Kristen would trade places with D.J.’s parents in a heartbeat. If her daughter isolated herself in her room, like D.J., at least she wouldn’t constantly have the family in crisis mode, like this morning at the doctor’s office.
“Can I bring your mom in the room and tell her?” asked the doctor.
“Do I have a choice?” Sophie asked.
“Yeah. You do. But if I were you, I’d let her know. My guess is she already suspects. That’s why she brought you here today,” her doctor explained.
“@#$%^.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” the doctor said as she left the room.
She returned to the examination room with Sophie’s mom, “Mrs. Reynolds, Sophie is two months pregnant.”
“I knew it. I just knew it,” her mom said, as she put her hands up to her head to cover her ears.
Sophie looked at her mom’s expression and burst into tears. “Don’t tell Dad. Please, don’t tell Dad,” she sobbed.
Just sixteen years old and pregnant. Kristen was worried this would happen. For the life of her, she could not convince Sophie to stay away from her deadbeat boyfriend. From Kristen’s perspective, this older boy, who was no longer in school or employed, was using Sophie. But Sophie clung to him at all costs, reacting angrily to any effort to limit the relationship.
Despite the intelligence and creativity she evidenced as a child, Sophie was failing in school, smoking marijuana daily, and clinging to relationships with “friends” who used her for rides, money, or sex. Sophie accommodated their demands for fear of disappointing them and losing them.
This fear of loss had its basis in a long history of loss. Her father left when she was three, shortly after her sister, Julia, joined the family uninvited. Her mother, Kristen, was always at work, often leaving the girls to fend for themselves after school. When they were together, it seemed like one fight after another. Usually, it was a fight about how unfair Kristen was being. Over and over, Sophie placed Kristen in the bind of giving in and indulging her demands or denying them and adding proof that Sophie was indeed unloved. Abandonment concerns dominated Sophie’s life and relationships.
Do things get better for Sophie? Yeah, but it won’t be easy.