Never Too Late Read online

  I called my boyfriend up right away. I was crying so hard I could barely speak at first. And of course he always knew something was wrong if I was crying, so right away he got really serious and concerned. “What’s wrong? What’s happening? Is your brother okay?”

  My brother had joined the military and was stationed overseas at the time, and that was the only reason he could think of for why I’d be calling him on the phone in hysterics. Fortunately, he was way off.

  “No,” I said. “I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh my god.” He sounded completely relieved. “I thought something happened to your brother!”

  The way he said it almost made me stop crying for a second. Not because it made me feel better, but because his reaction confused me. I hadn’t had time to decide what to expect from his reaction, but I definitely didn’t expect him to sound as happy as he did. I was like, what the fuck?

  “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re gonna get through this. It’s gonna be okay.”

  He came over to my house, and we didn’t waste much time breaking the news to my parents. I called up my mom to have her come over so I could tell her what was up. I think it was actually her birthday the day I found out. She came home for five minutes, which was long enough to sit down, hear the news, freak out a little bit, call my dad, and leave with her boyfriend. Pretty smooth. Can’t say I blame her.

  With my dad it was a different story. It seemed kind of ironic, actually, that my father made it back into my life just in time for me to get pregnant at seventeen.

  “I’m pregnant.” Those aren’t words any dad wants to hear coming out of his seventeen-year-old daughter, and my father definitely wasn’t ready for it. I’ll never forget his reaction. He was so pissed he just slowly turned away and went into the kitchen to get away from us for a minute. He was freaking out, and it was obvious he wanted to beat the shit out of my boyfriend. And of course my guy went and said something like, “Don’t worry, Shawn, I’m gonna take care of her.” Something stupid like that. It did not help. My dad was absolutely furious.

  Both of my parents were seriously shocked. They thought I was a virgin. My bad.

  I have to say, though, it’s almost amazing they didn’t see it coming, or something similar. You could say that I was really good at hiding shit. But you could also be honest and ask, “If you’re not around, how the hell are you gonna know?” No one was watching me. I had no rules. I had no reasonable boundaries. I had no consequence. So, there’s that. I mean, hey, it’s whatever o’clock. Do you know where your kids are? If you have no idea what they’re up to half the time, prepare to be shocked when it comes out into the open.

  Either way, what was done was done, and I was having myself a baby. While the parents were flipping out, my boyfriend and I actually hopped right on it and got to work. Both of us were naturally hard workers, and we worked our asses off getting ready for the baby. I kept working at Wendy’s for as long as I could, and we got our money organized and moved into a townhouse together. He had already started going to classes to become a CNA, and I used to go to the diner with him literally every single night to help him study, just drinking hot tea and quizzing him on his exams. He ended up doing amazing on the test and getting a really good job. That made us really proud.

  I was working almost full-time from the moment I found out we had a baby on the way. I did all I could to pick up extra hours, staying late to help the managers whenever I got the chance. I finally had to quit at six months because I got sick with gestational diabetes and I had to be careful. My fiancé was working eighteen-hour shifts three days in a row, and I’d stay up all night cleaning the house and trying to plan and prepare as much as I could. At midnight I’d be on the floor scrubbing the stove, and then I’d go take him lunch at four in the morning. I did everything I could think of to make sure that the pregnancy went okay. I even ate right. I did such a good job on the gestational diabetes diet that I lost five pounds in the beginning! Between the two of us, we really were a force of nature getting ready for the baby. We were a great team.

  As for the pills, I didn’t touch one speck of anything when I was pregnant. I was actually terrified when I saw that positive test result. The very first thing that went through my mind was whether I’d taken something recently enough, and been pregnant long enough, that I’d done something to hurt the baby. Drugs were banned as soon as I saw those lines show up. Doing drugs while pregnant was completely out of the question. I was horrified by even just the thought of it. And honestly, luckily for me, I still wasn’t really much of an addict by the time I got pregnant, so it wasn’t a struggle at all to quit. I only say that based on the experiences I had later, when I was really an addict and it was really the battle from Hell to get off of drugs. But at that time, for the pregnancy, no big deal. Even if I had been more addicted, all I had to think of was the fear of that baby coming out with something wrong with her. The thought of it scared the shit out of me. I didn’t want to do anything to harm my child.

  The point is, I didn’t touch a damn thing during my pregnancy. Didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t take a pill. And it paid off, because Leah came out healthy, beautiful, and smart as hell.

  My parents ended up being really supportive of the pregnancy. After they got over the shock of their daughter not being a virgin, I think they were able to calm down once they saw us moving out into a nice townhouse, getting a van, and working our asses off. When I couldn’t work anymore I would clean, clean, and clean. We’d do things like go out to rummage sales looking for cute baby clothes and baby stuff. For not having a whole lot of money, we did the best we could do. And I think we did a really good job. To this day, I’ve never had a parent pay one bill of mine or hand me money. We did it all ourselves.

  I want people to know this: you can do it if you have to. The secret is just that you really have to work your ass off. That’s all there is too it. There’s no trick or hack or coupon that’s going to make it easy. It sucks to find ways to support a family when you don’t have money to burn. But you can do it if you have to. Pick up more hours, get overtime, get more work. I remember one time when he came home with nine hundred dollars from all the extra shifts he’d gotten. Back then that was so much money to us it was unbelievable. We were excited to the point that he spread the money on the table and took a picture with his phone. We were just staring at it like, “That’s a lot of money.” It was the most exciting thing in the world. We were going, “We’re gonna go out to eat!”

  We used that money to help pay off a bunch of bills and buy a good van. We thought that van was the coolest thing in the world. We were really responsible with the money that came in back then.

  Still, people can believe it or not, but we had absolutely no idea the show was going to turn into the huge thing it is today. We literally thought it was one of those one-time things MTV always does, like True Life, where we were going to be on TV for a little while and everyone would forget about us afterward. Real people are featured on those MTV specials all the time and don’t get famous. We had no way of knowing people were going to jump on it like they did or that it would become this huge phenomenon. It’s almost mind-blowing to think of how innocently we were looking at the whole thing.

  MTV started the filming in the townhouse. They pretty much filmed us moving in together. It always amazes me to think about how many firsts he and I shared together from those years. We had all of the big firsts together, to be perfectly honest. And when it came to the giant first of having a child together, we just worked so damn hard to do it right. We helped each other with money, organized our finances, did everything we could to be responsible. After growing up with nothing, we were so excited to start out on our own, to be able to actually make money and buy the things we needed and wanted. We did a really good job at it.

  During that time I really missed my brother. I wished almost more than anything he could be there with me, but he was stuck in the Middle East with the army. There was nothing to do about
that. Still, he stayed in touch with me as much as he could and his support always meant a lot to me.

  In fact, even though he was all the way overseas, he found a way to be with me in the delivery room. In the footage of me giving birth on 16 & Pregnant, if you look close, you can see a phone next to my head the whole time I was going through it. That was actually my brother! He had all of his buddies on the base gathered around while I was in labor. I’ll never forget him yelling, “What’s going on? Why is she screaming?” He was freaking out! But when Leah finally arrived and the whole room started cheering, he and his buddies were all going crazy and screaming and cheering right along with them. It was the funniest, sweetest thing. Not to mention, as far as ways to be welcomed into the world go, that’s patriotic as hell.

  There were a lot of people in the delivery room when I had Leah, which I honestly didn’t think was weird at all. I was having my first baby! I wanted my family to be there. I didn’t mind a bunch of people in the room. I needed all the support I could get.

  Even so, they all faded into the background once I had her in my arms. She came out crying, of course, and they cleaned her off and handed her to me so I could cradle her on my chest. I’ll never forget that moment. As soon as she was in my arms, she literally stopped crying, opened her eyes, and looked straight up at me.

  That was when I just melted. I had never felt love like that in my life. Having that little girl look up at me like that, and knowing she was my baby, was the most amazing moment of my life. I remember just being so overwhelmed in that moment, just blown away by that beautiful connection and how huge my love for her was. When I finally looked up at my dad, he was watching the whole thing. I looked up at him almost in a daze, like, “She stopped crying and looked at me!” I will never, ever forget it.

  After we brought her home, things were so good. It was just a happy time. I mean, not that it was ever a perfect situation. It was our first baby, and we were young, so we were dealing with all the stress that came with the circumstances. We were also living together for the first time, suddenly having to deal with each other around the clock.

  I was taking care of Leah by myself while her father worked, and that was tough sometimes. But he would always come home and tell me he was proud of me, and it made me feel so good.

  When he came back from work, he loved to sneak into the house to watch me taking care of Leah. I had this thing I used to do when she first started sitting up by herself. I’d sit her on the bed and turn some music up, and I’d dance around her and make funny faces. I’d sing and act crazy and talk to her, and I’d pick her up and dance with her all around the room. Her little face would be smiling and laughing. He would hide and watch so he could see those moments, and then he’d walk in with a huge smile on his face and hug me and give me a big kiss.

  He used to joke around with me and Leah, too. One time she was sleeping in her crib and I was downstairs with the monitor on, and for some reason he came home early and snuck inside. I heard noises through the monitor, like somebody was walking up there, so I went upstairs. I saw Booboo just sitting on the floor, being all calm. I was like, “Oh my god, how did you get out of the crib?” I started freaking out, thinking she fell out of the crib, but I couldn’t figure out how. And she was just chillin’ on the floor, not crying or anything, looking up at me and probably wondering what my deal was. When I went to pick her up, her dad popped out of his hiding place and cracked up.

  When we were all together in the house, there was a lot of music and laughter and love. I’d sit cross-legged on the bed with Leah on my lap facing me, and I’d sing a little song I wrote for her:

  “I like to poopy on Mommy, poopy on Daddy, cry cry cry all the time time time... I sleep and drink my milks!”

  Trust me, you have to hear it to get the full effect. I would do it in the funniest voice I possibly could, and it would put the biggest smile on her face. All three of us would just crack up.

  He would get out his acoustic guitar, and I’d sit there and hold onto her and help her dance while he played guitar and sang little songs for us. Her eyes would just light up when he was playing—you know, that perfect face babies make when they’re surprised and their eyes get all wide with excitement. When she started to crawl, she’d crawl on over and reach for the guitar strings, and he’d stop and let her play with them.

  They were really happy times. We had such a beautiful little family started. Sadly, though, the cracks were already starting to show. Those wonderful hours started to feel fewer and farther between as he and I got more and more stressed. When it came down to it, we really didn’t know how to handle everything that was going on.

  Filming with MTV was no problem for us. We liked the crew we worked with, and the money was nice. But when the show blew up, it brought things with it.

  All that attention was the last thing we expected. Leah’s dad started getting all of these messages on MySpace, all of these girls talking to him. I don’t know how many times I saw messages on his account from girls, risqué pictures from all these randos, and him writing back saying, “Ooh, sexy” and things like that. That shit was the basis for a lot of the fights we started having. Of course I replied to some of the people who messaged me sometimes, too, but never like that. He took it to a completely different level.

  It started out slow, but we would end up losing ourselves in the money and that weird kind of fame we had landed in. Leah’s dad wound up becoming someone who was far, far away from the person he used to be in my memory. But I got away from myself, too, in my own way, with the pills.

  Still, I’ll say this until I die, and you can ask any honest person. I have never cheated on that man in my life, and he knows it. No matter what life I was living, I never cheated on him. I was always loyal to our relationship. I wish he could say the same.

  6

  Falling to Pieces

  People always ask me how exciting it was when I realized 16 & Pregnant was making me famous. Well, let me just remind everybody what kind of “famous” that was. I wish I could quote one of the stories directly, but you’ll just have to trust me when I go over some of the things the tabloid writers said about us. Or you can see for yourself. It’s all over the Internet. The gossip reporters called us schlubby and fat, made vicious fun of our lifestyle and how much money we had, and mocked our relationship relentlessly. It got meaner and meaner as time went on, to where it really just felt like bullying. I’m not even talking about the many times we were criticized in the media for our behavior or our mistakes. I’m talking about the many stories that served absolutely no other purpose than to call us fat or ugly or stupid.

  That side of fame wasn’t fun for either of us. It was pointless and cruel, and it took a toll.

  It didn’t happen all at once, but the first signs of what was to come were bad ones. I instantly knew the reality TV thing was out of control the moment I saw myself on The Soup. That was a truly shocking moment for me. Like I said, we never thought 16 & Pregnant was going to turn us into household names. We just thought it was a funny thing that happened one time, and after we cashed that check we were totally ready to fade off into the MTV archives or whatever. We weren’t prepared to reach late-night joke status.

  It just so happened that The Soup was one of my favorite shows at the time. So one night I was sitting around watching Joel McHale cracking jokes when all of a sudden, boom! I popped up on the screen. I didn’t even have time to think about whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. It was obviously a bad thing. They went right into it, showing clips of me eating all of this food and making fun of me.

  It was the first time I experienced that kind of negative media attention, and all I can say is it made me feel like shit. Straight up shit.

  Back then I didn’t know what assholes the media were. Maybe it was all that time I spent without a TV growing up, but I just didn’t understand how mean people could be. I didn’t understand what reason there was for it.

  I’d never felt good
about food or my weight, and to see myself on one of my favorite shows being bullied for the way I was eating was absolutely devastating for me. I was sensitive, and those remarks cut deep.

  That was the experience that kicked off the fame roller-coaster. There was never anything about it that I can say was fun or positive. You can call me ungrateful, but that’s the truth. It wasn’t like I was walking out on the red carpet with people cheering for me and throwing me flowers. I was getting splashed on tabloids and shows like The Soup, and people were not on my side. They’d made their own opinions based on what they saw on the show, and I guess they felt like they knew the whole story and were right to say whatever they wanted about me. They were always picking on my weight and my looks. It was just the hardest way to learn firsthand how vicious the press can be.

  So with all that going on, we weren’t really excited by the attention so much as we were shocked. Even when people were coming up to us on the street, it was so unexpected and new for us we didn’t even know how to deal with it. We were like, “You want a picture with us? What the fuck?” You have to remember we were just two kids in Indiana who’d grown up poor and sad. To get from where we were coming from to having people follow us around with cameras, asking us to pose with them, it was just beyond our comprehension.

  I’m not saying I was never excited, but there really was more shock than anything else. I didn’t even know how to deal with it or process it, because of course I’d never had that experience before. I remember doing my very first magazine, People, with the rest of the girls. They asked us how it felt to be an overnight celebrity. I remember saying, “I don’t feel like a celebrity. What are you talking about? That’s crazy.” It felt more like I was a target for bullying than anything else. After the way it all started out, with all the mean comments about my looks and my weight, I felt completely self-conscious and miserable. I was just buried in that feeling. It really sucked. There was so much of it happening that pretty soon I kind of just wanted to crawl into a damn hole.