The news...

One of the scariest days of my life...

Last spring, about a year ago, I received a phone call from my girlfriend Courtney. She simply asked me if I was at home. I told her yes and asked why. She said she had to talk to me and that she would be over in a minute. At this point I was so scared she was getting ready to break up with me. So in that minute I was waiting I sat there and was thinking about if I had done anything wrong or what I could do to make it better. And I just couldn't think of anything. She finally arrived at my house and I could tell something wasn't right just by the look on her face. I wasn't at all prepared for what she had to tell me... We went up into my room and sat down on the bed. I could tell she was nervous and upset. I could also tell that she was struggling to come up with the right words on how to tell me whatever it was she was about to tell me. My heart was beating soooo fast, as was hers. She finally just came out with it and that's when I heard the words, "I'm pregnant." At that moment, I didn't know what to think. I kind of just sat there blank and waited for what she just said to sink in. Then she started crying... and my heart just broke. All of our dreams, our ambitions, our goals were gone. It was just not what we had planned at all. I just took her in my arms and we cried and cried for about an hour. We had so much planned.. it was just not good timing for us at all. But we talked about it and said that we don't have to come up with any decisions on what we were going to do right away.

That night was the hardest night of my life. I couldn't sleep at all. I mean, we were in high school! We're 17 and 18 years old and are expected to be responsible for another life. I can't raise a kid, I'm still a kid! I want to go to college, hang with my friends, go out and do whatever I want. So many thoughts ran through my head that night and the following days. It just seemed unreal to me. Like, how on earth is this happening to us? Better.. why is this happening to us? I just didn't understand. It was too much for me to take in... just too much. I just couldn't imagine what was going to Courtney's head at the same time. She still has one more year of high school to finish. She wants to go to college. She wants to be a freakin' teenager! It was just killing me knowing that not only my life was "ruined" but so was hers.

A week or so went by and we eventually both broke the news to our parents. I broke the news to my mom after we had just finished eating dinner at Applebee's. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Seeing the look on her face, the look of shock, of disbelief, of disappointment. It was horrible. She was trying not to cry as was I. I think it was even harder for her because my dad was away on business in Mexico. Of course she called him that night. And the worst part was as I walked by their bedroom, I just heard her crying and I just broke down. From that moment on, I've felt like I've disappointed my parents. That has always been my biggest fear and it came to a reality. Up until this point in my life, I've done a few stupid things but I always got good grades, I was never arrested or in trouble with the law. I was a successful young man. Still to this day, I feel like I've just disappointed my parents and everyone else around me.

We decided to keep the baby. We definitely weren't going to get an abortion. Adoption was the next option, but both Courtney and I didn't think we could live our lives knowing we have a child out there somewhere. I don't know how anyone could do that. After discussion with our parents and with their financial support for the time being, we decided that keeping the baby was what we were going to do. We knew there were going to be sacrifices made and it was going to be extremely hard but we knew that's what we had to do. Eventually word somehow got out around school and by the end of the school year, pretty much everyone knew about it even though you couldn't really tell by looking at Courtney.

Christopher Zachary Jackson was born on September 8, 2008. Courtney and I were married on December 13, 2008. The two single best days of my life! This was something that I thought was going to ruin my life and has turned out the be a complete blessing! I thank God that I have my son in my life. Even now, looking back, I wouldn't change anything. Courtney and I are happy and we are making the best of our situation. As for me, I will be trying to show my parents that I can be that responsible man. I just want to give my family everything that I possibly can. I want to be able to give my son everything and more! I just want to prove to myself that I can do this, that this whole thing was not just a mistake. That it happened for a reason.

This is now my life.. and I'm proud of it!

Surgery

Hearing the words, "you're gonna need surgery" are not exactly what you want to hear.

About a year ago, I injured my knee. I actually remember it pretty clearly. I was playing basketball at our town's rec center with a few of my friends. The game hadn't gone on more than a few minutes when it happened. I drove past my guy and pulled up for a short jumper at about the free throw line, it hit off the back of the rim and came back towards me. I then soared up to grab the rebound and when I landed on the floor my knee bent sideways and I heard a "pop". I immediately hit the floor and screamed in pain! This was the most pain I've ever been in. It was horrible! Nothing like giving birth I'm told, but it was pretty intense. After being helped off the court and not being able to put any pressure on my right leg I just went home and iced it all night long. The next day, it was still swollen and hurt a lot! We went to the doctor and they examined me and I had an MRI taken. At this point it was just time to wait to see if I tore any ligaments. And of course when we got the phone call, they told us that I had torn my ACL and partially torn my meniscus. And that meant surgery! This was horrifying news for me considering my last season of soccer was just starting and that meant I couldn't play and not to mention but it was getting close to the end of my high school career and I didn't want to spend my last months on crutches. So we decided to schedule the surgery for after my graduation ceremony. I went the next few months without playing any sports at all and that absolutely killed me! The only thing I could do was walk. So after graduation I had my surgery. I don't remember much from it, but I remember getting my leg shaved and then waking up later in a totally different room than I started in. The surgery was over. I had to have a special machine that iced my leg and put pressure on it. I was also on crutches for just 3-4 weeks because I recovered pretty fast. I went most of the summer going to therapy 2 times a week and really built my flexibility and strength back. After the summer was over and I went back to school, I was almost all the way recovered. To this day my knee feels fine. I do wear a brace just to be careful but that's just my decision because I don't want to experience that kind of pain again! I don't quite have the strength in my leg to where it was before but it's getting there!

"Surgery" is not what you want to hear when you get an injury. I've experience the pain among other emotions of suffering from an injury that required surgery. I'm glad it's all over with and I just pray that it never has to happen again!

What the hell am I going to do???

Have you ever asked yourself, "what the hell am I going to do with my life?" I have. Deciding what you are going to do for the rest of your life is pretty crucial. I definitely don't want to get stuck in some job that I don't like doing. This question has in a way haunted my dreams recently...

As you may know, I am a freshman at Purdue right now in the first year engineering program. I never really knew what I wanted to do as college quickly approached me and engineering was always something that interested me a little. Therefor, I made the tough decision to leave my wife and son back home in Brownsburg and attend Purdue University so I could get the best possible engineering degree and be able to support my family the best I could. Those plans have changed. I don't want to be an engineer. And it kills me that I made such a big deal about going to Purdue and that I left Courtney and Christopher back home while I go off to school each week. I guess I just thought that it would be easy and that it wouldn't be that hard to leave them each week as I would be coming home each weekend. I was definitely wrong about that too! It was the hardest! The main reason I chose to go to Purdue for engineering was because my dad graduated from Purdue with an engineering degree and I guess in some way I wanted to be like him. He has always been supporting our family and has done very well for himself and for us. I just though I could do the same. But like I said, after a semester and a half, I've decided that it's not!

Next year, I will most likely be attending IUPUI and study business. I am still unsure of what I want to do with my life as far as work goes but for now I know that with a business degree there will be many job opportunities awaiting. I am really looking forward to permanently living with my family as well! I think we will actually feel like a real family then. Things are not normal now, but I hope they will be by the summer when I come home. I just want to be able to give my son and my wife the best possible life!

I do not know what I want to do with my life, and the question lingers in my head from time to time. I love sports! I've always been a basketball guy too! I know I will never play professionally but something that has to do with sports would be a great job for me! I love basketball, soccer, football, golf, tennis, bowling... you name it and I pretty much love it! (Except baseball) haha! Maybe I will have a career in sports marketing, I don't know! If you know of any other jobs or degrees that would be good for me, let me know.

As for now, the question " what the hell am I going to do?" will always be on my mind!

March Madness! Boiler Up!

Boiler Up!!! As a big Purdue fan, it was good to see Purdue kick ass in the Big Ten tourney last weekend and come out with it's first ever Big Ten Championship since the tourney has begun. This was pretty exciting stuff. First of all, they beat Penn State pretty easily and really boosted the team's self esteem as the tournament continued. And it was good to see IU lose in the first round and finish the season with only one conference win! Sorry to all you IU fans but you know how it is, us Boilermakers love it when we're winning and you're losing! Next, it was really good to see the Boilers beat Illinois after they lost to them twice in the regular season! Although, the first lost to them was in overtime and they just kind of broke down at the end of the game and the second loss was at Illinois and without our main man Robbie Hummel. So it was definitely good to see the Boilers whoop on the Illini. Finally, the Boilers came across the tough Ohio State team who knocked off Michigan State. This was a very intense game but the Boilers play hard the whole game and came out with a great victory! It was good to see the team that excited!

As NCAA tourney gets underway, as well as all the other Boilermaker fans, I was proud to see that we got a #5 seed in the tournament. I don't think we should have any trouble against Northern Iowa. We most likely will be playing a tough Washington team, but I still have faith in our team and have them winning and going on to play against the #1 seed UConn! I'm not so sure here as some people have UConn as a potential NCAA champ, but if we can get by the Huskies, then we definitely have a shot at the final four! This is our time now!

Purdue plays on Thursday at 2:30 and I'm sure I will be watching the game and cheering on the Boilers in the first round!

Also, I'm going to be cheering for the Butler Bulldogs as they are the only other team from Indiana in the big dance. Also because of Gordon Hayward! He is one of the best freshman in the country and I have the honor of saying I once played with him a long time ago! He has great potential in the future! Although, he definitely kicked my ass at basketball back then and he still can now! The Bulldogs drew a tough LSU team in the first round, but I will still be cheering them on! I believe they play at 12:20 on Thursday!

With March Madness finally underway, they next few weeks are going to be basketball, basketball, basketball for me!

My story...

Let me first start off by telling you all a little more about myself...

Like I said, my name is Adam Jackson and I'm 19 years old. I'm not your typical 19 year old college freshman though. My life is a little more than someone who's waking up on Saturday or Sunday morning wondering, "what exactly happened last night at that party?". I currently go to school at Purdue University as a first year engineer. However, I'm transferring to IUPUI next year to most likely study business. So some of you may know about my so called "situation", but for those of you who don't, here it is. I'm 19 years old, married, and have a 6 month old son. Just from that statement right there, I'm sure most of you can tell why I'm not living the typical life of a college student.

College has been hard on me so far, for the main reason of being away from my family. In the fall, my girlfriend (at the time), was pregnant and was due to have our baby in September. This made the first month or so of school pretty crazy for me. While I was away each week, I not only had to worry about each one of my classes, but I had to worry about that one phone call that could change my life. That phone call saying, "I'm going into labor.. get you ass here now!" Fortunately that didn't happen because the doctor and Courtney (my girlfriend) decided to have induce labor on Monday, September 8, 2008. I'll go more into detail about that day in a future blog entry. My son was born on September 8, 2009 and we named him Christopher Zachary Jackson. He was a perfectly healthy little boy and Courtney and I are so blessed to have him. But now that my son was born, it was so hard for me to leave and go back to school, but I did what I had to do. I would leave at the beginning of each week to go back to school, away from the two people I cared about most and had to deal with being away with them as well as a pretty brutal schedule of classes. Every Friday after my last class, I would drive home in my brother's car or my dad would come pick me up so I could come home and spend every weekend with my son and Courtney. And after each weekend was over, it was harder and harder for me to leave to go back to school. I just wanted to be there with them. I knew it was unfair for Courtney to be raising our child by herself all week long and that killed me that she had to do that. I was also so afraid that my own son wouldn't even realize that I'm his father considering that I was only there for about 2 and half days out of the week. It was so hard on me. The only reason I was doing it was because I knew with the right education that I could eventually give my family everything that they deserve.

As the fall semester came to a close it was getting close to Christmas Break where I'd get to be home for nearly a month. I was so excited. Plus, Courtney and I had planned to get married on December 13, 2008. And that we did. We got married at my church in Brownsburg (Calvary United Methodist Church). Only our close families were there such as our parents and siblings. It was a short and sweet wedding but definitely unforgettable. Afterwards, we had a wedding reception at Brownsburg Rec Center with all of our friends and the rest of our families there and it was a blast! By the end of Christmas Break, it so even harder for me to say goodbye and go back to school again, especially after not doing so well in a few of my classes. I have continued to come home every weekend and will for the rest of the school year. Spring Break is next week and we are excited again to spend a whole week together. After that school will almost be over and then Courtney and Christopher will move in with me and my parent's house for the summer and at least the fall semester until we can get a place of our own.

My life has definitely changed but it was definitely for the better. I'm so blessed to have such a beautiful son and such an amazing wife. Yeah, so what if I'm not going out and partying every weekend like any other college kid, I'm raising my family!

So there you have it. That's the story of my life right now. Of course it's not everything but I hope I caught you up on some missing information that you may not have known.

Future blogs to come... "What the hell am I going to do?", "The birth of my son.", and "My bachelor party."

Welcome!

Hello.. my name is Adam Jackson. I've created this blog simply because I want to get things off my chest sometimes that I just can't always talk about. Also just to talk to people about whatever may be going on in my life. The title is called "Life is Changing..". I called it this because as a 19 year old, my life has taken many interesting twists and turns and there are many more to come. I'm probably going to talk about lots of these "twists and turns" in future posts. Also, I'm just going to talk about anything that may be going on in my life as well as anything that interests me, such as sports. So some posts may include some graphic details about my life that most people may not know about and other posts could just talk about what happened in the game last night. Hell, I'm not really sure what all I will be talking about right now. I'm also up for any funny suggestions you might like to hear about or whatever.

So later this week as I start to post my first couple of blogs, I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I do writing them.