........
Chris is a new guy up at work. Sometimes I can't tell if he is speaking the truth or not, but according to him, he's already lost several jobs, been homeless for a good while, and become engaged to a young lady (who already has twins), both in their early twenties. Seems an awful lot to go through.

And he's one of those strange sorts I always seem to get along with so well--he's got that bitingly sarcastic attitude tinged with just enough geniune humanness that has you teetering between slapping him and laughing with him.

Monday, he showed up, and he looked happier than I had ever seen him. When I asked, he said that his fianceé was expecting. He was going to be a father; any happier, and I swear he was going to start dancing on the bar.

Imagine my surprise when I came into work Tuesday morning and found him huddled in one of the booths, on the verge of tears. Chris isn't the type to cry, so I gently inquired again. Voice cracking, he told me he wasn't going to be a father after all. Before I could speak, he rushed on to say that his fianceé was getting an abortion; she didn't want the child, and she didn't need his consent to have her choice. I saw the joy leak slowly from his eyes.

It hurt then, and it hurts now. I haven't the faintest idea what to tell Chris, and he just seems to get more and more miserable with each day. The day it actually happens, I predict he won't show up for work.

Having been the potential target for such an act (my, my, dramatics today), you can see why I'm against it--I'm just thankful my mother was also against it, even if she and her brother were the only ones. And I know circumstances dictate the ability to raise children well, but...well, don't do something if you can't handle the "consequences", as it were.

I promise myself that when I finally do have children (O_O, scary thought, heh!), I will have them willingly, I will have their natural father with them, and they will grow up "normal", or abnormal--not from a divorced family. I just don't want them to grow up and through the crap that I've heard about and that I've been through.

Hang in there, Chris...