
went through sex education and everything, but I sort of thought I was an expert already.
We thought pulling out is good enough, and like typical dumb kids, we couldn’t actually
comprehend what would happen if it wasn’t.

We can’t blame anybody, but I wish someone would have hammered it in a little harder.
We just approached sex like we’d taken the pills and the air duster. It was fun and
it was available, so we did it, because the risks didn’t really scare us. We were
doing adult things with a child’s level of understanding.

Catelynn:

Now we believe it’s really important to talk to kids as much as possible about sex.
We don’t exactly believe in abstinence-only education. It would be nice if everyone
could be abstinent, but the fact is, most teenagers aren’t. You can tell the teenagers
of the world to stop having sex as much as you want, but they’re going to do it. You’ll
never have a world where teenagers are not having sex. So you can still teach them
that abstinence is the safest thing to do, but you also have to make sure they understand
that when they do have sex they can do it in a safe and healthy way. That means condoms
and also having control over your own decisions. We want to teach people, “It’s your
body, it’s your choice, and you don’t have to do anything without protecting yourself.”
If you’re going to do it, be smart about it. Don’t be stupid.

Catelynn:

I didn’t ever suspect that I was pregnant. One day I was cleaning the shower and I
suddenly got really sick. The door was closed, and I just thought, “Wow, I probably
shouldn’t have locked myself in a room with all these cleaning supplies.” I didn’t
feel good for a couple of days. I couldn’t hold anything down, not even water. And
I had my period, so I ruled out pregnancy right away. That was the first thing my
mom asked me on the way to the doctor. I told her I needed to go because I might have
the flu, and she was asking me if I was sure I wasn’t pregnant. I was like no, mom,
geez. I’m on my period. I just think I have the flu.

So they hooked me up to an IV, had me pee in a cup, asked me if I was pregnant, and
I said, “No, I’m not pregnant.” Then I lay there for awhile, with my mom sitting in
the room with me, waiting to hear from the doctor again.

When she came back in, she didn’t say anything except, “Well, you’re pregnant.” Then
she walked out.

I can’t explain why, but my feeling was instant rage. I just wanted to get out of
there. I was like, Get this IV out of my arm, and let me get out of this place. My
mom got the papers from the doctor and we got out of there. She drove straight to
Tyler’s house.

Tyler:

I knew Catelynn was going to the hospital, but I thought the same thing she did. I
didn’t think she was pregnant. I was hanging out with friends of mine while she was
at the doctor, and they were giving me all this shit. “Dude, what if she’s pregnant?
Dude!”

“Whatever,” I thought.

Then Cate and her mom pull up. So I go out to the car, and she’s lying in the backseat.
I get in with her and have her lie down on my lap. Her mom doesn’t say a word, just
hands me a bunch of papers and starts driving.

Catelynn doesn’t say anything, either. So I look at the papers and at first I don’t
understand them, because it’s all this medical mumbo-jumbo. But I read, read, read
all this stupid stuff, until I get to the bottom.

Pregnancy Test: Positive.

“No.”

I felt like I was going to throw up. I barely even remember the car ride back to Catelynn’s
house, but I know it was silent. I didn’t know what to say. I just stared out the
window with my chin on my hand, thinking, “What am I going to do now?”

Catelynn had already moved ten times that year and they were in a new trailer with
no furniture set up yet. It was this empty place. You could hear the echoes as you
talked. All Cate had in her room was a mattress on the floor. She lay down and closed
her eyes, and I just sat down against the wall beside her in shock. I didn’t know
what to do.

My first reaction was, “You’re going to do this, you’re going to have a child.” And
then I was thinking, “This can’t happen to me. How can this be happening?” I looked
at Cate and I just thought, “I don’t know what to do.”

It was an intense, draining, emotional day.

Catelynn:

I was so overwhelmed and upset that I slept that whole day. My mom woke me up at six
the next morning and the first thing she said was, “Do you want an abortion?”

I had always been against abortion. But you never know how you’ll really react until
you’re in that situation. I was young and I was absolutely terrified. I broke down
crying and said yeah, yeah, yeah. People say that they’ll do a certain thing, but
when I was caught off guard, woken up like that and still shocked and scared, that
was how I reacted.

Tyler:

Cate’s mom called me up and asked if I could skip school the next day. And I said,
“Sure, I guess, what’s tomorrow?” She said, “I made Cate an appointment, we’re gonna
get an abortion.”

I said, “Hang on, just wait a second. We need to think about this.” I didn’t know
how to process that. But it was my baby, too, and I didn’t want to make any big decisions
I didn’t understand. I told Catelynn’s mom we needed to take some time so we could
all think it over and discuss what was going to happen. After I hung up I just sat
there trying to untangle my thoughts. I was sure I wasn’t ready to be a father, but
I didn’t like the sound of an abortion, either.

I didn’t have a clear understanding of the issue or anything. I didn’t really know
anything about it. I spent all day researching everything about abortion. I talked
to a teacher I trusted and he helped me find trustworthy medical websites I could
learn from. I wanted to see what the procedure actually was, what they’d do, and how
things were different in different weeks, what the risks were and all of that.

So I printed it all out and went over to her house to talk about it with her. I thought,
she’s going to be the one who has to do this. Her body will carry the baby and she’s
the one who would go through pregnancy and birth. I wanted her to make the decision
but I wanted her to know everything she could know to make the best decision for herself.

She looked at one page and immediately said, “No. Absolutely not. I can’t do this.
We’re going to have to think about something else.”

And that was really when the whole ball started rolling on the idea of adoption.

It still wasn’t an easy choice between parenthood and placing the baby for adoption.
Catelynn and I bounced back and forth: I wanted to parent and she wanted adoption,
she wanted to parent and I wanted adoption. We did this over and over, just figuring
things out from every angle we could. -But when you’re in that situation, you’re thinking
with pure emotion and pure feeling. You’re all wrapped up in yourself and what you’re
feeling, what you want that second. You have to step back and think logically.

So I finally wrote up a “pros and cons” list of what I could give this child as a
parent, versus what adoption could do for her. Before I started the list I thought
it would be a tough balance. But what happened was that the one thing I had on the
side for parenting the child was, “being with biological family and surrounded by
love.” That was literally the only thing I could think of. The cons were, “You don’t
have a diploma. You don’t have a license. You don’t have a cell phone. You don’t have
money. You have two years of high school left. You have no way of getting a car...”
When I looked at all the things on the cons side, it was like, “Holy shit.” Votes
for adoption were huge. She still gets surrounded by love. She gets her own room.
Catelynn was living in a trailer! The crib would be in Catelynn’s room! There was
just no way, logically, that it would work.

So what I did was I left the list on her dresser and I went home. Later that night
she called me and said, “Let’s do it. Let’s make an appointment with an adoption counselor.”

Catelynn:

The list brought us back to the reality of what we could actually provide for a child.
It wasn’t about us or what we wanted. We couldn’t think about our own wishes. It was
about the child, the child’s needs, and what was best for the child. I wanted to think
of more things we could give her, too. And the same thing happened to me. All I could
think of was living with biological parents, unconditional love. So I thought, let’s
look into adoption and see if it’s the right thing for us or not. But even then it
was hard.

Tyler:

We knew we didn’t have good enough reasons to choose parenthood. Yeah, it could work.
We could scrape by. We could live paycheck to paycheck and struggle our whole lives.
But we both knew that the one fact of “biological family” was not enough to give this
child the best chance.

Still, it was so hard to separate the facts from the emotions. As teenagers, we wanted
to be selfish. We wanted to do what would make us happy. And we wanted to parent that
child. That was something we really, really wanted. But every time we thought about
the nitty-gritty, we realized it was something we were wanting for ourselves.