When my girlfriend got pregnant, I didn’t run. I got a job at a hardware store, kept going to school, and told myself I’d figure the rest out. And I did, honestly.
I was 17 when my daughter, Ainsley, came into the world.
We had plans. A small apartment. A future we’d sketched out on the back of a fast-food receipt between part-time shifts we worked just to stay in school. We were both orphans. No safety net. No one to fall back on.
By the time Ainsley was six months old, her mom had decided that a baby wasn’t the life she’d imagined at 18. So she left for college one August morning and never came back. Never called. Never once asked how our daughter was doing.
So it was just Ainsley and me, and honestly, looking back now, I think we were each other’s best thing.
It was just Ainsley and me.
I called my daughter “Bubbles” from the time she was about four years old. She was obsessed with the Powerpuff Girls, specifically Bubbles, the sweet one, the one who cried when things were sad and laughed loudest when things were funny.
