I have two beautiful children.  They are both boys.  One is three and the other is one.  I keep thinking, how can I not want to be there to watch them grow up?  Do you know how fucked up they’re bound to be if their mom kills herself?  It’s not like I’m dying from cancer or something else that’s somehow noble, it’s “hey, how did his mom die?”  “Killed herself” and then they bully them on the school bus until they kill themselves too, and it’s just me and my boys up in Heaven and my husband down on earth with his new wife and his happy life without all of this bullshit to tie himself down.  We got married when we were 22.  Then I got an abortion a month later.  How is that to celebrate an anniversary?  I still think about it, myself on amazing abortion drugs while the doctor sucks my baby out of me, just drifting up to the sky looking at the lovely light fixture which so considerately had clouds and blue sky painted on it, remembering when I was a little kid and I was playing underneath blue skies just whirring about on the ground smiling laughing looking at birds, not having my baby ripped out of my body and not even caring due to the drugs.  I could have walked out at any point.  But I didn’t.  I could have had the baby, but I didn’t.  I imagine myself dying at age 80, 90,  whatever, maybe earlier due to liver failure and going to whatever afterlife there is and seeing her there, the first thing I see, and rushing to hug her but she just starts screaming and screaming, her murderer coming again, just there again to torment her and I want to get it over with but I never will.
I don’t want to get old. Â I don’t want all these old regrets surfacing at odd times at Christmas morning or whatever, thinking about what my baby would be opening. Â I can’t anymore. Â But I have these two real anchors holding me down. Â I need to make a decision.
6 comments
Maybe you didn’t grieve properly after you had the abortion. It’s a difficult decision to make and since you were so young when you made it (your husband young too?) it seems to haunt you. Find a safe, non-judgmental place to share your feelings with others. Don’t keep this secret to yourself, share it. Give yourself a break. Abortion involves so many losses that aren’t even tied to the pregnancy.
Don’t confuse the legal, political and religious debates with your own personal journey. If you listen to all the rhetoric from both sides you will become paralyzed with fear and confusion. Know that walking out of the darkness and into the light of healing will free up space in your mind and heart to put towards positive outcomes in your life.
I send you love and strength.
We were both very young. It used to happen all the time, getting married that young, but now I understand what a bad idea it is… I’ll probably never have a career, or a calling outside the home. I had to wait four years to have my first son. It was horrible. I’ll never get over it. He wanted me to have the abortion and then he wanted me to wait so he could “be selfish for a while.” HOW HORRIBLE A REASON TO HAVE AN ABORTION IS THAT. Whenever I think about abortion, I think about some sixteen year old or some 45 year old, not a perfectly healthy 22 year old woman who already has a husband and two pairs of rich baby boomer parents. I never wanted this and it’s been eight years, but it’s not any better.
I know I killed a baby. I have had two children since then and I wept in joy over their healthy first ultrasounds. I saw my first baby’s ultrasound too. Then I killed it. I let a doctor rip its body to shreds. I murdered it. I had horrific post partum depression with my second son. I had to be medicated because they thought I would kill him. I would never do such a thing but they knew about my abortion. They knew I was capable. Anyway I had therapy and such, but whatever. I should probably seek more therapy. I need to either get help or shoot myself in the mouth like I’ve always wanted.
Only you get to perceive what your abortion means … but it was a choice that cannot be undone no matter how much you might want. Agonizing over it does zero to be helpful and positive to the children you DO have. Everyone makes mistakes – forgive yourself for it – you’ve tortured yourself enough.
If you believe in Jesus then you HAVE to know that Jesus has LONG ago seen that you are genuinely sorry for your mistake and you have been forgiven. If you are not religious then you know that there is no afterlife and/or heaven where you will “meet” the passed souls. Either way, you made a mistake (in your judgement) and you are sorry, don’t make another mistake and leave the children you DO have without a mother – love them and protect them as you feel you should have your first … don’t compound it.
That said, if you DO choose to die, please make sure your children are taken care of and will not find your body … or worse, the gun and end up harming themselves or being forever traumatized.
options dawg
You don’t deserve the grief you’re bearing.
The thing about abortion: it is a choice, and (correct me if I’m wrong) it sounds like you feel your choice was taken away from you. You felt pressured into making a difficult decision that in the end is nothing but yours to make. Because the decision made wasn’t yours, you will absolutely feel overwhelming guilt. Have you confronted your partner about this?
Also, as someone who’s best friend’s mother committed suicide (her and I found her body after school and that day will forever have a largely negative impact on our lives) please think of your living babies. Please know they will forever wonder why they weren’t enough to keep their mother around. They will forever blame themselves. They will forever think they are not good enough. They will begin to question their own existence and possibly have suicidal thoughts of their own, as did my friend. I beg you not to do this to them.
While you certainly need to live your life the way you want and make your own choices, please consider the choice you made to have two beautiful children who will need their mother. You owe it to that first pregnancy to be the mother you couldn’t be at the time, to your living children. Honor that unborn child by loving, hugging, and being there for your two beautiful babies. Be there when they graduate from school and when they have children of there own. Otherwise, instead of being their guiding light, you will be nothing but a dark cloud on their happiest days (my friend sobbed on her wedding day because her mother made a choice when we were 14 that she didn’t want to stick around to see her get married).
Hey that’s not murder! My mom and I both wish she had aborted me I am disabled now because she went ahead with the pregnancy, not knowing the nightmare that was coming. Really this is a horrible world to be born into, your aborted child is better off. She has not had her life destroyed by being brought to a life-destroying planet.