How I Got This Kid: Part 1

TW: Suicide, addiction. 

    Once upon a time, in Mr. P's grade 2 class, two girls met and became best friends. One of those girls  was a smart and sassy little pixie who was wise beyond her years and destined for motherhood. The other one was me. 

    Lily and I shared precisely two amazing decades as friends. Our teen years were spent in oversized plaid shirts and thrift store pants, listening to grunge music at sleepovers and the occasional shoplifting escapade. Our twenties, to which I now refer as our "hot years" were spent travelling, drinking, flirting, and generally being awesome. 

    When Lily and I were about 24, I was bartending downtown, while unsuccessfully trying to get a photography career off the ground. Lily had an unlimited supply of free draught beer when she came to keep me company on the other side of my bar. That's where she met Dean, who was the house musician and sound guy for the bar. She and Dean had a passionate relationship that turned tumultuous right around the time he knocked her up. By the time she gave birth, to a very noisy redhead she called Matilda, Lily and Dean's relationship had turned toxic, resulting in Lily newborn Matilda spending night after night on my big red couch. Lily ultimately found a tiny apartment for her new "single mom" life. She had a stable job, a supportive family, and a relatively cordial custody agreement with Dean. Lily and I thus resumed our hot years. 

    As Matilda catapulted noisily through infancy, I was starting nursing school, while Lily was secretly struggling with depression. The year we turned 27, Lily lost her fight with mental illness and took her own life. 

    I would like to journal more about this loss, and perhaps I will, someday. But for now, back to little Matilda, who naturally went into Dean's full-time care after Lily's death. I visited with Matilda several times over the next 14 years, bringing her items that belonged to Lily and watching her grow up from further away than I'd imagined I would when she was born. 

    Meanwhile, I was establishing myself in my nursing career, and had committed steadfastly to a child-free life with my spouse Noah. We belong to an amazing supportive group of friends - chosen family, really - who are also child-free, and this lifestyle had granted us such liberties as:
Sleep.
Money.
Free time.
Travel.
Privacy.
Bodily Autonomy.
Peace of Mind.
Avoidance of all the unappealing (read: gross) aspects of pregnancy, birth, and generally just keeping a tiny human alive.

    Life was fucking grand.

    Unbeknownst to me or the remaining members of Lily & Matilda's family, Dean had descended into  darkness over the two year course of the pandemic. As a musician, he was unable to work. His debt climbed, his mental health fell, and he committed wholeheartedly to debilitating alcoholism. As I do not wish to centre Dean's story any further in this post, let's leave it here: Matilda's home had become her location of intense neglect and immeasurable trauma.

    Dean died of acute intoxication on the Victoria Day weekend. Matilda found him dead in his bed, called EMS, and was brought to Lily's sister's house, her Auntie Darcie. 

And thus my story begins.