Living in Grief Leads to Painful, Difficult Choices

After exchanging comments with a friend of a friend on Facebook regarding abortion, I decided quoting facts and figures didn’t seem like an effective way to address him. Instead I decided to share my personal story. Few people know it but maybe if they see that circumstances aren’t always black and white, it may enable them to see things from a different perspective. Here goes...

When I was 26 years old my mother died after a 5-year battle with ovarian cancer. I won’t go into the specifics but it was a brutal fight and we all sustained our own battle scars.

After she died I was lost. I remember going to work one morning, and I am sitting on the bus seeing the world through this pinprick of light in a long, dark tunnel. I was devastated, angry at the world. “What the fuck is the point of life?”, I would think to myself.

You see, my mother and I had an extremely unstable relationship. When I was 11, she sent me to live with my father who was an abusive alcoholic. Our relationship was severely damaged and I never lived with her again. I had a lot of anger and resentment towards her, but when I realized she may not win her fight with cancer, it was important to me to repair our relationship.

It wasn’t easy and there was much heartache, but in the end (and I do mean literally as I was the only person in the room as she took her last breath) I felt we had somewhat repaired much our relationship. I guess that’s why when she died I was completely devastated.

The year after she died was a blur. I drank too much. I met a man who wasn’t a very good one and I made poor choices, like having unprotected sex with this man who wasn’t a very good one. One day, I felt a little off. I felt this strange fluttering in my belly. In my heart, I knew I was pregnant. I went to the Dr. who told me I was about a week or two along. Things with the man I was seeing were bad. He was MIA most of the time.

I agonized over what to do. The father was MIA (He would not respond to my calls). My mother had just died. Her husband had already remarried. My brother had moved to Florida. I was estranged from my father due to his alcoholism. I was supposed to be moving to California in a month or so. I was pretty much alone with no support system.

Also, I had huge fears… in looking at the history of my childhood (A mother who abandoned her children and a father who neglected and abused them). What if I do this on my own and I’m a terrible parent? What if I turn out like my dad and hurt my child? What can I offer this child when I’m such a train wreck; wracked with grief over my mother’s death; angry and lost without much hope?

So, I made the choice to have an abortion. It was so difficult. I had experienced so much loss in such a short time, but I just did not feel that having a child was the right decision for me or for my future child. There was no way I could carry the child full term and give it up; so, I didn’t.

I am 48 years old and I don’t have any children. Sometimes the fact that I could have, is painful, but I made MY choice and I must live with the consequences. My burden to bear; not anyone else's.

So, that’s my story. You can judge me and say I should have abstained, used condoms, etc. but I didn’t. I was in the most painful, fucked up time of my life and I was lost. I made poor decisions and they had consequences. But the one thing I did do was think long and hard about having an abortion. I did not take it lightly. I did not make my decision easily but in the end I made it and I’m grateful that I had the freedom to make my own choice.; as difficult and devastating as it was.