Haunted By A Lost Future

Please take your time. Take your time in deciding what choice you will make. It will be you who are left with the pieces of a future you can never grasp. No matter who is telling you they have your best interest at heart, let this be your decision alone. I went to the doctor 2 times in the summer of 2019. I knew something was off. Something was wrong. I had missed my period since June, I had an ultrasound in late June, one in July and in August. My body subconsciously was telling me that I was pregnant but I didn’t know and there was no confirmation from pregnancy test or my doctors ultrasounds. Sometimes when I am stressed my period can be late but this was too much even for me. I knew something was really off but I digress, I had a vacation planned and I wouldn’t be back until that second week of August. I did those 2 ultrasounds and nothing was out of the ordinary, we did that because I had a cyst before that we had to check up on anyway so I was afraid that maybe it was causing me to miss my period too but at this point it was getting into really abnormally late territory. On vacation I drank because I celebrated seeing my family again for the first time in a few years. I am not usually a drinker but I had my fair share on this vacation. There was also a lot of arguing and misunderstanding bf about some things that cause my blood pressure to spike quite a bit which is normal in my family, things can get heated. But I found myself getting very very upset, more upset than I had ever been before, my heart was literally in my throat and I subconsciously was telling myself to chill out before I had an aneurism, like something more than myself was at risk. It was at this time that I decided that I definitely have to see the doctor when I got back. So cut to getting back from my vacation and I just couldn’t make it to the doctors office I found myself feeling very tired, I started passing out and I mean literally passing out as soon as it hit around 1pm in the afternoon I would be fully asleep which is super unusual for me. I don’t usually take naps but this wasn’t even napping, I was literally dead asleep in the afternoon. Then I started getting diarrhea (I know it is gross) but this was so out of character for me because I’m not used to going to the bathroom so much. Then the finale was being so exhausted one of the days that I actually passed out. I felt sick but I wasn’t throwing up so even if I had suspected before my vacation that something was wrong I’m not thinking pregnant because I had no morning sickness I was just so exhausted ALL THE TIME. I have never felt that tired before in my life. It was at this time that I thought that something must really be wrong with me and I definitely am dying of cancer or something. Then I finally made it to my doctors office and told her everything, she said this was enough to do blood work to figure out what was going on with me and to do a follow up ultrasound the next week but I would most likely get the blood results before that. Cool. I do that. Then my doctor calls me and leaves an urgent message saying I should stop by her office as soon as I can. I thought, wow, I must really be dying now. So I call out of work and hurry to her office, I sit down and she says, “Girl, you’re pregnant.” To which, I tell her in my thick New York accent, “You’re bugging right?”…..” Are you sure?” So then she shows me the HCG levels and then it hit me. Like a ton of bricks. Real as could be. I was so confused but somehow I wasn’t surprised in a way because I think deep down subconsciously my body already knew. She asked me what I wanted to do and if I wanted to keep it. I was 24 at the time. Not super young but definitely didn’t have a chance to further my education yet because of personal circumstances and was just trying to apply for financial aid and all these things. It seemed crazy. Honestly, crazy that it was real. Like a dream, an out of body experience that whole visit. But it was real. So I thought well my partner definitely doesn’t want this, he told me many times he didn’t want children and if he changed his mind it would be sometime way in the future but he definitely is leaning towards no and yet we continued to have sex. (Go figure right) I told my doctor as much because she knew us, we had been dating on and off since highschool but finally put some solid 5yrs together. I thought you know at some point he might change his mind if it happened, and it happened now after all those years together. I have only been with one other guy before him and since him I was always faithful so there was no questions who’s it was. We were together. I guess I kind of hoped he would change his mind maybe, consider, think it over but when I told him he asked me if I was sure so I showed him the HCG levels. Then the next questioned he asked was, “You’re gonna get rid of it right?” Proceeded by “I am not ready to be a dad.” He has just become an EMT. Just seen the start of his dream completed. It crushed me. It crushed my heart and it crushed my soul. But I still loved him and thought about his future. Perhaps more than my own and definitely more than the future of our potential child. There was so much pressure, he said he would pay whatever I needed to get it done. I was on the phone with planned parenthood, I was trying to see what my options were but he was pretty sure that I was taking too long. They said they had something for 2 weeks the earliest or I could come in later in the day the next day. I said that I wasn’t sure, that I should probably think about it. He said this was time sensitive and I needed to make a decision now. But I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. It was always my dream to be a mother and since I had avoided it for so long and I know how hard it can be to conceive I thought you know this may be my moment to hold onto to that dream. What if this is my one chance of becoming a mother because there are no guarantees. He said he didn’t want to be a father, his future would be ruined. So I told her that I would come in the next day. I asked him to come with me. He said that I shouldn’t expect him to call out of work, he has to go make money for us. I asked him to call out. He said that he needed to be at work. So I called my best friend, a guy. I had no time to process anything, I told him I was pregnant, my appointment was tomorrow and I needed him to be there with me. He said he can get a note from the doctor so work can kiss his ass because he needed to be there for me. except he shouldn’t have been the one saying that, he wasn’t my partner, I love my best friend but he didn’t create this potential life with me. And all the way there, my best friend was with me as much as he could be but when it came down to it, in that room, with the doctor, I was alone. And if all he could have done was be there in the waiting room he should have done that but he didn’t. They poke you with needs to do more tests and pop you back into the waiting room for a few more hours where you see other people waiting to make the same decision I was about to make because it doesn’t happen right then and there, the waiting makes it even more torturous. Then they do your ultrasound and it hits you even more when you see it (if they let you, the place I was at happen to let me see) and the nurse says I’m 8 weeks along. Then you do some more waiting and then they bring you to see the actual doctor. Then they ask you if you are sure and you have to document all of this to make sure that you gave yourself consent to do this horrible thing because that’s what you do if you had a medical one. They give YOU THE PILLS TO ADMINISTER TO YOURSELF. THEY MAKE YOU COMMIT THE FINAL ACT. I begged the doctor to allow me to have a copy of the ultrasound because it was my first time. Quietly I said it but she understood. And so she did give it to me. Then I walked out of there after sitting for another 30 mins or so. But that’s when it hits you what you have done. When you walk out of there and you realize you just ended your child’s life. But it’s not the end of it. You have to walk around knowing that you are ending this life inside of you. Knowing that you did this, snuffing out their existence. He asked me when it was over if I was done. I don’t know if I responded because I started to cramp after awhile. I was crying on my best friends shoulder in front of that place. I am sure this is a common site for people in that neighborhood but I couldn’t stop myself. I cried there quietly thankful for my best friend’s support wishing my partner had offered me something more than his money in this situation. My best friend took me home and I laid out all the things in bed and laid myself down. He left me because he couldn’t stay, he had to get to work but he was there as much as he could for me. I was alone for 6 hours before my partner got back home from his shift. It was 6 hours of torture, it was so painful but I knew I deserved it for what I had done! I was a coward. I didn’t advocate for my unborn child. I didn’t give myself room to think things over. Even if this is the choice I ended up making I would have preferred to make it after thinking it over for even a few days. I can’t help to think I treated my miracle like trash. I found out I was pregnant and got an abortion the next day. How vile and disgusting of me. I can’t live with myself for comprising who I was, I don’t know who this person is anymore. It is now the month in which I had the abortion. My baby would have been 6months old. I have terrible dreams about killing him. Dreams about who he woulda have been, reliving the trauma of what I have done and the loss of what I will never have because even if I start my own family some day, this child will still be my first. And it feels like I am the only one that remembers this. I am the only one aware that he used to exist there in my womb because for my partner it was a situation that was dealt with and now we need to just move past it and I can’t. I can’t because it’s not what I wanted. I didn’t even have time to process what was happening to me or how I really felt about everything and even though I was doing what he wanted he still abandoned me for most of the whole unpleasant situation, he didn’t support me the way he should have. He ran. And I am ashamed I let him decide for us, I am ashamed I did not think it over, I am ashamed that I could have raised my voice but I didn’t. For you. My unborn. I am struggling with thoughts of resentment and contempt for him. Contempt for myself, depression and suicidal ideologies. I know this is not healthy but I cannot help but feel like I made this bed and dug this grave so I should just climb into it. So alas I resign myself to suffer while I live. To become something my child never got to be and to be the one who remembers that he existed, that he could have been someone, that I should have protected him. I deal with my grief by giving him a name. I deal with my guilt by getting ink in his honor. I deal with my guilt by not forgetting him. I know it was early in the term but I had the feeling of a little boy And then I kept dreaming of a little boy. I have no one to talk to about this because I feel emotionally withdrawn from my partner, I am not sure how long this relationship will last now because I am dealing with so many emotions. So many conflicting emotions but most of all guilt and shame and regret. I know it would not have been ideal to become a mother but I should have had more courage than I displayed. I should have tried harder to protect what was vulnerable (at least until I could think it over even- I am not against choice but I feel that this was not the right choice for me and I let others sway that conviction) . There is so much I am dealing with. I cry my eyes out almost daily at first but now it’s more like every week. I feel so many things swell up inside of me and mostly I just try to keep it bottled because it’s unnatural to mourn and grieve for something you destroyed. How could I ever be entitled to say that I feel loss when I chose to lose what could’ve been kept. I struggle and suffer silently because no one knows, my parents don’t know either and neither does his parents. I am silently carrying the embers of my unborn child while simultaneously being the destroyer of his life. I was once vulnerable and unprotected, how could I do this? I am not debating wether a fetus is a person but it definitely becomes ones. That was me and that was you at some point. We became who were are because we were like that at one point. It’s something I can’t take back. I am not religious but something is telling me that it is wrong what I did but I can’t take it back. Now I just ask for my unborn to forgive me. Now I ask that there be a place that is not as unclean as I am to keep his soul. Now I ask that if there is hell that he will not be condemned to such a place but I am a fitting subject. I know that I will never forget this. And I don’t want to. So I ask you women out there facing the same choice to think it over. Think carefully if you can live with this kind of pain because as bright as your future will be after making a choice like this, your souls will be hollow. A piece of you will always be missing, a piece of you will always be hollow. There may be no saving grace for doing something like this. I will continue to ask forgiveness from my first child. -VT