I was 21, going on 22. I had a boyfriend. I thought I loved him. I assumed that staying with him and making him my project meant I loved him. I was naive, unknowing. Afraid to ask for clarity, too insecure to set some standards. This boyfriend was not capable of anything I truly needed; it felt good to be “claimed.” I did not know his claiming me was contingent upon how much I labored on his behalf, while calling it by another name.
Twenty years ago today, I was 16 weeks pregnant. I cried, I prayed. I didn’t want this thing to grow. He talked to my stomach. I felt stones inside me. I did not feel wonder or excitement, only dread. He did not know how to respond to important, pivotal, time sensitive things. He did not turn in homework or prepare for exams. He was in school to escape himself. I was in his life to escape mine.
Twenty years ago, I named the weight inside my lower abdomen. Johari. Swahili, meaning jewel. I knew it was my daughter’s name. I tried to envision holding her; I could not see it. This was not my child to have. Add this to dropping out of school and refusing to go back. Add this to being so crazy, so depressed, that I holed up in the art institute dorms in a twin bunk bed instead of sleeping on the sofa in the 3 bedroom house with too many people in it. Add this to the secrets, shame, the “typical” outcome of a purportedly broken family. Too much. Too much grief. My poor grandfather, he hadn’t cleaned my grandmother’s stuff out 4 years later. Too much. Too much grief. I could not be that person. I would not come back to that house with a man and a baby in tow. I couldn’t do what my mom did. I wouldn’t.
I hurt so bad I was sweating in that ice cold room, the one with all the other patients. Someone had a 6 month old, her 4th baby. She couldn’t do it again. I remembered her every time I argued, without implicating myself, the stats on married people and abortion. I still hope she got away. I still hope her babies are all right. I still wonder if she ever had to go back.
When I went with my play niece the second time, I said, “please stop doing this to yourself; if you don’t want to be pregnant, please think about ways not to be pregnant.” I didn’t care to argue about body stuff. More like mental and emotional. The agonizing, the back and forth with her shiftless, too-old-for-her boyfriend. Why do it if you don’t have to? For what? Because you love him?
That’s what Kim at work asked me when I said I wasn’t sure about keeping it. I knew I’d be a terribly unprepared mom. This could not happen. It could not be. So I called my insurance. They covered it and I got a few waiver for the copay. I hid away at the dorms for a couple days, then went home to my mom with “a really bad period.” A few months later, she told me that planned parenthood was billing insurance for something she KNEW couldn’t have happened. She was mad. I was scared. Still ashamed. I could not change it. I was not well enough to be a mother.
Arguably, I’m still not. Not that I want to be. Not that I physically can. Three years ago, I had a hysterectomy. About 7 months before, my Fallopian tubes were removed because of damage. Those organs went through so much before they were eventually removed. I was tired before that. Fibroids could have drained my life force. Almost took me out with PMDD symptoms, especially the desire to exit my body forever.
I felt like that twenty years ago, too. Then I had an abortion.
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*cross posted from a July 18, 2022 post on my patreon site. please consider subscribing as I build my life around my covid recovery.