Oops! I’m a Mom 🤷🏼‍♀️

I have a huge secret. I am such a wonderful procrastinator, I mean making up excuses is practically a part of my job but that’s not the secret. I keep telling myself I needed to write all of this crazy secret down, like “Hey Brianna, this shit is real, it’s happening and you better document it because you're going to forget all of the insane ridiculous details in the next few months, so get it out of your jumbled up yet simultaneously vacant mind!” This secret is big. It’s fun, it’s terrifying, there’s not really a manual on how to go about dealing with it… well, scratch that. There are lots of books about it. There are lots of opinions and “go to guides” for secrets like mine but not exactly mine.

I’m a 33-year-old woman who started up this business with a couple of my friends two and a half years ago in Seattle. We came out from LA, bought a music venue and went through the arduous, thankless, and penniless process that is following your dreams. I will say that it’s a cool gig and I’m sure it looks great on paper. It definitely looks extra sexy when dating and my friends think it’s pretty rad that they can hit me up to get on the list and probably have a few free drinks. I can go to any show and get passes to pretty much any festival and after two and a half years, I’m fairly certain that I have never paid the correct price for my drink tab in this city. These are all the perks that come along with bartending and working in my super cool music venue. Not only do I get to call myself an owner, I also get to be the blue-collar face of the place I own. Sounds super great, right?

Yeah, it’s awesome. The reality is that it’s September 5, I have $800 in my bank account and my rent, which is due the first of every month, is $990. I have $3,000 in credit card debt, my cell phone is on a family plan with my mom and brother, and my dog Nancy’s big bag of $60-grain free wild bison whatever is almost gone. I owe my family about $125,000 for investing in my stupid dreams and that number pales in comparison to what my partners owe their friends and family. All that and now I have this big secret.

Before I get into the secret, I should set the stage for what led to this… thing. See, I’ve had this life that looks pretty awesome on the outside. Single young thing dating all the sexy band dudes without any money living out of a barely functioning tour bus down by the river. There was the touring musician who played in that band with the guy from The Strokes, and who can forget the brooding sound guy who was also the tour manager of that band who is going to blow up after their gig on Conan coming up in October. The list goes on, I am a complete stereotype and I have enjoyed every second of it. However, I wanted to try something new and I decided that in this new world that is location-based dating apps, I should take advantage of the fact that I live in Seattle, the tech and startup capital of the country. Maybe I could meet some dudes with jobs, perhaps who might live alone or, dare I say, own a car made after 2005? Anyway, it took about five minutes to set up shop and I started swiping.

My profile was set with about five pictures of me looking like the whimsical, carefree, smoking hot life of the party. No half-naked boobie pics though because as much as I am sexually free, I’m not desperate for attention. I eluded to the fact that I owned a business but didn’t name which one and let my perspective ex-boyfriends think that I was a huge success in said business, because who knows, maybe one day I will be. So I started my journey dating attorneys, tech guys, med students, engineers, blah, blah, blah. I got my fair share of dick pics, sushi dinners, hangovers and two-date max relationships—it was a blast.

That was all fine and dandy until I met Tom. White Orange County born headhunter/recruiter guy Tom, who worked for this tech company that does stuff that sounds like it’s important but I don’t understand what it is even though I really try to understand when I casually ask questions about his day at work. I decided to meet Tom on a Friday night after he wooed me by texting me that he really just wanted to get naked and see if we had any chemistry. After already committing to a friend's night out at some new club opening up in Sodo, I told him I’d keep in touch throughout the night and if it was a bust, maybe we could get a drink.

So I went to this club. It was hilariously horrid but it was a friend of a friend’s place, so I couldn’t really say anything. The thing is, when you work in the service industry your entire life, then buy a place and go through every possible problem that could ever exist, you become a judgmental piece of shit whenever someone else opens up a new spot. This place was really bad though. Like it had to be millions of dollars of a mistake bad. Like the opening was three months ago and I’d be shocked if it's still open bad. There was not enough alcohol in the entire watered down bar to make me stay a minute longer so I ghosted after doing a bump in the hideous bathrooms with awful mismatched lighting. I texted Tom at midnight and told him to put on his fancy sweatpants cause mama was Ubering to Ballard for a drink.

He thought I was kidding but no no, I was not. I got out of that Toyota Prius, thanked Mohammad for the ride and the sweet jams and walked into Old Peculiar to meet my new dreamboat of the moment. I was a wearing a black jumper with a gold necklace and was feeling pretty sun-kissed after a day at the beach. I saw Tom at the bar, slid in next to him and started talking about whatever the hell fell out of my mouth. It must have been somewhat articulate because we hit it off, kissed, then he came to my place so I could walk Nancy. We did not, however, have sex because I kind of liked the dude. We were from towns that neighbored each other in Southern California, he was funny, cute, and seemed like he had his shit together for 30. So what the hell, maybe I’d like to check him out in daylight. So I sent him home.

The next day we texted for a bit and he ended up coming over. He brought me coffee and we spent the day together before I had to go to work. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other and after five Hendrick's and sodas, my willpower depleted and my impulse control was gone. We had sex, he went home and I went to work a little buzzed and very relaxed. Over the week we talked a lot and things started to heat up. It was really great until he ghosted on me on July 4. Basically the old no call, no show, oops I got drunk and lost track of time on my friend's boat excuse. We’ve all used it. I was irritated in the moment but mostly because he had such a rad view of Lake Union from his apartment and my friends and I had to adjust our fireworks plans.

After the independence day hiccup, we ignored each other for about a week until he texted me and apologized for disappearing, citing emotional issues and fear of closeness as the culprit. I was sympathetic because I myself have played that card in many a relationship game, however not enough to jump back down the rabbit hole. He was a nice dude with a fluffy dog but with my next date a swipe away, I wasn’t really interested in fixing our one week romance and he didn’t really seem too eager either. It was a love story true to our time.

So I continue on with my life. It’s summer and I’m out at all the events, making new friends, drinking tequila and Rosé, going to the gym three to four times a week, you know—basically killing it. I’ve got a couple potential matches on Bumble and started some banter about the quest for the best burrito in Seattle with some UW med student, things were looking up. Then it got a little weird, I kept having these flashbacks to my time with Tom and I couldn’t shake him from the back of my mind. Then I realized after few days of cleansing on La Croix that things were feeling really off. My mom called me one morning to chat and let it slip that my cousin and his wife were pregnant with a second kid. I was PUMPED. They are awesome and if their first kid was any indicator, they make awesome humans. When we hung up, that's when it hit me. I bet all you smart readers out there are starting to figure out what my big secret is. You little sleuths, you. Well, keep reading.

My boobs were huge but I was sure it was because my period was about to start. Then I began making out some timetables and started to trip out a bit. So rather than completely freak out, I decide to walk down to the bodega on the corner with Nancy to get a pregnancy test. Nancy needed to pee anyways. So I get down there and it’s the guy working that I’m the least chatty with—I don’t know his name but he always gives me extra dog treats for Nance. We were the only ones in there and I tried to be cool and act natural so I grabbed a coconut water and casually said him before checking out, “While we’re at it, can you grab me a pregnancy test?”

Let me tell you there was nothing smooth or comfortable about that interaction. I don’t care how much of a feminist you are, I buy my own condoms and forgo bras just because I like the way my boobs look in certain shirts and it's comfortable. I do what I want because I’m a grown ass woman, but buying a dollar pregnancy test at your neighborhood bodega from a 58-year-old man cashier is NOT a normal interaction and it was weird AF. So I walk home, pregnancy test in hand because this is Seattle and why would I ask for a plastic bag??? Nancy is bouncing around making friends with every passerby while I uncomfortably laugh and call her to stay close so she won't run into oncoming traffic (clearly already killing it at being a dog mom). As if this wasn't the most awkward walk home, I find myself accidentally waving with my coconut water and pregnancy test box to these strangers. Like what?! What was I thinking? If you ever want to creep people out, do that. Just walk down the street with your dog off leash in sweat shorts and a t-shirt without a bra, holding a coconut water and condoms, while waving around a pregnancy test…. Well I didn’t buy condoms that time around… I added that because it would have been the only other thing aside from a bottle of wine that really would have set off my look.

I finally get home and run into the bathroom, open the box, read the instructions, pee into a shot glass because it was the only clean glass in my house, take the dropper, and drop three tiny piss drops onto this little fate-sealing crystal ball made of shitty plastic. I looked at the lines that showed up within less than two seconds of being submerged in my urine and was convinced the test was broken because it happened so fast. I started pacing around my apartment then ran back to the bathroom to pee again, not because I wanted to take another test but because I legitimately had to pee. That had been happening a lot lately. So I started doing what you do in this situation. I sat on my pink toilet in my pink-tiled bathroom googling the accuracy of the particular brand of test I took and looking up pregnancy symptoms, like frequent urination.