situations tolerable

My first apartment was on the second floor of my cousin’s house. I moved in with my fiance after living at home until I was 25; I never had the chance to live alone.

The apartment consisted of a tiny kitchen that barely gave me room to maneuver to cook, a living room/dining area, a full bathroom, and one bedroom. It was small but liveable and I painted and decorated like it was my own house and not just some rooms stuffed into someone else’s home. We bought furniture and hung paintings and mirrors and my wedding shower provided us with all the accessories we would ever need. Every piece of decor was my idea — V. didn’t care about those things. He left me to my own devices and I thought I did a pretty good job putting our apartment together.

I got pregnant on my honeymoon or maybe a week after. I went off the pill the week before our wedding — I didn’t know I would immediately get my period in a debilitating way — thinking that my body would need time to reset after being on birth control so long. Oh, how stupid I was. We didn’t use any form of prevention. So there I was, pregnant and horrified at the situation we put ourselves in. A one bedroom apartment was fine for the two of us. But now there would be three, and we’d have to make do.

I craved mashed potatoes and Kool-Aid and made them both in my confined kitchen and developed gestational diabetes because I was an idiot. I chewed ice and got sick at the sight of raw meat. I spent a lot of time on the couch in our apartment, reading parenting magazines and wondering how…