Month: September 2012

I am going through menopause and some things are happening to open up old wounds. When I was 19 my fiance let me go through an abortion. I assumed he didn’t want the baby because he said to get rid of it the last time my period was late. Luckily my period came that time. But this time it was for real. I gave him his last chance to keep the baby while we were in the clinic.

There was a little girl in the waiting room. For God’s sake, what was a little girl doing in an abortion clinic? They made it sooooo easy to get an abortion in the 70’s. I just wanted to throw up. I asked him, well are you sure? but he told me to go through with it. After it was over the stupid nurse told me to tell my fiance it was a boy. Now that I think back how can they determine this? It was 11 wks. I am not sure if the baby’s sex can be determined. Maybe she was just trying to get even with men. I somehow feel maybe it was punishment to him. But the truth is we were all guilty. I remember wanting to throw up again…

I remember him taking me to Nathans. I remember feeling empty, alone in my room feeling I wanted to take it back. I felt so alone. Now I had nothing of value. I felt worthless. No one could ever love me. I almost forgot about whats her name. (He was seeing some girl in college) I never did know her name. He only denied it. I never did know if he married her. I heard they broke up and he dated others but then my gut says I think he married her. I never really knew, but I think he did. We only stayed together 2 more years and then our fighting destroyed our relationship. It was very bitter, there was so much pain, it was unbearable. We felt we were better off apart.

In my recent dreams he loves me and he is trying to say “I am sorry”. Well, it’s too late now to go back and make my decision over again. I should have listened to my mother. My own mother wanted me to have the baby. Now that she is gone I want to thank her for supporting me. If I had the baby I might have found out the true meaning of love. My child would have been 33 today. What a comfort it would have been for me in my old age. Now that I can never have kids, I feel regret and a terrible loss. If I could only take it back. My brother’s wife was mortified when I confided in her. She was very jealous. She wanted to be the first to have a baby and had bitter feelings towards me. She told me I was too young to have a baby. My fiance was seeing another girl while all this was going on. I got a phone call one morning, and it was some girl phoning me asking for my fiance. It broke my heart and cut me deep. After that I didn’t want to have this man’s child. He was repulsive to me. I hung up the phone and tossed my breakfast in the toilet. I was young, I didn’t have any confidence in myself. When I told a friend of mine my situation she said to have the abortion. She pointed out all his bad faults and it hurt me deeply all over. Why did my baby have to suffer for everyone else’s short comings? And now I don’t have any children at all. It only gets worse. I kept meeting more men who didn’t love me, they just wanted to make love. Anyone can do that. I am too ashamed to say I had 3 more abortions before I was 30. I just didn’t know how to stop it. I just wanted to be loved. The last time was the worst. He was a young version of my fiance. I had to get a grip of my self. Now that I am older I can’t believe I let this happen to me over and over again. I feel so ashamed and helpless. If I had only had the first baby, maybe my life would have had more meaning. If I could go back in time, I never would have gone through with it, regardless of the way my fiance acted. I just didn’t know the love the baby could have offered me. A baby is such a precious gift, and now sadly, I will never know the love between mother and child. I have paid so dearly for all my sins, when will all the punishment stop. I do not know.

My brother divorced his wife. They had one daughter and she had to get married. I do not know where my fiance is. I haven’t seen him since 1974. He got married before I did and he had 4 kids. I got married 10 years after him and my marriage has been rough. We didn’t have any kids. I had been in therapy for 5 years. My husband and I are not intimate, yet he is a very kind and generous man. We are only beginning to discover real love for each other. The fog is only beginning to lift.

 

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My boyfriend and I were dating for 4 years. We were both in college in different towns. I found out at 8 weeks I was pregnant. I thought, “maybe we could do it, maybe we could make it”! He slowly convinced me otherwise, that this is the right decision for us.

I was devastated! I was depressed! I made myself sick! I had one point while driving and sobbing that I thought it would be best for everyone if I drove into a telephone pole. This way I couldn’t hurt anyone else.

As with the person who wrote “Why didn’t I Chose What I really Wanted”, I did not tell my parents or many of those who loved me. Which also made my actions appear very erratic!

Our relationship became very damaged. We could not have sex for a year and eventually we broke up.

I sought counseling. She told me I needed to forgive myself. (I couldn’t understand what she meant. Oh, ok self, I forgive you. It sounded crazy!) I needed to take ownership of my decisions and to stop blaming others. I was convinced that God would never allow me to be pregnant again. That I willingly destroyed a tiny baby. She told me I was still a good person and that I deserved good things. I was insane with worry, depression, rage, anger, blame, shame, guilt, sadness, you name it! I consistently marked missed birthdays and cried every death day.

I did get better! Am I still sad sometimes? YES! Are Septembers always a little off? YES! But I am a good person. I made a decision! I’m living with that. I can’t go back and I accept that. I can only take the life I have and do what good I can for others. That is what makes me feel good, whole and loved.

As for that boyfriend … I ended up marrying him! We’ve known one another for 11 years now and we’ve been married 3 of those years. Two days ago I found out I was pregnant again and I cried with happiness.

Forgiveness is very powerful!

 

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At 13 I had a abortion. I thought I was in love, which may seem “silly” to some of you because of how old I was. I know at times it seems “silly” to me to. I thought if I had a baby it would make him love me more and want to stay with me forever (which by the way I was totally wrong about that), but I didn’t think I would really get pregnant. When I got sick I knew I was. I wanted that baby and didn’t plan on telling anyone.

Then after being sick for a few days (to the point where if I looked at food or even thought about it I would throw up), my mom wanted me to take something to make me feel better. Well, I had heard that if you take certain stuff it could hurt the baby so I looked at the bottle and in big capital letters it said, “DON’T TAKE IF YOU ARE PREGNANT OR PLAN TO BECOME PREGNANT”. So I told my mom; I thought she would understand. I was very wrong. The first words out of her mouth where “what are people going to think about what kind of mother SHE was.” I felt so bad and she said, “What are we going to do? You can’t have this baby.” So I said “abortion”. I didn’t want to, I don’t know why I said it but I did. So she was looking through the yellow pages in as much time as it took her to walk from the table to the closet to get the book. She got the number and we went for a drive so she could call the place without my dad or anyone else knowing. As she picked up her phone I told her I didn’t want to do it. She said she would just call and find out what they would do during the procedure. I was too sick to listen to what she was saying, but as soon as she got off the phone she said I had an appointment in two days.

So we didn’t talk about it for those two days. I woke up and we drove to the city. We went into what looked like an old apartment house. I had passed it over a hundred times though the years and never suspected it to be anything more then that. We were buzzed into a room with a bunch of doors. We walked up to one that had a sign on it that said, NO CHILDREN ALLOWED. we walked in and there were a couple of people there. I was sitting there about 45 minutes before I got called into a room with a lady to tell me about the procedure. She asked if I was sure I wanted to do this and I nodded my head. She seemed very nice. She went to do an ultrasound but couldn’t because I didn’t have a full bladder (ugh), so I got 2 cups of water and had to sit in a waiting room for what seemed like forever. I went back into the room but this time with a different lady. She didn’t talk much but when she did it was enough to scare the begezzies out of me. She did an ultrasound. I couldn’t look at it and it had no sound. She gave me a cup and I went into the bathroom and pee’d and when I came out she was waiting for me in another room.

My mom was with her at this point and I told her I wanted to leave but she said I couldn’t. They told me there were two ways to do it: I could do it “surgical” or “medical”. “Medical” being the pill, and it didn’t sound as bad so I wanted to do that, but the lady told my mother that there was a slim chance it wouldn’t work but it most likely would; well, that slim chance was all it took and my mom said surgical.

So they gave me a “gown” as they call it but it was really more like a giant paper-towel with holes to put your arms in. They walked me down a long hall into a room, and said the doctor would be in shortly. I waited forever and then some, then he finally came in. He was mean, or maybe I just thought he was mean, I’m not really sure which it was. He told me what they would do and checked me out. Then we walked down that very large hall to a different room (I swear that hall got longer each time I walked into it). It was a big room and I was told to sit on the table he gave me a shot in the arm and said I wouldn’t be able to feel anything, that I would go to sleep, to count to 100. They were going to give me needles in my cervix to open it up more. Well, he was wrong. I never went to sleep and I could still feel. All that shot did was make me to weak to move or say anything. Finally after crying for about 10 minutes from all the pain I blacked out. I woke up awhile later, I’m not sure how long I was out but it was awhile. My mom was the only one in the room besides a nurse who was standing in a doorway that connected to another room. The doctor came in when I started to move and I asked if he was done. He said he couldn’t finish it because when he started to poke me with the needles I would squirm. I don’t know how I could squirm, I don’t remember being able to move at all. So he told me to try the pills. He gave me a shot and a little brown envelope with pills in it. When I got in the car I told my mom I didn’t want to do it and she said the shot he gave me would hurt the baby if I decided to have it so I had no choice. I did it.

I went back to the office for a checkup and pee’d in the cup again and the lady said I was still pregnant, then she said I wasn’t. I guess she thought she was funny; I didn’t. I went home after being checked out and no one told me about any counseling or anything I could have gone to. My mom told me to never tell anyone and not to talk about it ever again. I am 15 now and have a boyfriend I love very much. (It may seem silly still but I am much more mature and understand that I don’t need a baby to make someone love me.) He knows about what happened and lets me talk to him about it. It helps me a lot to have someone to talk to.

I spent the last year with shrinks because of depression. My mom blamed it on my dad and his drinking, and whenever I mentioned the baby she would tell me to shut up (she still does). I have been on many different meds, none of which helped. Then I met my boyfriend and he thought if I talked about what happened it might help and it has. I am not on any meds now and I am “HAPPY” which I have not been able to say in a very long time.

I hope one day I will have a baby. I still cry sometimes when I think about what happened. I know it would have been a girl. I don’t know how I know that I just know. If I found out I was pregnant tomorrow I would keep the baby, no question about it, and if I could change what happened I would. Someday I will have children and I will make sure that they know they can come to me if anything happens and I will NOT make the decision of what to do for them.

Thank you for listening to my story. I hope it has helped you in some way.

 

 

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I’d like to share this … it’s not so much a story as my feelings almost two years after my abortion. I hope you’ll forgive the fact that I’m not ready to give my name, or share any details of my story. The whole thing is still very painful for me.

I’ve written this letter and rewritten it … every time trying to come up with a way to tell my story where I’m getting my point across, while not droning on and on. I had so many reasons I fed myself to have the abortion, but I can’t really find those reasons now.

Was I afraid to lose my boyfriend? Yes, I’m sure I was, but I lost him anyway, so did it help that I had the abortion? No.

Was I afraid to disappoint my family? Yes, but now instead of disappointing them in the short-term by giving the gift of life at the expense of some of my youth, I hold a terrible secret from them that, I’m sure would be a much larger disappointment.

Did I think I was doing the right thing? No, I honestly can’t say I ever felt right about it. I feel dirty and I feel ashamed.

The thing I wonder now is, if abortion is such an okay thing, if we women with our huge “right to choose” are so morally acceptable, how come I hear so much shame from those of us who’ve actually had abortions? All the women out there screaming that it’s our bodies and our choices … how come I never hear “I had an abortion and it was the best decision I ever made?” All I know is that I’m so ashamed I’ve never been able to tell my family … I rarely tell people I make friends with. I’m with a wonderful man now who is very understanding about it (although he is very pro-life, he is also very Christian and very forgiving and loving), but I still feel the need to apologize to him for it whenever I think about it.

I don’t know why I felt the need to share this, I suppose I didn’t really share much of anything except a few random thoughts. All I really want to say is that I wish I hadn’t made the choice that so many people fight every day to let us women have. It’s a terrible feeling. I’m filled with shame and remorse and work every day to find forgiveness. From reading the stories that prompted me to write this, I’d say I’m not the only one.

 

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