I’ve admitted to being a walking bag of contradictions in the past, but never before have I felt so confused and exhausted by my conflicting emotions of deep regret one morning and warm relief the next. After vast amounts of thought, my brain still remains a giant plate of scrambled eggs. I should apologise in advance because I'm about to write my feelings all over your Internet and it's likely to upset a lot of people.
By age 45, half of all women will have had an unintended pregnancy and one in three will have had ended theirs, yet there remains so much shame and stigma surrounding the issue. I haven’t yet been able to say a lot about this openly in real life and most accounts I’ve found on the Internet were either very pro-life or very pro-choice. What happened to all the voices that were slightly muddled or unsure?
I’m aware of the floodgate writing about this opens, and it honestly is such a terrifying process to actually sit down, dig deep, and churn out all these words about something so sad and so personal, and then lay it out here for third party consumption. But the more I think about it, the more I feel that it is important for me to try to be as transparent and honest as I can, especially with other women, because a woman's ability to choose whether or not she wants to terminate a pregnancy – for whatever reason – is often under attack.
I have found the experience of abortion to be greatly uneven throughout the world. It varies not just by law but also by upbringing, culture, race, income, age, religion, education, family; by whether a boyfriend offered a hand to hold at the clinic or told her matter-of-factly that there are already enough human beings in the world as it is; by the kindness and warmth or callousness and flippancy of the attending nurses; by whether she had to order the pill online because it is illegal in her town or battled protesters outside a clinic. Some feel so ashamed that their family and friends will never hear of their pain; others feel stronger for having lived through the experience and regret nothing about their decision.
It isn’t every day that a story comes back full circle to bite its author directly in the arse, but such is the case for me, who has wittingly joked about pregnancy scares for a decade. I kid you not, bitch is knocked up! (Ba dum tss.)
I'm probably the least reliable narrator right now but I want to attempt to talk about this without it sounding like a fancy fur coat that everyone is keen to try on, only to have it thrown back at me in revulsion because we all know nobody would ever deliberately wear something so vile.
In my gut, I knew what I wanted to do. But the moment logic and reason caught up with my instincts, I did the thing I thought I'd never do. Suddenly it became apparent that my life right now was not conducive to raising a happy, healthy child. Even though I was in a much better position compared to the many young victims of rape who kept their babies in spite of it all, I couldn't bring myself to put a child or myself through a lifetime of chaos. Even though I'd always trusted my intuition, I turned my back on it when it really mattered.
Adoption. Murderer. Reckless. Selfish. Irresponsible. Let the judgements roll...
I will not delve into all the intimate details, such as how did it happen and wasn’t he wearing a condom and how far along are you and what did he say and is he going to take responsibility for it and whose is it, actually and are you sad and does your family know and who have you told and who can I tell and when will you make an announcement and does Nadia know and is it okay for me to tell her when I see her tonight and who is going to pay and how much is it going to cost, exactly and does Nadia know because I feel like she needs to hear it from me and are you seeing someone else and what's going on between you guys anyway and does he have a new girlfriend and what are their names and how much do they weigh and are weekends lonely and are you happier and do you think you will ever regret this and could you just tell me exactly every detail from the very beginning especially the bad stuff?
“It will hurt,” my doctor warned. No shit. I wasn’t expecting an abortion to feel like a milk bath and massage. I had 3 doses of medication inserted into my baby box before I felt any contractions. I cramped and bled the entire weekend before returning on Monday for an ultrasound. Somehow the amoeba was surviving. Just 6 weeks and already it was a little bit resistant, a little bit stubborn. =)
Because it was still early in the pregnancy, we could afford to wait until Friday before we made our next move. My sesame seed had evolved into a peanut by then and I think I saw a heartbeat on the screen but I didn’t dare ask. It's weird the attachment you can have to something you can't even physically hold. I spent another Friday afternoon at the clinic for a second round of medication. I heard a small splash when I sat on the toilet to pee that evening. Using a pair of chopsticks, I fished out a lump of curdled blood attached to a grey thing the size of a ping pong ball. It was surreal. I thought, do I just flush the toilet? And then I did.
Since then, I’ve had six bowls of really awful herbal soup cooked by my mum, two hours of sleep per night, ten plates of steamed Pomfret, forty cups of bitter tea, approximately 3,000 iron pills, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Even though I have amazing friends who guide me and take care of me and save me from my darkest days, everyone has his or her own life to return to and wants me to do the same. Everyone else has moved on and is a little tired of my situation, even though I am still in transition as I try to make sense of everything that has happened. Unless my baby daddy texted me something appalling recently, or there are some new boyfriends and girlfriends in the mix, most people don’t want or know how to talk anymore about the physical reality of going through an abortion and the psychological burdens that accompany it.
Except your mother.
It’s one thing to be tough and stalwart. It’s another to bear such extraordinary pain alone. Don’t do it. Even though it feels like nobody else understands the specific ways you are in pain, you have to be brave enough to show some weakness. You have to trust people, especially the people you love and who you know love you back. You have to give them the chance to come through in the clutch. What’s the point otherwise?
A mother is like your conscience only much louder. And nosier. In fact, your conscience probably stays out of your own affairs far more often than your mum does, which is not so much because while your conscience is negligent or busy, your mum is always watching and you are nothing without her, really.
Ultimately, any gut-wrenching experience makes you see things differently. It tears apart your ego and breaks your heart so new light can come in. It also reminds you of the simple truths that we purposely forget every day or else would never get out of bed. Things like, condoms break and pills get skipped and pulling out seems good in theory. And shit happens. And it can happen to anyone. The best outcome is that you learn a little more about what you can handle and you stay soft through the pain. Perhaps you feel a little bit wiser now. Maybe your story can be of help to others if they should ever need a hand navigating such supremely shitty times.
The fact that anyone has to feel ashamed of his or her personal decision is extremely unfortunate. The countless women who feel scared and alone when they end up needing to have an abortion are the reason I speak freely on the matter. My hope is that one day, all women will be able to feel the same way. That being said, even though I am not ashamed of my abortion, and I will never be ashamed of being a woman who exercised her rights, getting an abortion really does suck a lot. Really. Just to reiterate: getting an abortion sucks.
As I’m learning, saying I'm pro-choice and living that decision are not entirely the same things. When you decline the gift you're given, will the universe offer you that gift again? In truth, most days I feel like I need to be punished for getting pregnant in the first place, so I alienate myself and am hesitant about asking for help or support that I'm not sure I deserve. I weep at anything, even detergent commercials. Some days I wake up and it's almost too much to open the door of guilt and regret because it is daunting and overwhelming. But it’s precisely the stuff we ignore that haunts us further down the road.
So, I dunno, you guys. I'm waiting for the day I wake up feeling like my whole self again. But until then, I think we just try to do whatever we can and forgive ourself the rest.
By age 45, half of all women will have had an unintended pregnancy and one in three will have had ended theirs, yet there remains so much shame and stigma surrounding the issue. I haven’t yet been able to say a lot about this openly in real life and most accounts I’ve found on the Internet were either very pro-life or very pro-choice. What happened to all the voices that were slightly muddled or unsure?
I’m aware of the floodgate writing about this opens, and it honestly is such a terrifying process to actually sit down, dig deep, and churn out all these words about something so sad and so personal, and then lay it out here for third party consumption. But the more I think about it, the more I feel that it is important for me to try to be as transparent and honest as I can, especially with other women, because a woman's ability to choose whether or not she wants to terminate a pregnancy – for whatever reason – is often under attack.
I have found the experience of abortion to be greatly uneven throughout the world. It varies not just by law but also by upbringing, culture, race, income, age, religion, education, family; by whether a boyfriend offered a hand to hold at the clinic or told her matter-of-factly that there are already enough human beings in the world as it is; by the kindness and warmth or callousness and flippancy of the attending nurses; by whether she had to order the pill online because it is illegal in her town or battled protesters outside a clinic. Some feel so ashamed that their family and friends will never hear of their pain; others feel stronger for having lived through the experience and regret nothing about their decision.
It isn’t every day that a story comes back full circle to bite its author directly in the arse, but such is the case for me, who has wittingly joked about pregnancy scares for a decade. I kid you not, bitch is knocked up! (Ba dum tss.)
I'm probably the least reliable narrator right now but I want to attempt to talk about this without it sounding like a fancy fur coat that everyone is keen to try on, only to have it thrown back at me in revulsion because we all know nobody would ever deliberately wear something so vile.
In my gut, I knew what I wanted to do. But the moment logic and reason caught up with my instincts, I did the thing I thought I'd never do. Suddenly it became apparent that my life right now was not conducive to raising a happy, healthy child. Even though I was in a much better position compared to the many young victims of rape who kept their babies in spite of it all, I couldn't bring myself to put a child or myself through a lifetime of chaos. Even though I'd always trusted my intuition, I turned my back on it when it really mattered.
Adoption. Murderer. Reckless. Selfish. Irresponsible. Let the judgements roll...
I will not delve into all the intimate details, such as how did it happen and wasn’t he wearing a condom and how far along are you and what did he say and is he going to take responsibility for it and whose is it, actually and are you sad and does your family know and who have you told and who can I tell and when will you make an announcement and does Nadia know and is it okay for me to tell her when I see her tonight and who is going to pay and how much is it going to cost, exactly and does Nadia know because I feel like she needs to hear it from me and are you seeing someone else and what's going on between you guys anyway and does he have a new girlfriend and what are their names and how much do they weigh and are weekends lonely and are you happier and do you think you will ever regret this and could you just tell me exactly every detail from the very beginning especially the bad stuff?
“It will hurt,” my doctor warned. No shit. I wasn’t expecting an abortion to feel like a milk bath and massage. I had 3 doses of medication inserted into my baby box before I felt any contractions. I cramped and bled the entire weekend before returning on Monday for an ultrasound. Somehow the amoeba was surviving. Just 6 weeks and already it was a little bit resistant, a little bit stubborn. =)
Because it was still early in the pregnancy, we could afford to wait until Friday before we made our next move. My sesame seed had evolved into a peanut by then and I think I saw a heartbeat on the screen but I didn’t dare ask. It's weird the attachment you can have to something you can't even physically hold. I spent another Friday afternoon at the clinic for a second round of medication. I heard a small splash when I sat on the toilet to pee that evening. Using a pair of chopsticks, I fished out a lump of curdled blood attached to a grey thing the size of a ping pong ball. It was surreal. I thought, do I just flush the toilet? And then I did.
Since then, I’ve had six bowls of really awful herbal soup cooked by my mum, two hours of sleep per night, ten plates of steamed Pomfret, forty cups of bitter tea, approximately 3,000 iron pills, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Even though I have amazing friends who guide me and take care of me and save me from my darkest days, everyone has his or her own life to return to and wants me to do the same. Everyone else has moved on and is a little tired of my situation, even though I am still in transition as I try to make sense of everything that has happened. Unless my baby daddy texted me something appalling recently, or there are some new boyfriends and girlfriends in the mix, most people don’t want or know how to talk anymore about the physical reality of going through an abortion and the psychological burdens that accompany it.
Except your mother.
It’s one thing to be tough and stalwart. It’s another to bear such extraordinary pain alone. Don’t do it. Even though it feels like nobody else understands the specific ways you are in pain, you have to be brave enough to show some weakness. You have to trust people, especially the people you love and who you know love you back. You have to give them the chance to come through in the clutch. What’s the point otherwise?
A mother is like your conscience only much louder. And nosier. In fact, your conscience probably stays out of your own affairs far more often than your mum does, which is not so much because while your conscience is negligent or busy, your mum is always watching and you are nothing without her, really.
Ultimately, any gut-wrenching experience makes you see things differently. It tears apart your ego and breaks your heart so new light can come in. It also reminds you of the simple truths that we purposely forget every day or else would never get out of bed. Things like, condoms break and pills get skipped and pulling out seems good in theory. And shit happens. And it can happen to anyone. The best outcome is that you learn a little more about what you can handle and you stay soft through the pain. Perhaps you feel a little bit wiser now. Maybe your story can be of help to others if they should ever need a hand navigating such supremely shitty times.
The fact that anyone has to feel ashamed of his or her personal decision is extremely unfortunate. The countless women who feel scared and alone when they end up needing to have an abortion are the reason I speak freely on the matter. My hope is that one day, all women will be able to feel the same way. That being said, even though I am not ashamed of my abortion, and I will never be ashamed of being a woman who exercised her rights, getting an abortion really does suck a lot. Really. Just to reiterate: getting an abortion sucks.
As I’m learning, saying I'm pro-choice and living that decision are not entirely the same things. When you decline the gift you're given, will the universe offer you that gift again? In truth, most days I feel like I need to be punished for getting pregnant in the first place, so I alienate myself and am hesitant about asking for help or support that I'm not sure I deserve. I weep at anything, even detergent commercials. Some days I wake up and it's almost too much to open the door of guilt and regret because it is daunting and overwhelming. But it’s precisely the stuff we ignore that haunts us further down the road.
So, I dunno, you guys. I'm waiting for the day I wake up feeling like my whole self again. But until then, I think we just try to do whatever we can and forgive ourself the rest.
