Response to "The Love of My Life"

The story was well-crafted and played off the teenage dream of love but the dream takes a very…sad turn when the couple gets pregnant. The two of them decide to get rid of the baby in a rather grotesque way. They are found out and arrested then sent to prison. The relationship takes a downward turn at this point. The two see faults in one another they never saw before. Aside from the story, the author provides a great amount of detail and paints a very clear picture of the two young lovers’ lives. It helps pull you into the illusion of the “perfect” teenage love. This helps show the downward spiral of their relationship during the pregnancy and after the baby is born. You see them steadily growing apart toward the end as they go through prison and the trial against them. The beginning of the story is filled with a euphoric daze but the couple is brought down to earth with pregnancy. With this turn, a sense of dysphoria permeates the remainder of the story. The boy has taken to drinking to ease the pain when he is told that his lover would be testifying against him, which leaves him (unsurprisingly) shocked. It ends with the young girl looking back over the relationship, still seemingly lost in love and broken by the events that lead her to this point in her life.