When you're a teen mom at thirty, you feel like a teen mom again: completely out of place. Your friends are now catching up and having babies of their own but they're not really "catching up", are they? They're doing it at the right time. You were the one who clearly got it wrong.
Your friends talk about formula and breast feeding and what stroller to buy while you research "How to Get a 12 Year Old Through Puberty" on your own.
You realize this will always be the case. You will always be the odd mom out. Hell, you always have been. You will always be at the wrong stage of your own goddamn life.
Your pregnant friends will ask you if it's weird to have a different last name than your child's. They ask because they are beautiful, bad ass feminists that never took their husband's last name. Clearly, not the reason why my child and I do not have the same last name. His was never offered to me with a promise and a ring.
I tell them not to worry about it. They are married. They belong to a family unit. Their different last name is a minor detail that doesn't take from the legitimacy of their family. Alright, so I just say, "No, it's not weird".
When you're a teen mom at thirty, you're reminded that you did it wrong, out of order, too quickly. Your friends are engaged married, expecting, mothers of toddlers and you're still trying to survive, trying to fit in, knowing you never will.
Am I grateful to not be changing diapers? Absolutely. I am looking to get married and start all over the "right way"? Hell to the no. I love my child. I realize my blessings but there's just something about being a teen mom at thirty that makes you feel well, like a teen mom again. You watch them do it the right way, unable to stop the thoughts that you clearly did it wrong.