text: I got to know her through her writing. From second trimester to five months old, I read the months of her texts that were sent between them while the baby grew and plans were made for him to give his rights to the man she found to settle for. Her never without a reason to reach out in enthusiastic bursts behind the fiancés back for mundane, loosely related reasons with an underlying energy usually only reserved for high school girls driving by a crushes house too many times. Him always responding right away behind my back in a measured, upbeat cadence with one too many uncharacteristic exclamation points that only someone who knew him could tell had all the fear and emotional exhaustion of strained facial muscles held for too long in a clenched teeth-fake smile. After the resulting confrontation that quietly started with me waking him to shakingly whisper “you have a son?” and ended with the last time I ever saw him, I read the print screens of texts between them a mutual friend was sent by him to show me to help them both make sure I stayed away for good. The point was for me to read him telling her I was a good person, but absolutely someone he was no longer interested in. I knew that by this point. However, I got to know her through her need for reassurance of both points when she knew me by name the entire pregnancy and often took joy in the power of having a secret with another man from his partner. When I moved on to other things and people, the adoption was final, and he was no longer the father of his son or partner to me, she grew bored sitting in her home alone with the child whose conception she had carefully contrived. The drama it entailed, layers of deceptions she got to navigate, careful handling by all around her, and the resulting year of attention it generated was more than she had ever anticipated that fateful night before he was my boyfriend. That night she knew she was ovulating and planned the lie for when she invited him, just another guy she couldn’t get to date her but she could get to sleep with her once or twice, home. After 38 years of never being asked to the dance, being passed over for the good jobs, sitting alone on Valentine’s Day, and missing out on the Friday night invites: it was all about her. She thought it might feel like this, but she had no idea. She loved telling friends and family, but swearing each to secrecy with the assurance they were the only one who knew. She found that the more people she made feel special with the secret the more people she had to treat her special. She carefully watched his social media and imagined the day he would be posting photos of her holding her belly, but she had to wait for the fourth month before she knew it was safe to tell him and not have any other conversations than their future together. She had not anticipated him meeting me in the interim and it was a hard week or two when she had to change plans, but the fiancé she found to replace him was low hanging fruit. For the blissful months after she got double the attention and intrigue she desired. It was never really about wanting my boyfriend or the fiancé anyway. It was about them wanting her and this made it so both of them had to stay around. Friends let her be the object of celebration. Family clamored to assist her situation. The pregnancy was amazing. But, now the baby was growing older by the month and it was slipping away. There were less and less likes on the parade of new grainy, selfies she posted of herself with the baby. She only had one angle she could use that obstructed the view of her body and double chin while still holding the infant. So, aside from outfit changes on the baby’s part, it difficult for her to generate content that stayed about her under the guise of being about him. No one stopped by with meals anymore. The parties were over. Presents open. Cards used to come in the mail. Some even had checks. Now it was just bills and reminders. The fiancé picked up a construction job. When he was home, he held the baby and watched tv. At night, he slept in the living room. He said it was for staying rested during their night feedings, but it reminded her of how lonely she felt not being able to attract the kind of man she felt she warranted all her life. The kind of man like my boyfriend. Sometimes, when she needed it, she would pick a fight to refocus the home on her. They fought. They made up by distracting themselves with the baby and even less with each other. He wouldn’t set a date. She didn’t push it. A wedding is just for a day. The pregnancy gave her so many months more than that. She wanted the last year back. So, with my now ex boyfriend gone from both of our lives, she would send me run on texts behind everyone’s back that were peppered with smiley faces and offers to talk about my feelings regarding her having a baby with my then boyfriend. They held the obvious desperation of someone looking for emotional entertainment. I won’t oblige, but I got to know her more through her writing. What do I know about her? There are the details of her last year as the mother of the son she made then took back for the man she settled for and the same gold glitter cat eye glasses she wears in her selfies. But, those are just facts. The kind of stats that can go on the back of a baseball card. I know parts of her she reveals when she thinks no one is looking. When she is getting what she wants. When she needs more of what she wants. I know it by who she writes and when for what she needs. Her personality is banal, annoying, and obtuse. Like the persona embodiment of a cut out Cathy cartoon taped to a refrigerator mixed with a chubby receptionist that forces an insecure laugh after every sentence and brings in the day old blueberry bagels no one enjoys to foster unenthusiastic, fake office friendships. The emotional equivalent of person who writes three star Amazon reviews for kitchen floor mats, uses words like “hubs” or “preggers”, and thinks they are quippy and original because they are obsessed with fall themed candles and Christmas pajamas. I know she is someone that has manipulated and managed other peoples lives to get what she has wanted in her own when her character could not command those things based on its merit alone. I know she thinks she is a good person. She might actually be. It doesn’t change how she uses control and manipulation cheats in instead of challenging herself to develop what she desires. It hasn’t always worked, but adding the baby put the reins in her hands. Why hadn’t she done this sooner? She would have had more years to chase this high again. Keeping people separated to protect different lies needed to prop up herself is the most tired, known trope of a controlling person, but she cannot see that every time she deploys it with efficiency. To my boyfriend, he was told the fiancé doesn’t want him involved or around the child being raised as his. To the fiancé, he was told my boyfriend is uninterested, hard to reach, and difficult to even find most of the time. A bad person too for safe measure. Both must only coordinate the child’s well-being through her and never met each other to compare stories. Is it because new father will find out the lie that was told to trick the birth father into thinking there is some kind of infertility diagnosis that was miraculously overpowered and suspended during one ovulation cycle of a near 40 year old woman? It might make him see the sides of her she hides from him. From everyone. Including her. Is it because the birth father will find out that the father has been told some unpleasant false truths about being forced, alcohol, and consent surrounding this conception to nurture pity and buy in? It might make him think less of her. She needs everyone to think her selfless and wonderful. Most of all, in all of this, none can see how she has enjoyed exploiting the role of “mother just trying to do the right thing in a surprise situation” that she secretly, originally, and intentionally contrived and managed. This has to be protected. What would happen if the father and birth father know her like I do? What if the former reads what she wrote to the latter like I did and sees how she enjoyed having both men on the hook while forcing relationships neither would have elected to choose with her had she not created the baby? In the malaise of the quiet house next to the growing, sleeping child, there is a moment of mild discomfort when considering the rippling human collateral damage in her wake. Maybe for me, but it really only tickles her mind because her vanity is uncomfortable not knowing how much I know about her. Things she hardly understands, but also doesn’t stop. She would never afford even an ounce of that consideration and regret to the birth father when it comes to the psychological impact during the pregnancy and after the rights are transferred to the man she settled for. He is quietly ruined from the best year of her life. The birth father won’t have his own children someday. He won’t have healthy relationships ever again. He won’t have his own family. This will feel okay to him for a while, but he will realize the loss too late when his mother passes in 12 years and there are no more warm homes with real love to be invited to. When friends move on and evolve in life, he will be suspended in this broken, compartmentalized state. He is trapped. The next 20 years will be him alone as the old guy at the bar growing more and more bitter because the girls he likes don’t like him back like they used to. The quality ones don’t look at him anymore. But, hey, at least he will always be in the same place when she is bored. Under the false flag of the child he can’t have, she can make up reasons to come to his store or text for a rush of forced, fearful, inauthentic attention he feels obligated to give. She could have googled a sperm bank that summer when she came up with the plan. But, even if so, she was too cheap to spend $900 on a vile and if lives don’t have a price for taking when making one, she doesn’t feel a debt. What started this all, the baby, grows up with some of his birth fathers nature. Just a small sliver fights through and she resents it. When she sees parts of the nurture from the man she settled for in him, she resents that too. She actually resents him more and more the further away from the pregnancy life takes her. He might have a real chance at what his birth father refused to give himself after knowing her: a meaningful and good life with the best opportunity to thrive.