My Abortion Experience (And Worst Break-Up)

TRIGGER WARNING!!! Might be a bit too graphic for some.

Many women don’t speak about this yet a lot of women go through it for various reasons, a whole lot more than one would think. There’s a stigma attached to women getting abortions and it is something that we as a society should address.

You can never even begin to imagine what it’s like until you have to go through it yourself. I know people say things like it’s your fault, you should have known better…

Anyways here’s my story:

I had just turned 21 and I felt like my life just wasn’t enough. I wanted more; more out of life, my relationships and more for myself. So I ended a 2 and a half year relationship that I didn’t see going anywhere and started dating what one would call a “bad boy”. He was a bad boy in the sense that he was nothing like my ex who was inexperienced with women. He was bold, intelligent and charming but also the kind of man your mom would probably warn you to stay away from.

Bad-boy phase I guess…

We were madly in love (or so I thought). He gave me this rush I had never felt before and I loved it. I felt more alive when I was with him and also more myself. When it was good it was great and when it was bad… Well, it was awful!

I don’t know what it was but there was just something about him that I couldn’t shake. I wanted him, all of him, but that was just something he couldn’t give; I later realized.

I had never planned on it becoming anything serious.

Anyways, we had been dating a few months and our sex life was great but I had always been careful. In fact, in my previous 2 and a half year relationship I had never had unprotected sex, not even when I was on birth control. I guess I should have known better but I somehow let him convince me that it was okay… That’s not when I fell pregnant though.

This one time, we were lazing around, just talking and he mentioned casually during the conversation that the previous time we were together he had removed the condom while we were having sex. I remember talking about how it felt different afterwards but it never occurred to me that day that that was why because as far as I knew, he was wearing a condom the whole time.

I thought he was playing some kind of a sick joke but he was being dead serious.

IMMEDIATELY, I got up. I left. I just didn’t know what else to do at that point.

I was furious! Furious at the fact that I had let this happen, furious because I should have felt the difference, furious for the mere fact that I had trusted him yet he thought it was okay to do such a thing. I mean I thought he loved me and I felt so betrayed. How could he do this to me??? And he was telling me WEEKS after the incident.

HOW COULD YOU BE SO STUPID? — that was I repeating my mind. That’s what I kept asking myself.

I should have known.

Gradually, I was starting to notice small changes in my body that initially, I just dismissed. My clothes were tight, my boobs seemed to be growing and spilling out of my bra.

Then I realized that I hadn’t had my period in a while…

I went downstairs to the nearest store and bought a pregnancy test because I’m a “need to know NOW” kind of person. Yeah, the test came back positive which is exactly what I had feared but had known after all the warning signs — I was pregnant!

I knew immediately that I was not going to be a mom. Having a kid was out of the question. How the hell was I going to explain to my mom who had just thrown me a 21st birthday party and spoken about how proud she was of me just a few months ago that I was pregnant (among other things).

I did not want to be a mom! Not yet. This wasn’t part of my plan. I was still a freaken student 100% reliant on my parents for like everything.

I called him (my then-boyfriend) immediately and told him that we needed to talk urgently. He was too busy drinking with his buddies at the time to come and talk to me so I ended up telling him I was pregnant via text. He came down immediately.

Funny thing, he seemed kinda happy about the news even though I had made it crystal clear that we were not going to keep it. We were not going to have a baby. He ended up respecting my decision and helped me find a clinic, Marie Stopes, which we then visited together about a week later.

I had to use my grocery allowance from my parents to pay for all of this because I did not want them to know. We went to the clinic together and they did an ultrasound and they told me how far along I was. I just went numb.

It had actually been roughly 8 weeks before he told me about his stupidity and total lack of respect for me and my body.

All this was happening during test season so I was not studying — the tests we were writing to gain entrance to the exams and I was just so fucked up. I was also angry at myself for waiting for so long to go to the clinic.

We scraped some money together and got enough to pay for the procedure. They told me they were going to give me 2 pills to take.

I took 1 immediately at the clinic and the other I was instructed to take at a specific time the next day. My then-boyfriend took me to my room and left saying he’d be back soon. He didn’t come back… I guess he was freaked out but then again so was I.

That second pill was the real mother fucker! It’s the one that empties the uterus… I took it in the early afternoon. I went from being fine to having excruciating stomach cramps, diarrhoea and sweating to feeling freezing cold. I was so cold my teeth were chattering, my blankets couldn’t get me warm enough. Then came the cramp…I have NEVER felt a stomach cramp like that in my entire life, not even to this day, period pains don’t even compare!

I was running to the bathroom up and down, multiple times in a short space of time. Need I remind you I lived at student res so I hoping nobody would notice me and ask me what was going on.

I was throwing up and I had diarrhoea all at the same time. I actually tried to position myself on the toilet seat so I could do both at the same time and ended up puking on my inner thighs. Later my roommate came back I was praying she wouldn’t notice anything. I tried to be as quiet as I possibly could so she wouldn’t see what I was going through.

I tried to get some sleep and was woken up by a sudden movement in my lower stomach and before I could even make it to my door, I felt I huge lump coming out of my vagina and blood started gushing down my legs, soaking my pyjamas. I ran to the bathroom with this lump in my pants, trying to squeeze my thighs together, as fast as I could. I was convinced I would find a baby in my pants and I was absolutely terrified.

It was nothing but a huge, clumpy mess of blood which I then flushed down the toilet. I washed my blood-soaked pants. I don’t know how nobody saw or even noticed me because I was afraid it was going to turn into a huge scene and the whole floor, then building, would found out.

Side note: I thought I was going to get rid of the pants because they’d be triggering but I just washed them. They still fit me after all these years.

I bled for I think it was about a week after that. I did not even attend lectures because I was afraid I would bleed out in front of everyone so I stayed alone in my room until I felt like it was safe. I went through multiple packs of pads because I was bleeding so much.

I guess I kinda died inside. Then I guess my sadness became way too much for him to handle, as you can imagine the relationship was never the same again. Eventually, he broke up with me (I have no memory of this) I just remember trying to call him and receiving a Facebook message saying and I quote “what do you want, I broke up with you remember!” I felt devastated.

And no, I did not remember…

What I do remember is that I had gone home for the holidays and he kept asking me when I was coming back and I kept joking giving stupid answers. I was kinda enjoying being away from everything.

I finally went back and the night I got there I tried to see him. I called and his phone just rang ’til it went to voicemail so I figured I’d just see him at school, which I did. It was chilled.

One night we were chilling and we were speaking about everything. I didn’t even really want to talk because I was just tired, not just physically but mentally.

He brought up the whole termination thing which I never wanted to talk about because frankly I just wanted to forget but I remember saying I needed time and things weren’t just going to go back to the way they were in his time. I needed to process.

On that Friday, I remember coming back from a pageant the school had held and calling him because I had scored an extra ticket to the after-party from a friend who wasn’t interested in going. Little did I know he was already at the venue, drinking with his buddies. Anyways, I asked him to come down because I didn’t wanna walk up alone, which he did. At the time I didn’t notice anything off.

We got to the club and went towards his roommate who he’d been with the whole night. I think he asked me to get him a drink at some point which I don’t recall doing. I got pretty wasted though and sometime during the evening things just got weird…

We said we were leaving and his roommate was telling him he better not take me to their room, to which I responded not going there and he just snapped at me going on bout how he never wants to see me ever again blah blah blah. I was really confused.

I was pretty upset on the way down to res and started crying because I didn’t understand where all that was coming from. What had I done? To my memory, we got to the door and said goodnight and went our separate ways. I went upstairs and straight to bed.

And that’s what I remember. When he actually broke up with me, I have no freaken idea.

That’s how things ended.

I know you’re probably wondering why I was not taking birth control, well I felt like I never needed it before. I had always used condoms and they worked for me just fine for years so I did not think it was necessary for anything else. (I went on the contraceptive injection after the abortion even though I had hated the idea of injecting things into my body). I had been with my previous boyfriend for 2 and a half years without any baby slip-ups. We were very responsible and I always try to be. If it was not for my ex “stealthing” I probably never would have gone through any of this. I take full responsibility for my part in the pregnancy. (By the way; stealthing is when your partner removes the condom during sex without your knowledge).

The rest of that year was terrible, I just felt like I had dug myself into a whole I couldn’t get out of and I was drowning. Emotionally, academically I just wasn’t coping. I felt scared and alone and my whole life just fell apart. I started to unravel…

I stopped eating, going to class. I stopped everything. I would just lie in my bed and cry.

After a few weeks, I tried to seek help from the school guidance counsellor because I felt like I was dying inside. Everything was just too much for me to handle on my own. I went for 1 session at the end of the year; it didn’t do much for me and never went back…

This is whole experience is probably what contributed to my depression.

I tried to start over and move on from that experience but it became too much for me. I ended up moving back home and dropping out of university because I just wanted a fresh start; actually I was academically excluded for poor performance and I did not even bother to appeal.

I was done.

For a long time, my own body felt foreign to me like I was just a passenger along for the ride. I just didn’t feel like myself.

It took me a long time to actually feel good about myself again and learn to love and forgive myself for what I did and everything I went through. I never in a million years imagined I would go through anything like that.

I know many of you are against my decision and think it was murder and that it was wrong, but I believe I have the right to decide what happens to my body. I did not plan on getting pregnant, it was due to stealthing. I thought I was with someone I could trust and sadly I was wrong. The last thing I would expect someone to do is to remove a condom during sex. I have always been sexually responsible and I did everything in my power not to fall pregnant my entire sexually active life. To this day I do not regret my decision. I regret certain situations and how they unfolded.

I now know better than to completely trust my partner and that I should always take extra precautions. It was a very difficult experience and I have not been in a serious relationship since. I put up walls that made it difficult to build a meaningful relationship, I did try dating but I had huge intimacy issues.

But that was then!

Abortion is not a topic we should shy away from. We should talk about it and address such issues as women and remove the stigma behind it. I did not want to talk about what I was/ had gone through with anyone for fear of being judged. There were days when all I did was cry and sleep and I didn’t know who to turn to. My mom is not the type of person who understands any of this so I never felt like I could talk to her and when I finally did all she said was that that’s just what boys do. I stupidly tried talking to an ex because he was the closest person to me at some point and he basically said I deserved everything I was going through which only depressed me even more.

Fast track to today; I am happy and healthy and glad to report that my fertility was not affected by the whole process. That was my greatest fear. I did have a bit of a cervical cancer scare, don’t know whether or not it is related but I am pleased to report that I am happy and healthy.

There were times when it felt like I would never get through that experience but I did. It hasn’t overshadowed my life or made me feel negative towards getting pregnant (on purpose) in the future. I spoke to my gynaecologist who said he doesn’t see any reason why it would affect my fertility and that everything in terms of my reproductive organs looks healthy. I do hope to have kids one day when I meet the right person.

I learnt a great deal about myself through the whole process. I never thought I was as strong as I am until I didn’t have a choice to be. I do take extra precautions now when I am in a relationship but I haven’t had a serious relationship since.

To all those that like to protest in front of abortion clinics — STOP DOING THAT. The experience is already traumatising enough on its own and you don’t know or will never understand the situation that leads women there.

Just try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes…

Originally published at https://weirdnliberated.wixsite.com on August 10, 2020.