My son's father and I were best friends in high school. I suspect that he liked me for a long time, but we've never really talked about it. We moved out of our parents' homes a year after graduation and into an apartment with another friend. We both went through a few relationships and apartments and fell in and out of touch, but eventually started sleeping together on a friends with benefits basis. It got kind of serious a couple times, but always kind of faded out back into a regular friendship. 


At this point in my life, I was undiagnosed with BPD/Bipolar NOS. Between this first part of the story and the next, I was diagnosed, had a stay in the crisis stabilization unit, and grappled with a huge problem with weed and alcohol.


Not quite a year after I was diagnosed, things got serious again. He ended up moving into my apartment and we started looking for our own place. Things we're going really well. Then we found out I was five weeks pregnant. 


We (mostly I) decided to keep the baby and we kept moving forward. We broke my lease, kicked my roommates out, and moved into our new place. Everything was going well, at first. We talked about getting married eventually and traveling to Europe. 


By the time I was ten weeks pregnant, I had been taken off all of my meds haphazardly by a sham of a PDOC who should lose her license. I was hormonal, off my meds, and terrified of everything that was going on. I split on my son's father in a matter of days.


I wrestled with the decision to leave him for a few days. The last straw was when we were sitting in the living room of our new place. We were watching The Office, not talking, and I was silently seething. He got up to get some ice cream and proceeded to eat the whole pint by himself without offering me any. I broke. I took my ultrasound pictures off the fridge, got my prenatal vitamins and work clothes, and left. 


I went to my parents house, where I completely broke down. They told me to come home and they would take care of me. I didn't talk to my son's father about my decision. I iced him out for days and barely responded when he tried to talk to me. 


I told him to find a roommate for our new place and he decided to break the lease. I stopped paying the electricity, which got shut off after about a month. I got most of my things while he was at work and left him to deal with the rest. 


I sent him a message telling him that I would raise the baby alone and I didn't trust him to help. He said he would take legal action if I kept him away from the baby. We spoke very little for the remainder of my pregnancy and only saw each other face to face once. 


I remained with my parents and still live here with my son. His father sees him once a week and every other weekend, plus random times when I have to work. I didn't invite him to my c-section and I didn't let him visit us in the hospital for two days. To my family, my friends, my therapist, and anyone who would listen, I made him a monster. 


But really, it was me. 


When our son was a few months old, my new PDOC brought up BPD and splitting. I told him about it, and we got back together briefly. But I think the pain of everything that happened was too much. He stopped talking to me after a few months and we broke up soon after.


Now our relationship is tense but amicable. He checks on the baby every day and we can stand to be in the same room as each other. He changed my brakes for me last week when I couldn't afford to have it done at the shop. He got me a Mother's Day card. He takes good care of our son and wants what is best for him. He pays child Support on time and makes sure our son has everything he needs. 


I was fucking wretched to him. I crushed his heart and now I realize that. I don't even know how to begin to make it up to him or fix this. I just know that I can barely live with myself right now. In the past I've brushed it off as if I've been through so much that my behavior was justified, but nothing can justify the way I acted and what I did to him. I would spend the rest of my life trying to fix it, but I don't think he'll ever let me. I am a terrible human being and I don't understand why I'm still here when good people die every day. The world is cruel. I was cruel. And I don't know how to make it right. 