Here she was in her forties, single, working night and day trying to keep the Dragonfly Inn afloat. Sometimes Lorelai couldn't help but speculate how her life had turned out if she'd never come to Stars Hollow. Could her mother have been right all along? Had she been foolish to run away at sixteen? Wouldn't her life have been much easier if she'd stayed home, finished high school and gone to college? Of course it would have, Lorelai thought. If I hadn't left my parents I would have been able to get a good job and move out by the time Rory was in kindergarten.
Lorelai could no longer remember why she had been so eager to run away from home. Okay, Richard and Emily weren't warm and fuzzy, but they hadn't beaten or molested her. It's not as if they'd thrown her out onto the street when she had gotten pregnant. They had wanted her to attend a top school, and marry a high-achieving man. That was hardly monstrous of them, Lorelai thought. It was hard to admit, even to her, but Emily had only wanted Lorelai to have the best. Weren't those were the things that she wanted for Rory?
Lorelai remembered Mia, the kind lady who had taken her and Rory in, given them a home, and provided Lorelai with employment. If it hadn't been for Mia, I would have been forced to return home, Lorelai thought. Home to my rich parents who would have hired a nanny for Rory while I went to high school, home to a life of financial security, home where I could have had a normal social life instead of spending my teen years taking care of a baby 24/7. Home to where Rory could have had the best of everything, a huge house, and a giant yard to play in, complete with a swimming pool, instead of being cooped up in a shed all the time. Yeah, Mia really did me a favor, Lorelai thought bitterly.
The more Lorelai thought about it, the angrier she got. What the hell was Mia thinking? Lorelai thought. What kind of person sees a sixteen year old runaway with a baby and doesn't call her parents or social services? Who encourages a kid to leave school at sixteen to work as a hotel maid full-time? Was that even legal? Why did everyone in this town go along with it? Lorelai wondered.
The more she thought about it, the more bizarre the whole thing seemed. Did nobody in this town think that I should go to school and live a normal life? I wasn't on the run from the mob; I was a stupid teenaged girl who thought my parents were evil because they wanted me to be a debutante. Why the hell did everyone encourage me to stay here instead of called my Dad to take me home?
But my relationship with Rory would have been completely different, Lorelai thought. We wouldn't have been nearly as close. But is that closeness such a good thing? Lorelai wondered. She's always been my everything, but is that any healthier than my estrangement from my parents? Did I put too much on her all her life? Rory should have been a carefree kid, not my best friend. We both would have been better off if we'd had a more normal mother-daughter relationship.
The realization hit Lorelai hard. She had traded in her youth, her education, damaged her own life and that of her beloved Rory in exchange for a minimum wage job and a bed in a shed. What a chump!
A/N The more I think about how Lorelai ended up in Stars Hollow and the conditions she and Rory lived under, the weirder it looks.