I became a father at 17.
No plan. No backup. Just a baby girl and a promise I made to myself—that I wouldn’t run.
Her name was Ainsley.
Her mom and I were one of those high school stories that thought it would last forever. It didn’t. By the time Ainsley was six months old, her mom left for college and never came back.
No calls. No visits. Nothing.
So it was just the two of us.
And somehow… that was enough.
I called her “Bubbles.”
She loved The Powerpuff Girls—always Bubbles, the soft one, the one who cried easily and laughed the loudest.
Every Saturday morning, we sat on the couch with cereal and whatever fruit I could afford that week. She’d curl into me like the world made sense there.
And for her… it did.
Raising a kid alone isn’t poetic.
It’s survival.
It’s counting dollars, skipping meals, fixing things yourself because you can’t afford help.
I learned to cook because takeout wasn’t an option.
I learned to braid hair by practicing on a doll at the kitchen table because my little girl wanted pigtails for first grade—and I wasn’t going to let her go without.
I showed up.
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