100 Reasons Why I Shouldn't Be Alive

Chapter One || Beggars Can't Be Choosers

No one chooses the family they were born in to.

This couldn't hold more truth for anyone other than Ryder Kason Romero.

Yolanda Rodriguez had walked into her local Subways during her lunch break from the nursing home which she worked. Once there, she ordered her sandwich from a handsome young man who she later met at a friend's party in downtown Rockport. A few dates later, the unofficial couple attended a concert together where mistakes were made and Yolanda found herself in bed with the subways guy named Brian Romero.

The twenty-five-year-old woman worked hard for her own apartment, car, and three cats and demanded the respect of all who surrounded her.

Until the seventeen-year-old Brian had swept her off her feet and she found herself unexpectedly pregnant with his baby.

Ryder had been an unlucky little enigma since the moment he was created.

Unaware of his existence, Yolanda continued drinking well into her fourth month until a little morning sickness caught her off guard. On the day she found out she was pregnant, she returned to work as if nothing was wrong and accidentally got her apron caught in the gas stove top setting fire to her little belly, almost killing herself and Ryder in the process.

Later that night she told Brian, who instantly panicked and told her his real age. His panic stemming from the fact he would be graduating soon and his deeply religious practices said s*x must only happen after marriage. Brian had convinced Yolanda that the only way to do this in a way that wouldn't get him excommunicated from the church, would be to marry her, so the boy graduated high school in May, got married in June, and had a newborn baby by the beginning of October.

Before the baby was born, a woman at the nursing home had felt Yolanda's stomach. The end of her life was quickly approaching but she made Yolanda promise her to name the baby after her. The sweet older woman died the next day and it fell on Yolanda's shoulders to keep her promise.

So Ryder was born on October 4, 1997, as Bertha Rosie Romero.

And within two seconds after his escape from the womb, he was assigned female at birth.

He started his journey in this world as a 'She'.

And the little girl already had three notches as to why she shouldn't be alive, scraped into her belt.

With only 97 more to go.