a healing choice

It’s been nearly three months since I’ve blogged here, and it isn’t that the abortion has slipped out of my mind so much as I had to let it go for a while. In the intervening time, D. has come back into my life, but just as the same issues of anger and abandonment are cropping up, and he is refusing to talk to me, I’ve signed up for a post-abortion support group at the Chicago Women’s Health Center, which starts Sept 18, and I’ve reached out for therapy at the Family Institute. I’m tired of depending solely on friends to make it through such a difficult time, and I’m beginning to fully grasp the concept of being powerless over many things.

I’ve had a headache for at least eighteen hours, a dull pressure permanently furrowed into my brow and periodically accompanied by nausea. If I didn’t have an IUD, I’d think maybe I were pregnant, but the realization that I’m not doesn’t prevent the flashbacks of when I was, the day I spent alone in the hospital because D. couldn’t or wouldn’t come to stay with me, the days after when all I could do was curl up on the couch and watch mindless television in the hope that blathering idiots would take the focus off of the churning in my stomach, the cloudy morning M. drove me to the clinic, the sunny mid-day we spent afterward that I’ll never remember because I was too far gone on Ativan.

I don’t know if I’m ready for Sept 18, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. The support group lasts three weeks and includes some grieving rituals, which I know will be helpful. What I fear is reopening old wounds, in particular the deep sadness and guilt I feel over my first two abortions, both of which were second-trimester procedures. But it helps to know I’ve found a safe space in which to expose this raw feeling, since I’m tired of wincing every time I’m in a rough spot, and something else triggers something that rubs up against them.

I am hopeful for the future. I am grateful to have come this far. I don’t know what lies ahead, but I know I will work to make my life better. And in that sense, even though I don’t know if I’m ready for next Tue, I’m just going to have to be.

5w0d

Today, the magical thinking begins. I am pondering the list of reasons I don’t have to and my (perhaps delusional) optimism is worrisome. In this state of mind, there are no (good) reasons I can’t have a baby: surely the financial, emotional, and physical factors (not to mention the shaky state of my relationship with D.) are incidental, irrelevant facts, fragments of information not necessary when weighing my options.

And, of course, when I mention to D. that perhaps we need to reconsider, he doesn’t argue. What does this all mean? I wonder. I’m notorious for accepting jobs, responsibilities, projects, that I then push aside because I’ve overestimated my ability to handle them (in addition to my regular work, children, etc.). But a baby isn’t a freelance job I can drop at the last minute. How, exactly, can I think about this at all rationally? I feel as though I am working through the stages of grief in my decision-making process: Denial? Check. Anger? Check. Bargaining? Well, wouldn’t you know it…I’m right there.

4w5d (morning)

I am amazed at how much positive energy has been directed my way over the last 24 hours. If yesterday I felt alone, today I feel as though I’ve jumped off of a highwire expecting to crash but have instead found myself cradled in familiar surroundings, comforted by people who love me, protected fiercely by those who most realize my vulnerability. I am still scared. I am still reeling from the jump. I am anxious about whether I’ll survive jumps to come. For now, though, I am less damaged than I’d feared I’d have to be.

I am grateful to my friends: R., who has been drawing on her own experiences to show me there is hope; M2., for offering to go with me on June 5, and for telling me she’d support me no matter what; K., for checking in to make sure I was okay; and V., for listening when she was dealing with her own problems.

And I am grateful to D., whose break this weekend brought him to realize that he hasn’t been as supportive as he should be, for looking at me with tears in his eyes, for taking my hand in his, for listening to me, for asking what I needed from him to make it through to the other side.

Thank you all.

4w2d

I don’t know how I can do this. It’s the right thing to do, the only thing that can be done, but at this point I can’t figure out how I will have the strength. If I had money, or energy, or fewer existing medical problems, it would all be so much easier. But I don’t have any of those things, and neither D. nor I are ready for this. Does that make me immoral? A coward? Emotionally weak? I don’t know. Right now, I just want a hug.

4w1d

There is too much arguing and too much negative energy. I am tired, and not just because hormones and a growing blob of cells are sucking all of the life out of me. I have had a headache since Tuesday, since before three tests confirmed I am pregnant. I have had cramps since the tests came positive. I have been crying too much at too many things. Most of all, though, I am scared.

Tonight was the first time we’d touched each other since. We were both apprehensive, each thinking the other never wanted to touch us again. When D. kissed me, he said it felt like the first time, and I believe he might have been right. We had changed since the last time. We’d become the sort of people who had to make tough decisions amid anger and tears and across great distances, in spirit if not in fact. We’d been the exception to the statistical probability, the one- to two-percent failure rate “with perfect use” that doctors warned about. And also: we’d become the couple who, three months into dating and falling in love and dreaming of years in the future, made an appointment to have an abortion.

4w0d

I almost didn’t make it onto the bus today. And I had to make it onto the bus, the #11 Lincoln Avenue that would take me to the #8 Halsted, which would take me to my doctor’s office. After a morning of fitful chatting online with D., I almost couldn’t take the loneliness anymore. I huddled on my couch and cried until I had the sense to contact V., who I knew would talk me down from my hysterical ledge. I cleaned myself up, engaged in a sufficient amount of numbing repression, and began my journey. Along the way, I decided that if D. didn’t hug me within two minutes of seeing me, I would either spontaneously combust from inner sadness or break up with him.

I’m glad I was numb, walking to the bus stop through Lincoln Square, the proving grounds of our relationship: The theatre in which we saw our first movie together, the coffee house where we’d eaten waffles a half-dozen times, the indie record store where the clerk knows both our names. This is MY ‘hood, though, one he could just easily abandon as an old pair of socks or jeans that no longer fit. I couldn’t escape, and any way I turned, I saw his face, felt his arm around me, could even smell the scent of his neck as I leaned in for a deep embrace.

The bus ride was interminable. He’d be waiting for me at the end, standing outside of Jamba Juice, probably texting me because I was running a few minutes late, because of all the crying. Men on the bus ranted about governments and revolutions and the injustice of CTA bus drivers over- or undershooting bus stops all across the city, and the only thing I could think was “Baby. Pregnant. Fuck.” On the Halsted bus, out the window: fancy shops, upscale chain stores, gaunt women wearing $500 shoes carrying shopping bags, Latina nannies pushing Anglo babies in $1,000 strollers while talking on cell phones. It was all in stark contrast with my thoughts: I was a bruised and damaged woman, pregnant and alone, facing the prospect of an abortion, years after I swore I’d never go through that again. And the man who was at the end of that bus line, the man with whom I’d fallen in love despite myself, the man from whom I needed the most support… well, he was the last person on Earth able to do much of anything other than wait just under two minutes to give me a hug when I finally arrived.

3w6d

It all began as a passing thought last week in the shower, thinking that there was an awful lot of hair going down the drain, something that happens only when I’m pregnant. Or perhaps it began with noticing how often I had to pee. Or when I realized I was a day late (today) and took the test that would show two thin blue lines. Maybe it was the dream I had a few days ago, in which I was lactating and sprayed milk across the room while D. sat tacitly and nonchalantly watching the whole spectacle. But none of these things, really, mark the beginning. No, the start was when I told him on the phone and was met with near silence. And it had definitely begun when I told him I’d spent most of the afternoon huddled in a ball on my bathroom floor, crying, and all he did was tell me he needed time and space to think.