"I've watched her type her applications, and it sparked a flashback to when I sat in the kitchen of my run-down college apartment and learned I was pregnant with her. I'll never forget the look of the brown linoleum floor illuminated under the harsh fluorescent light, its buzzing the only other sound competing with my sobs. My boyfriend held his head in his hands, the positive pregnancy tests fanned around him like the color sticks at a nail salon."
"Is it really possible that I was only a few years older than my daughter is right now? She, who still prefers me to run in and grab the smoothie I preordered because she doesn't like to talk to people? The girl whose room is messier than I ever thought possible? The one whose kindergarten picture was so perfect it took my breath away?"
I became pregnant during my senior year of college and now help my 17-year-old daughter apply to college. Watching her type applications triggers vivid memories of the run-down apartment kitchen, brown linoleum under fluorescent lights, sobs, and my boyfriend holding his head among positive pregnancy tests. I recognize how young I was and recall naive self-confidence collapsing the night of the pregnancy. Motherhood carved and emptied my sense of self and made me question everything. My daughter's quirks — preferring preordered smoothies, a messy room, a perfect kindergarten photo — bring excitement for her future alongside surprising grief for the life I did not live.
Read at Business Insider
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