Where did the love go?-part 5

August 1995. I finally give birth to the boy. Baby daddy leaves the hospital as soon as he was born. I am in the hospital for 5 days... He comes everyday, but never stays for long. On Friday evening, he comes to pick me up to take me home. He drops me and the boy off in the driveway. When I walk in, my mother was there with baby daddy's daughter. It seems that baby daddy had picked her up earlier in the day, even after I had already asked him to tell her mother that we could not get her that weekend...I had a C-section and a newborn baby. I was not ready to deal with someone elses child so that they could run the fuckin streets. But as it was.. I didn't see him again until Monday morning.

Baby daddy wanted very little to do with the boy. He wouldn't hold him. Never changed a diaper. Never fed him. He said that he was waiting until he got older, so that they could do stuff together. He sometimes would take his daughter out for the day kicking and screaming, and leave the boy and I at home by ourselves. He would purposely take my car and the keys to his car, just to make sure we were stuck in the house.

I got into a huge argument with baby mama. I loved baby daddy's daughter. We were road dogs every weekend for 2 years. Sometimes she would call me mommy. If we were out somewhere, I didn't correct her. No need. It was all good. Baby mama said that her daughter would not be coming over anymore. She didn't really mean it, but if efforts to let her know that I was not to be threatened, I made her stick to it for a few weekends. I never saw baby daddy's daughter again. A few months later, her and her mama moved out of Maryland.

Baby daddy, being a creature of habit, always wrote himself little "to do" lists. I came across one of them one day, and it talked about "check on Antoine to see where he is living--paying too much child support." When I confronted him on this, as expected, he denied it. I knew he was lying. Everything that came out of his mouth was a lie.

I hated him and I wanted to leave him. He had other women, their panties and bras were all over my house. ..they called the house...he called them..our phone bill was riddled with long distance numbers. I bitched and complained and the calls stopped. But baby daddy's motto was deny, deny, deny. Then, one night, I heard the faint sound of a phone ringing. I got out of bed to see what it was. It seems that baby daddy had a cell phone, and some bitch was calling at 3am. He was asleep on the couch holding the phone in his hand. I kicked him in his leg, and went back to bed. The next morning, he denied the whole thing. He claimed there was no cell phone. He told me I was crazy. I was starting to think that for once, he was telling the truth. I felt like a crazy bitch. I didn't trust him. I refused to have sex with him, for fear of getting a disease. I didn't want to go anywhere with him. For what? I was done pretending that we were the happy couple. But I still loved him. And I just wanted him to act right. I tried everything under the sun to get him to love me back. Nothing worked.

I got a new job. Working for the Office of Child Support. They opened a new customer service call center, and they mass hired. We all went thru training together. The first day that our computers were up and running, I put baby daddy's social security number in~just for the fuck of it. When the results came back, I almost fell the fuck out.

Baby daddy had 4 child support cases. Count them..one..two..three..FOUR!
Four different baby mama's. I made 5. All the kids had his last name. All the kids had a derivative of his first name. There was Anthony, Antoine, and Antonio, and then his daughter. I went in the bathroom and threw up. I packed my shit up and went home. There was no way I could work. I was literally sick. by this time, the boy was 2.

"Dem kids ain't mine!" ~~need I say more? He denied that those were his children. I mean fo'real..He must really think immafuckinidiot. Day-um. It was a fucking nightmare. Simple as that.

The next 2 years were literally a blur. I was just surviving. I don't even know how I functioned. I did my work thing, came home and took care of the boy. I paid all the bills, and made sure the boy had what he needed. Baby daddy kept all his money, and never offered me a dollar. He was too busy runnin bitches and taking care of their kids.

Right after the boy turned 4, I could no longer deal with the way things were going. I decided to move back to my moms for a while. Baby daddy was coming too, only he just had no idea what he was about to get himself into. My mother's house. My rules. I was about to regain some of the power. and perhaps some of my dignity. He barely helped me move OUR shit. He was out runnin the streets. I did most of the packing and moving and with each box that I packed and carried, I became more and more empowered. How dare this motherfucker leave me to do all this shit by myself, I thought.
Thats alright, that's alright, I kept saying. Things are about to change.

Baby daddy slept in his car a lot after this. If he wasn't in at a reasonable time, the doors were locked. I told him "don't even knock motherfucker, 'cuz I will call the police and say that you don't live there, and my mother will swear to it. Don't fuck with me, because we are back on my turf now." He acted a fool for the first 3 or 4 months, he couldn't help himself.
But then something changed in him. He started to be the man that he once was.

But it was too much, too late. I wonder now, just how sincere he was in his efforts, I think around a month prior to this, he found out that he had gotten someone else pregnant. We were living together while he made child number 6. With baby mama number 6. I was still in the dark about this--but you know what they say..everything that you do in the dark comes to light.

Then, I found the pictures. And I could no longer deny what was right in front of me.
And, that my friends, was the end.