**The Long Road**
My name is Marcus Thompson. I became a father at seventeen.
It was 2008. I was a scared kid in a maroon graduation gown, holding a tiny baby girl with chubby cheeks and curious eyes. Ainsley was only four months old that day. Her mother, Kayla, stood off to the side taking pictures, smiling like everything was going to be fine. I believed her.
We were young and dumb and in love. When Kayla told me she was pregnant, my world flipped upside down, but I didn’t run. I stepped up. I worked nights at a fast-food place, studied during lunch breaks, and still managed to walk across that stage with my daughter in my arms for photos. Everyone called me crazy. My own parents begged me to let Kayla’s family take the baby. I refused.
“I got this,” I told them.
I didn’t have it. Not really. But I was going to learn.
**The Abandonment**
Two years after high school, Kayla sat me down in our tiny one-bedroom apartment.
