I was eighteen years old, trying to believe love could make everything work. On a night that should have marked the beginning of something beautiful, words from the person I was about to build my life with left me feeling shattered and alone.
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We set the wedding date for July 18th—exactly one year to the day from when we first met at the bar on my Mom’s birthday. I had just turned 18.

But my father was furious. He wouldn’t walk me down the aisle. In fact, he wouldn’t even talk to me for a whole year after I got pregnant. It deeply hurt my feelings that the one thing in the world that meant the absolute most to me—becoming a mother—was considered something bad by him. He acted like I was throwing my life away. He said the exact same thing, actually. But to me, I was doing the most honorable thing in the world, and the thing that meant the most to me. It is still the most important thing to me, and I don’t regret my choices at all.

However, I started seeing things that made me start to think maybe I didn’t want to get married—things in him because of the drinking, and because of the lifestyle, because of everything that I had already decided I didn’t want anything to do with. All of a sudden, I was right smack in the middle of it again with the person that I was going to be building my life with, and I was already pregnant.

I was fighting for my family. I was fighting for what I knew was going to be a good family. I was going to make it a good family. I just didn’t have a partner that felt strongly that way; even though he did say he wanted a life like that and I believed him but he was more concerned with drinking and partying, and I was more concerned with helping him be good.

And the worst night of my life, up until that time, was the night before my wedding, of all things. He had gone uptown and he got drunk. We were in North Carolina, my hometown—not Virginia, and not his hometown in Pennsylvania—so he knew no one there. I was at my Grandma Betty Ball’s house, and he comes home drunk. He had run into some people uptown and came to the conclusion that I slept around, which I didn’t.

I know from way back when I was a teenager, there were people that started rumors, and guys would get upset because I wouldn’t do anything with them because someone said that I had. It’s a long story, but I had one of my friends at school one time that said the teacher said something about me being loose, and he said, “Are you kidding me? You can’t touch her with a 10-foot pole.” But people had started the stories.

And so instead of the man I was about to marry taking up for my honor, he comes home and calls me a whore. He didn’t just call me that, he hollered it at me repeatedly and I was trying to get him to be quiet so he didn’t wake up my grandmother. And I had to tell him through sobbing tears I was not.
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He wasn’t my husband yet, and anyway, it was devastating. It was crushing. I can’t even explain the weight of how much that hurt on a night like that—the night before I’m getting married, when it’s supposed to be a special thing, and he’s calling me a whore. I was so empty. I already had everybody there coming, and I felt like I couldn’t call it off. It was a mess. It hurt deeply. It still hurts deeply.

​If you are reading this, and it’s already bad… you don’t have to go through with it. 


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I joined because I wanted to be near Mike.
​The moment I learned I was pregnant, all I wanted was to be a mom.
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​It came time for vacation, and I went back to visit my mom and see Mike at Thanksgiving time.

After seeing him again, I really didn’t want to leave. That’s when I came up with the story that I was joining the military so they would pay for my college. It would keep me from facing my dad’s wrath for not going to Florida State right away, but the real reason I was joining was to get back with Mike.

I figured I could pick out a station near him because he was stationed at Oceana in Virginia Beach, and there were other naval stations nearby that I could put on my wish list. I really thought out of the three that you get to pick, you’d get one of them. But then I was told they’re just a wish list—if you’re lucky, you get one, but they’re going to send you wherever they want to, and I didn’t want to go away from Mike.

These were all plans made to just be near Mike, and at the time I was making them, neither one of us fully thought it through. After I had already enrolled and gone to Jacksonville, Florida, where they do their enrollment—where you get all your vaccinations and get ready to go, where you enlist basically—I was told I had already signed my life away in the military.

My father had mixed emotions. I think he kind of liked the idea that I was going into the military. For some reason, I think he was a little bit proud of that, and I also think there might’ve been part of him that liked the idea that he wouldn’t have to pay for a whole tuition, especially since he had already put off me going to school so that he only had to pay for an in-state tuition instead of an out-of-state. But honestly, it was just my way of getting near Mike.

And then the reality set in that I might not get to be near Mike anyway, and they could send me to Greenland or wherever they wanted to. This is when we decided if I got pregnant, I would get out of it—it was the only way to get out of it, that’s what Mike said, and that’s what all of his friends in the military said. So that’s what we tried to do. When I got my period, I assumed our plan hadn’t worked, so I had to go off and join the military.

I actually really liked it, and during that time I felt very accomplished and proud. I can’t quite describe it. There was just something about being in the military and serving your country that made you feel good. I was really proud of myself, and I started seeing it as a career. I did really well in Boot Camp, too, because Mike and his military friends had already prepared me for what to expect. They’re pretty rough on you, but I was told it was all a head game, and they told me how to deal with it, so I did pretty good.

I saw a lot of people who didn’t do as well. In fact, a lot of people turned to me for support, and I helped them calm down a little bit. Some of them were young like me, but although I was young, I’d been through a lot, so I wasn’t as tender as some of them. They were crying themselves to sleep at night, so I just helped.

We had some people who kept getting us in trouble, and our company commander (CC) made us get up and do our PT at like four in the morning instead of six in the morning like the rest of them, and it was grueling PT! Those obstacle courses you see on TV that they do—that’s for real, you do some pretty rough stuff.

And I was getting sick, so I went to the nurse’s office. Before she even ran the test, she said I’m about 90 percent sure, you’re pregnant. Test was positive 😮

I was told I could stay in, but I had to have an abortion, and there was no way I was going to have an abortion. And then they said, “Well, you can have the kid and then come back,” and I was like, there’s no way I’m gonna have a kid and come back in the military. Although there was a part of me that was really sad because I really was proud and happy to be in the military, the moment I found out that I was pregnant, my entire life changed. All I wanted to do was be a mom. That was the most important thing to me in the world to me.

And I was going to be a good mom, and I was going to build a good life. Being a mom was the only thing at that moment that mattered—a mom and a family. I was going to be a good wife, too. I wanted a good family. I wanted what I thought was wholesome, not what I had seen and what I grew up in. I never wanted my child to have to go through that. What I envisioned was a family like Leave it to Beaver—that was a TV show that I loved as a kid, and it’s what I thought a normal family should be and what they should look like, and that’s what I wanted to have. Becoming a mom and having a family was the only thing I cared about from that point on.

And then after that discovery, I had to sit there in the barracks for almost three weeks until I got discharged, because they make you get all this paperwork signed and you have to meet this person and that person—it was crazy just to get out. When I finally did get out, I took my discharge paycheck and bought my wedding dress.
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