The night I got in my sister Lauren suggested I go out and have fun after being cooped up for so long but the thought of it made me nervous. I decided it would be best for me to take it easy for at least a few days. The following day my sister and I went to BYU. I met with advisors and other BYU administrators to make sure everything was good to go for me to come back in January. Everyone in administration was so nice and welcoming so it made me a little more excited for the upcoming tennis season. I still wasn’t cleared to work out yet, so it was crazy to think that in a couple months I would be back competing on the tennis team again. I still had at least two weeks until I could even think about working out again. So I definitely had to work on improving my eating habits so that I could shed all the baby weight. Later that night, my sister and coach, Lauren had all of the tennis girls at her house to kind of mingle and to meet me. We had two new recruits in for the weekend so the whole team was going to go to a big dance party. Recruits are players who come visit your school and spend the weekend to see if they like it, and if they do, they will commit to play the following year. So, as a team, we usually take them out to have fun and experience the overall vibe of BYU. I met all of the girls at Lauren’s house and they were all dressed up looking exactly like one another with plans to hit a Halloween themed dance party. We were all getting to know each other and Lauren suggested I go out with them but I kept thinking, “ugh no, I don’t think that would be good.” All the girls ended up convincing me otherwise so, I threw together a last-minute cat costume. This was also the first time I had left Hudson which was really weird for me. Especially because as we were arriving at the party, I could feel my boobs fill with milk… which meant it was feeding time.

My insecurity made me feel so vulnerable and uncomfortable, I really really didn’t want to run into anyone I knew. I still remember how awkward I felt. It felt like I was the new kid at school who had no friends and had to go eat their lunch in the bathroom; awful. But then, I saw a familiar face. “Oh no,” I thought. “Mayci? What are you doing here? I thought you just had a baby?” I felt SO awkward. I didn’t even know what to say to that. Yelling over the blaring music the DJ was playing I quickly mumbled, “oh yeah haha, my friends wanted me to come out.” At least I think I said something like that. I thought I felt awkward before, but now awkward doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt. The rest of the week there were things pretty much going on every day. I went to a BYU football game with all the girls and that was fun. I still remember sitting there thinking, “what in the world am I doing back here”. It seemed so strange to be back at BYU watching a BYU football game. I felt like a new person, a person who was starting over.

I used to swear like a sailor. No joke, it was really bad. Not that swearing is the worst thing in the world… but the F-word used to slide off my tongue like a guy sliding into your DM’s. Every other sentence had the F-word in it. So when I say that I felt like a new person starting over, I truly did. If I overheard other people using the F-word in a conversation I would think, “omg did he just say the F-word?”. The old me wouldn’t even think twice about it. It’s weird, looking at photos of myself after Hudson, I feel like I look different. I looked innocent and insecure, almost like what I was starting to feel on the inside started to show on the outside. The next few days I was in Utah I met up with some old friends introduced them to Hudson, and hung out with my family. My family got dinner with Arik’s parents one night as well. Everything was super cordial. They held Hudson a lot and talked about upcoming events in my life such as going back to BYU etc. Then one night Arik’s ex-girlfriend (who he also got pregnant) and I were texting and thought it would be nice for the boys to meet. This is something I didn’t mention throughout my last few posts. Mainly because I am trying to center my story around me and my experiences. Talking about other people who have a place in my story can sometimes cause unnecessary drama, misunderstandings, or hurt feelings… and I don’t want that at all. But just so you all know, Arik’s ex-girlfriend and I did keep a cordial relationship throughout my pregnancy. We texted every once in a while. Arik’s ex-girlfriend came over to my sister’s house with her son. We chatted about random things and the differences and similarities of our sons. I don’t really remember much about our visit but it was a good visit. Her son is 10 months older than Hudson. So Hudson being a newborn at the time wasn’t much fun for his half- brother. We took photos of the boys together, which was a daunting task with two kids under two. They visited with us for about two hours. It’s hard to remember all of the details but I remember everything was super relaxed. We met up one more time with Arik’s family to get lunch, but this time it was just my mom and me. Hudson was dressed in a little Mickey Mouse costume because it was the day before Halloween. Everything went really well and Arik’s brother got to see Hudson and hold him again. Now it was Halloween day and my family and I drove up to Park City for a big Halloween trunk-or-treat type of thing. Park City is a very popular city here in Utah, it’s known for holding the Sundance film festival. Hudson was asleep the whole time but we met up with my cousins to spend time and let them visit with Hudson.

Now this story is going to take a little turn so make sure you pay extra attention. I wasn’t originally planning on talking about this new person but in order to tell my story efficiently and talk about my dating life as a single mom, I have to add this guy in here. BUT for privacy sake, let’s call him “Chad”. I met Chad when I was 15. It was New Year’s Eve and we were at a Mormon dance party. He asked me to dance right before Midnight (which meant he wanted to kiss me) and I said, “uhhhhhh no? Why don’t we all dance together?”. So I basically made him do this weird awkward slow dance with the two other friends I was with. I was only 15, and never had kissed a boy… so I wasn’t about to waste my first kiss on this guy I met 10 minutes ago! I also heard he was in college so even more so I was like, thank you, next. Anyways, fast forward and we are seeing each other regularly. He was 20 and I was 17. So as you could imagine my parents did not like him too much. We would flirt and text 24/7 and saw each other every weekend. He was a bad boy (by Mormon definition) but he was in the middle of cleaning up his life to go on an LDS Mormon mission.

Before he left I remember him telling me I needed to promise him that I would never drink or do bad stuff with other boys. He was worried that I would get manipulated by the wrong kind of people and that he wouldn’t be there to protect me from it. Boy, was he was right! He left on his mission and we wrote regularly. That is until I met the “crazy ex-boyfriend”. Chad and I randomly re-connected when I was pregnant. I guess he heard I was pregnant when we started randomly chatting again, but he didn’t tell me he knew until later. We would talk maybe a couple times a month randomly over text, but it was mostly just small talk. I hadn’t seen him in over three years… until Halloween night 2015. To be continued…