06.25.2018
Media

Anonymous

I was 17 when I fell in love with a man twice my age. He was a father of 4 and lived with the mother of his children at the time he asked me to be the other woman. I was young and dumb and damaged, and at the time I didn’t realize that this wasn’t the love I deserved. After 2 years he left his children’s mother and just a few months later I lost him the same way I got him. After month of multiple women sleepless nights crying myself to sleep. I left him and went to Texas. When I came home he planned to move 3 hours away from me in Texas with one of the girl’s he had cheated on me with. I didn’t want that so I moved back to my hometown. We ended badly so we didn’t speak for 10 months. One day my friend reached out to him while I was with her and we started talking again. We planned to be friends with benefits and only see each other when he would come to visit his family. That soon changed to him planning to move back to our hometown. Two weeks before his move his grandmother passed away. I got a call from him on a day that had been Hell for me and he surprised me with his return. I had 2 more weeks before my appointment to get on birth control. I told myself that we’ve had sex unprotected before and I never got pregnant… so we can do the same now and be fine… a foolish thought on my part. We met up the next day and spent four amazing hours together. I didn’t know then but soon I would fall pregnant.

On June 3, 2018 I took a pregnancy test because I was 11 days late for my period. My heart sunk to my feet and a lump balled in my throat as i saw the plus sign become more vivid. I knew that he didn’t want anymore children and definitely not with me. I didn’t want to tell him but I did and he was supportive in my choice to terminate and reminded me if my mind changed I would be a single mother. I wanted more for my baby. I don’t ever want my child to crave the same love I have wanted from this man for 5 years and still haven’t received. I didn’t want my child to grow up feeling unwanted or unloved by it’s father. I didn’t want my child to grow up with a mother who doesn’t even have her G.E.D. and is only 8 months sober from opiates. I had a hard time at 13 til I was about 17 and I had seen and endured the harsh realities of this cold world at a young age. I promised myself then that I would never bring a child into this world unless I could give them everything they want and need. A child needs love, attention, affection, to be taken care of, to have food, water, shelter. To be safe, to feel loved. Not to come into this world already damned to a life of poverty and emotional issues. How do you explain to your child that you were the other women who stayed and became the other women to a woman who their father cheated on you with and he still picked the other woman instead of me, and through all that hurt and disrespect I still chose to have sex with him and chose to bring you into this world. That is selfish and it will only show my child that that’s how love is supposed to be. You’re parents and if your parents are separated their partners are your template of what relationships are supposed to be like.

On June 20, 2018 I went to the abortion clinic. My health insurance only covered the surgical procedure. I sat in a waiting room with four other women. About a hour later, a lady in blue scrubs came and got me and I walked with her to an elevator. We went to the second floor and she brought me into a small room with a chair in it; she handed me a gown and told me to take everything off except my socks and bra. I opened the door after changing and she brought me into a cold room that had a table and stir ups for your legs. She sat me on the chair and asked me a few questions. A doctor and three other women came in and put in my IV and told me that they were going to start not even 30 seconds after they injected me. Every time I’ve ever been under GA I’ve never been lucid. I was fully awake the same way I am typing this story. The doctor had already began inserting the speculum. I still wasn’t feeling any medication or sedation at all. She told me she had to open my cervix and it helps if i cough. When she told me to cough I felt the most horrible sharpest pain and pressure I yelled OWWW and began to cry, tears gushing down my face. I asked why I was awake why are you doing this if I can feel everything. The nurse that had brought me up looked at me with the saddest face and said nothing – no one said anything, she just kept going with the procedure. It hurt and the time felt like it was standing still. I felt the suction of the machine pulling at my insides. As I moved in pain the anesthesiologist held my hand and rubbed it. All of a sudden I felt a lot of pressure and it felt like someone was pulling my insides out. I heard the sound and felt my skin and then baby that was inside me get ripped from my body. It was the most excruciating and heart breaking thing I’ve ever had to endure. I felt every bit of this procedure. I was traumatized.

I lay there crying as the doctor and 2 interns got up and left. The nurse who brought me up put my panties on me with a pad already strapped to them. I felt like cattle that had just been gutted. I felt like just another procedure. All of the staff except the doctor were amazing. This doctor didn’t view us as patients, she viewed us as just another dollar in her pocket. The nurse who put my panties on pulled up a wheelchair and wheeled me to the recovery room across the hall. I was still in full tears and remained that way. They handed me my clothes and told me I could go change. I just wanted to leave. I wanted to forget this ever happened. I wanted to go back in time and stop it from happening. I promised myself in that bathroom as i wept and clothed myself that this would never happen again that I would never have to get an abortion again. I felt like a bad person. Like a murderer and I had always been an advocate for abortion and my perception of this procedure probably wouldn’t be as horrific if I had actually been sedated. I am on suboxone and they are only a ambulatory clinic so if they stop my heart because I OD they would have to call 911 they don’t have a defibrillator. I came out of the bathroom and asked the nurse in the room if I could please go home. She got 2 more BP’s and my best friend picked me up. I was still in tears. I explained to my friend what happened and was an emotional wreck the entire day. I’m working through the guilty feelings I am having. I have always been safe, but when they say it only takes one time they aren’t kidding. I ended up ending the relationship between me and the father. I explained to him that I can’t sleep with someone who doesn’t want me or a kid because accidents do happen and if this ever happens again I’ll never get another abortion. I haven’t heard anything from him, he hasn’t tried to contact me in any way. I told him how I felt via text message. Someone who cares that little doesn’t deserve my body. I plan to remain celibate while still taking birth control as a precaution.

I hope my story helps someone else. I know that I made the right choice for me and this baby. The quality of life it would have had wouldn’t have been what a child deserves. But the trauma from my experience will never allow me to chose abortion as an option ever again. It is your choice. It is your voice. Never feel ashamed. Do everything in your power to make sure you never have an UNWANTED pregnancy again.