I decided that God wanted me to be a party person. What else could the botched application mean? My dreams were dashed and so I dived back into the drug scene. I went back to popping Percocet and Oxy to balance out the depression I was feeling.
The week before high school ended, I’d met a girl named Natalie. She was blond with blue eyes, funny as hell, a little ditzy. I charmed her with texts and phone calls and soon we were a couple.
I wasn’t the best boyfriend, that’s for sure. Natalie didn’t know about the OxyContin or other pills, but she watched me smoke joint after joint, turning into a stoner. I soon broke up with her.
Not too long after that, Natalie informed me she was pregnant.
The baby was mine. Of course it was.
I knew Natalie wasn’t the girl I was going to marry. But there I was. After she told me, I drove over to her house and her mom and dad were waiting for me at the kitchen table. We sat there not looking at each other, as if someone had died. Her dad glanced at me and I could tell I wasn’t exactly his idea of a son-in-law.
Brother, I thought, I am right with you on that. I am not ready for this.
“I want to have the baby,” Natalie said.
Her parents’ eyes went a bit wider.
“Well, are you two even together?” her dad asked. “I thought you’d broken up.”
I looked at Natalie. I could tell that behind her brave face, she was scared. I felt like it was time to man up.
“Sir, as of this minute, we’re back together again. And I’m going to do everything I can to give that baby the life I never had.”
Her dad nodded without much conviction and I gave Natalie a hug and was out of there.
I wanted to be a man of my word. I took any job that I could find—mostly odd jobs in construction and landscaping. I kept telling myself that when I put enough money together, I’d go back to school and start on a real career. But I’d heard my mother say the same thing a hundred times, though until we moved to Prescott she had begun living out what she said. I knew school wasn’t my salvation. I wasn’t cut out for book learning.
I so wanted to do the right thing, but I had no guidebook on how to go about it. I started going to the gym that winter, trying to get in shape. I stopped seeing the worst of my stoner friends and cut down on my drug intake. I was doing the best I could in my new role as an expecting father.
I knew I had no right to be a father in my present condition. But no matter what I did, I saw my daughter’s life becoming a remake of mine: absent dad, struggling mom, minimum wages, a restless wandering that led nowhere. I couldn’t handle that. I didn’t want another generation of McDonoughs to be too strung out for the good life.
Natalie was a few months from delivering and I became desperate to get work, any work. I walked into McDonald’s and filled out an application, but nothing happened. The same story with In-N-Out Burger, Costco, and Walmart. It was a shock to me. I was nineteen years old and basically unemployable.
Depression shadowed my days. Some mornings I’d lie in bed and feel like I couldn’t get up if the sheets were on fire. I saw no way a good thing could happen in my life for the next forty years. It was all going to be black, depressing, drug-addicted shit, and nonsense.
And then I got arrested.