On The Day That Became The Day

I was lucky. I was knocked out during my abortion. It wasn't really general anesthetic, just enough to put you in an almost dreamlike state. I'm rather sensitive to medications, so I don't remember anything. It took them a long time to get the IV into my arm, there was classic rock playing too loudly and it felt so wrong, it felt so disrespectful. The male doctor in charge of the procedure acted as though I was invisible.

One minute I was lying there, numb in my heart, severe pain in my arm from their IV attempts, and the next I was awake leaning on my mother stumbling out the door. I don't remember getting out of the bed or putting on my clothes. It was the same when I was knocked out to have my wisdom teeth taken out - I'm told I wouldn't lay down, that I just kept trying to stand, falling over, and asking to leave until they finally let my mother walk me out.

I was so hungry. You don't eat before the 'procedure' and I'd had two straight weeks of twenty four hour a day morning sickness. Finally it was over and my belly was empty and numb. We drove through Arby's and I had a greasy, over-sauced Reuben. My mom filled my prescription for antibiotics while I sat in the car, just numb. Relieved too, but full of hurt feelings that I chose to bury instead of face.

My physical healing came easily. I did not experience the severe cramps or continued feelings of pregnancy after the abortion was done. In so many ways I was lucky, and I knew that all the time. That's part of why I couldn't accept the emotional repercussions of the abortion. I was so much luckier than a million other women. I wasn't raped, I wasn't a teenager, I didn't have family or friends judging me or disliking me (not that I told anyone as it was), I had been on birth control, so I knew at heart that I'd done everything I could have done to prevent this situation. That's supposed to help you know, being in the 1% of people whose birth control fails.

So there I was, a lucky girl, a "relatively easy tragedy," as a singer once put it. Yet I still felt so hurt and so beaten up inside along with my relief. To reconcile relief with so many mixed feelings is a big job, and not one that any person can get through by themselves. There wasn't anyone to talk to. Since I became disabled I have very few friends. My one good girl friend has a lot of issues with sex, including PTSD from rape and physical abuse in her past, I didn't feel I could put all this on her. I felt like she'd see it as my mother did "You didn't abort a baby..."

I know that. I understand that. It only makes it worse to know that full well yet to be scarred emotionally from something that was over so quickly. As a very rational person it made me crazy to think about the conflicts in how I felt and in how I thought I should feel. Again, I don't regret this, I didn't have a real choice given my medical condition, but now I'm able to admit how much I've bottled up, how much I need to get out of my system and still know that I did the best thing for me, for that child, and I'm still allowed to be upset and hurt. I'm allowed to grieve this experience.

That's the first step. It took me eight months to get there, to that first giant step, and another eight months to find a place I could start letting go of all that baggage.