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I had an abortion.
Currently, not a single person in my life knows this. I am only posting it here because it is anonymous, and I have been so desperate to share my experience, and hear the experiences of others.
It was two years ago, and I was 20 years old. I had taken a break from college after my second year, and was working full-time in a low-paying service sector job. It was about 5 months into a "friends-with-benefits" type relationship. I was on the pill. I realized that I had missed a period, and thought I should take a pregnancy test. I wasn't worried initially. I had had a couple of scares before, only to get my period a few days later. And I was a smart girl who was using birth control. Unplanned pregnancies didn't happen to girls like me.
But it didn't work out that way. I bought a few pregnancy tests, and took them to the bathroom at the mall. It took three tests to do it right, but I was staring at the third one, and it was pretty clearly positive. I thought it might have been a false positive, but when I did the math, I realized it probably wasn't.
For maybe five minutes, I sat in shock. I had considered myself so superior to all of those girls I went to high school with who were now single mothers, or soon-to-be, and here I was--I had gotten pregnant, even though I thought I did everything right. I wasn't any more special than them, no matter what my big aspirations were. The thing was, in those five minutes, I wasn't deciding what to do. I knew, immediately, I wanted an abortion. I had come to a very profound understanding in a matter of milliseconds.
Because before that moment, even though I had always said that while I was pro-choice, mainly because I knew that women sought unsafe illegal abortions when no safe legal ones were available, I still morally judged women who had abortions "just because". I said in many a conversation, that though it may be OK for other people, I, the special one, could NEVER have an abortion. I said all that, never thinking I would find myself with an unwanted pregnancy. As soon as I did, well, I understood. Within five minutes of reading the plus sign on the stick, I had found the number and was on the phone with the local abortion clinic. And within five minutes of reading the plus sign on the stick, I was unequivocally, no-holds-barred, pro-choice, morally, politically and everything else.
My appointment was three weeks from that day. Those three weeks were both the most miserable three weeks of my life, and yet also, OK. Miserable, because I was sicker than I had ever been before or have been since. I guess what I had was "morning sickness", although that is not an apt name for it at all. It was more like, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week sickness, for three weeks. I felt sick all day at work. I felt sick when I went to bed at night. I felt sick when I woke up in the middle of the night. I felt sick when I woke up in the morning. I actually lost seven pounds because the only thing I could stand to eat, was plain, dry toast. I couldn't imagine having to endure that for much longer. I don't know how I hid that from everyone, but I did--coworkers, roommates, friends, family. No one knew I was as sick as I was.
But even though I was sick, I was OK, mentally and emotionally. I knew it would all be over soon. I knew that I wasn't in trouble anymore. I wanted it to be hard for me, but it wasn't. I thought that I must have been "numb", just avoiding an inevitable storm of emotions, but that storm never came. I continued to see my partner during that time; it made things easier that it was long-distance, so I only saw him once or twice in that three weeks. I kept thinking I would tell him, but I chickened out every time. The fact is, I knew what I was going to do, no matter what he might have wanted. If he had said he was not OK with me having an abortion, I was going to do it anyway, and I suppose that would have been the end of the relationship.
Finally the day
