My parents, Jessica and Greg, were barely more than children themselves when they brought me into a world they were nowhere near prepared to navigate. In their early twenties, they were still caught in that messy, experimental phase of young adulthood—the kind of life where your biggest concerns are supposed to be Friday night plans and the cost of a tank of gas. They were trying to map out their own lives, to find their footing on shifting sand, before they were suddenly and violently tasked with charting mine. I was told, in the rare moments my father allowed himself to look back, that they tried to “make it work.” But the tether holding them together was made of frayed, sun-bleached rope, entirely incapable of weathering the gale-force reality of a pregnancy, let alone the relentless, twenty-four-hour demands of a newborn.
The day I was born—a day that should have been the cornerstone of a shared history—was instead the day the blueprint was torn to shreds. My father arrived at the hospital with a heart overflowing with the archetypal dreams that men carry into delivery rooms like precious cargo. He likely imagined the quiet, shimmering milestones that define a father’s pride: the first time my tiny, uncoordinated fingers would grasp his thumb with surprising strength; the wobbling, uncertain first steps across a linoleum floor; the frantic, backpack-heavy excitement of a first day of school. He saw a future where he was the guide, the steady hand on the shoulder, the protector, and eventually, the friend.
