my relationship with hipmama: 2000-2008

In 2000, at 18, a college freshman living in the dorms I got pregnant. Making the choice to terminate the pregnancy had less to do with a fear that it would cramp my style than knowing that the guy would bail (because he told me so) also, seeing as how I got pregnant the first time we fucked...well, and we ended up just not getting along very well, it was the best choice for me then. For some odd reason, though, considering I had always said I would NEVER have children, EVER...that experience made me feel initiated in to the world of mothers. In some weird way I believe that the would-have-been baby daddy and I stayed together "for the baby" - like we shared some great tragedy and no matter how much we disliked each other we stayed together for about 2 years. The summer of 2001 I was living back in my hometown and saw a flier with the cover of "breeder" on it. Had I ever wanted to be pregnant, that was what I wanted to look like pregnant-I had to check it out. I went to the bookstore and bought the book. I distinctly remember sitting in my trailer at the ranch I worked/lived at and drinking whiskey while I devoured the book. The flier was for the book tour and I went- I got to meet bee and ariel, they signed my book and it was awesome. I have read that book so many times that parts of the signatures have rubbed off, pages are tattered, the cover is dying and actually, right now, I don't know where it is because I've lent it to so many people. Fast forward to 2004, I've had my first baby (almost exactly to the day 4 years after the first time I got pregnant) and after a few months I realize that I need some community-her dad is abusive and our life is shitty. I don't hate being a mom but I hate being a wife, his wife...and I turned to hipmama.com to find some solace. This site, these women, have seen me through abuse, an affair, a divorce. All the while fax refers to this community as "those bitches" - the ones who are, in some cyber way provoking me to leave him. Not the physical, emotional, verbal or sexual abuse he hands down mind you, but a need to show off to my hipmama crowd. whatever. Through the early days of being a single mom, meeting some of the hipmamas in real life (even living with one now) through an unplanned, unexpected, and just all around weird pregnancy and now I'm a single mom of two. Through all of this hipmama has been there.