The Intro To Me, And Us.

This blog post is important.

It’s important because, not only is it my first one ever, but because it’s an introduction into our lives.

There’s so many of us and so much backstory that I’m not even sure where to start. Do I start at the summer of 2020?

Scratch that- I don’t even remember most of it.

I guess I’ll start where it matters- when Blu was born. That’s when it started for me. The healing. The looking at my life and trying to dissect it, instead of just letting it happen to me.

At this point in my life, I was still trying to recover from the effects of Fireball and Alabama field parties and toxic relationships. I was 20 years old and a new mother to a beautiful son who I had no earthly idea what to do with. My best friend, Jackie, had just also given birth to a beautiful boy who we’ll call Inman. (I’m using the name Inman because it’s an awful one that we all talked her out of.)

Now, Jackie was built for motherhood. I was not.

Flashback to us at the age of 11, playing with her Barbies in the same bedroom that is now her son’s playroom.

She has Ken and Barbie building a nursery, raising their baby together, and having family dinners. Then there’s me- Sally- getting Barbie and her best friend Rebecca ready to go clubbing in the next room over.

So it came as a shocker to say the least that just 8 weeks after we found out that she was pregnant- I was going to be having a baby of my own.

Today, Jackie is married to my childhood best friend Adam, who I introduced her to a few summers ago after her shithead fiancé left her with nothing but empty drawers and a half assed apology.  She’s a stay at home mom to Inman and also to Blu (when I have to work and his daycare is closed.) I was the maid of honor at their wedding and am the self proclaimed third wheel to their marriage. Almost everything I know about motherhood, I learned from her. Jackie’s what they call a natural. So we raise Inman and Blu together, because we want them to be best friends, but also because it works best this way. To have a village. And boy do we have a village.

Back in 2020- the summer that we don’t talk about: the summer after I lost my dad and my long term boyfriend and all of my inhibitions and dignity- I met three girls. One of whom’s name is Beth. Beth went everywhere with me. While Jackie and Adam had just met and were starting to settle down before they had Inman, Beth and I did absolutely everything together. We partied, danced on stage with the Ying Yang twins, almost got arrested on various occasions, and formed a strange kind of girlhood bond that was kind of like “You’re broken, I’m broken, lets just lose ourselves together” kind of thing. Was it healthy? No. Was it fun? Absolutely. Although just thinking about ingested that much alcohol now gives me a sympathy hangover for teenaged us. Fast forward more than a few years and friendship breakups later, and here we are. She has a son also, a year younger than mine and Jackie’s.

Speaking of friendship breakups- which are arguably worse than actual breakups- Beth and I had a pretty big one after Blu was born and she got pregnant herself. It wasn’t permanent obviously, but it was bad enough for me to miss the first 6 months of her son’s life. So I took some time to work on myself, because maybe I was the problem. It’s a hard thing to admit, right? But I did. I’m a smart girl with a son to raise. So I did what a smart single mother would do. I applied for college, got a steady job, and took some time away to fix whatever was broken before Blu got old enough to understand- and it worked. There’s still a lot to be done, but it worked.

After figuring out how to work and go to school and raise a son all at the same time, I decided that it was time to have a social life again. Not a 2020 type of social life, but a healthy balance of work and play. So I called my friend Matthew one Saturday night to see if he wanted to go out. Now, we all love Matthew. He has a big truck and an even bigger personality, and he pays a shocking resemblance to the Jolly Green Giant, except he’s not green. The conversation went a little like this:

“Hey Matt, wanna go do something tonight?”

“Yeah sure, if you can find a girl to hang out with me.”

“You’re ridiculous. Fine.”

So I got on Snapchat and picked the first girl I saw to meet us there, and in comes Zori. They dated for a couple months, but it wasn’t serious and they decided to just be friends. Zori is a beautiful girl, with a lot of hair and a lot more ADHD. So, despite her dependence on Lithium and my healing journey, we became fast friends. That was last summer. Now she’s an aunt to my toddler, and part of our family. That was last summer. She’s now dating my baby daddy, James’ best friend. We’ll call him Austin.

Speaking of last summer, I have one more introduction to make. Actually, two. I’ll let you meet Jax first. Jax is my husband. Not really. But we did talk about getting married once, for tax purposes. Jax likes guys. He has bright red hair and loves cars and also me, and I guess his boyfriend too (just not as much as me.) We’re laying in my bed one day discussing our love lives and I pull out the ol’ faithful- Tinder. He’s swiping for me because I’m indecisive and quite frankly hate the app. I’m a romantic. If I’m going to marry anyone, it’ll be some guy I meet in a coffee shop because they mix up our drink orders- right? Wrong. Jax swipes right on a handsome man who lives a whole hour away from me, and the rest is history. I think I’m getting engaged to him soon. I think I might marry him. We’ll call him Ronaldo, because that’s a funny name.

So this is the intro to our messy, hilarious, ridiculous lives. We’ve been brought together by fate and trust and pixie dust and dating apps. Welcome to Sally’s In Her Fucking Twenties, and thanks for being here.