How I Fell Down the Rabbit Hole

I feel that if you’re going to read my blog and be privy to all the details of my life, than you should know a little bit about how I got here. So in the spirit of ‘here-is-my-life-story-enjoy-it-bitches,’ I’ll tell you how I became the prince of town called Bel-Air fell down the rabbit hole into Mommyland.

Just like my namesake in Alice in Wonderland, my surroundings changed very quickly. Three years ago, I was a twenty-three year old waitress doing nothing with my college diploma except dreaming of moving to California. Then I blinked and I was pregnant. I blinked again and found myself living in suburbia- in a house with a backyard- with my common-law husband and brand new baby girl. And then I was all like, ‘I’m not moving to California anymore, am I?’ Now, once we get into the details, this story will sound pretty sketchy, like something off of Teen Mom (except that our version would be called Recent College Graduate Mom). But in its entirety, it’s actually pretty sweet. So I’m asking you to hold your judgement until the end. Well, I’d love it if you could just hold your judgement completely, but I’ll take what I can get. Anyway.

Dawson and I met while I was working as a waitress. He sat in my section and we struck up a friendly conversation; nothing really flirty, just a pleasant banter. When I came by to see how his food was, I used the typical waitress phrase, ‘Is there anything else I can get for you?’ Other waitresses can attest to the hundreds of witty, lame, weird or downright creepy responses that this phrase seems to elicit from people, though the most popular is usually, ‘A million dollars!’Dawson, being the nerd he is, came back with ‘A helicopter.’ He claims he doesn’t know why he said it, and I don’t know why I went along with it, but I went back to the server station in search of something resembling a helicopter. All I could find was a butterfly paperclip, which I presented to him. It sounds super lame, and it was, but it became a running joke for the rest of his stay. I was then secretly hoping he’d ask for my number and secretly disappointed when he didn’t until I discovered a note in his billfold that said, “If you find my helicopter, give me a call,” with his name and number underneath. I never found the helicopter, but I did contact him the next day, and we began dating.

Fast-forward two months to the bathroom of my friend’s apartment. It’s 1 a.m. and I’ve just peed on four pregnancy tests – Yes. I peed on. all. four. – and I’m on the phone with Dawson, telling him that we’re pregnant. After the shock and our swearing subsides a bit, we discover that, despite the fact that our relationship moved a lot faster than we had anticipated, not only do we both really want to have the baby, we both really want to do it together. And so began the process of us telling our families and friends, which provided some hilarious moments but we’ll leave that for another blog post.

If you knew me before all of this, you’d know that I was the last person anyone wanted to see get pregnant, aside from like, Paris Hilton or Kate Gosselin. I was known for my very questionable cooking skills and making un-ladylike comments to strangers while intoxicated. Suffice it to say, home-making and mothering didn’t, and doesn’t, come naturally to me. When Thumper was six weeks old, I remember thinking how bizarre it was that I, the under-achieving party girl, had been in charge of another human being’s life for two whole months and the baby was still breathing. Now it’s been a year and a half and she’s still alive, happy, healthy and smarter than I am, so I must be doing something right. Right? (Right??) Because despite my lacking ability to keep a clean house or sew wearable Halloween costumes, I love my kid and I try really hard to be a good mom, and that’s all anyone can ask of me.  

I know. It sounds completely unrealistic that Dawson and I, who only knew each other for two months, would be able to co-exist and raise a child together, let alone also maintain a successful romantic relationship. And while we’re far from perfect, if you met us, you would probably never guess that we have only been together for such a short period of time. Truthfully, we would still be together even if there had never been a baby. That was something I knew from the beginning, though I’d have never said it in the early months of my pregnancy. I knew it would only make me seem like I had my head in the clouds. So we just went about our lives, doing all the normal things couples do in preparation of a baby, which for us, included moving in together. Pretty soon, the people around us who had (rightfully) been skeptical began to see that we were taking our pregnancy seriously and that we were together because we genuinely wanted to be.

Although our relationship became super serious super fast because of the pregnancy, it felt like the most natural thing in the world for us to be doing together. And now, in spite of our unusual beginning, we are just like any other young couple, except that our daughter will be able to say that she was the flower girl at her parents’ wedding.

I’ll say it again. It was a strange way to start our life together, and not exactly ideal, but that doesn’t make it any less authentic. I certainly never anticipated that it would happen the way it did. I also didn’t know that as tough as it can be, I’d actually like being a stay at home mom or that I’d be lucky enough to have the love of my life and the father of my child be the same person.

So unlike the real Alice, I’m going to stay inside this wonderful, whacky world I’ve found myself in. It might be not be California, and I might need a break every now and then, but Mommyland is exactly where I’m supposed to be. 

-Alice

(Disclaimer: This story was not meant to be overly-cheesy or condescending, nor intended to glamourize casual sexual relationships or unplanned pregnancies. I was not paid six figures to write this and you won’t be seeing a reality show about my life on MTV any time soon. I am humbly aware that the positive outcome of this story is not necessarily the norm, so I must give a shout-out to the most hard-core, amazing and kick-ass people on the planet: single parents. Holla!)