I saw the lights on the ceiling. I felt the tear. The nurse held my hand with saintly love as I sobbed. A part of me died in that moment, a ripple through the eons.
I was 21 and a newly graduated nurse when I went through my abortion and had landed a prestigious hospital job. My mum was accidentally pregnant at the time at 40 with my brother who I later helped to deliver with the midwife (after I had undergone my abortion)
I freaked out. I couldn’t move back home in a small town with a pregnant mother. My boyfriend said he wasn’t ready for a child and we couldn’t afford it (I later discovered he was wealthy and had not been honest with me). He was living far away at the time going to university.
As he slept in my room one night at the nursing quarters against the rules of no men, we were discussing what to do. I got caught with him in my room and I was kicked out by the nun. Pregnant, I went to house hunt by day after my night shift work. The nun who found us gave me one week to find a place after I begged her. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t tell a soul.
My boyfriend booked a hotel for the week as I was homeless and I went through with the abortion. I didn’t want to go through with it but I was so scared, alone and overwhelmed. I always said I would have a child if I accidentally became pregnant, but I just didn’t realize what it was actually like to be in that position.
The first doctor I approached rejected to care for me due to his religious beliefs so I had to hunt for a doctor who would.
I went to get counselling afterwards and was paired with another religious man who rejected me so I had to keep searching for help. I gave up.
I went back to work and it was a very hard year. I saved a few lives and I decided to work in hospice to become more familiar with death. I nurtured people through their losses.
Many hard, lonely years accompanied me with multiple instances of sexual assault and trauma I started to have difficulties coping. I always comforted myself with the idea that losing a child to help others may be excusable as a choice but when I left my career, in those last days I sat down by my friends nieces side who was losing her new baby that had just been born. It was dying in her arms and her tears dropped on that babies face. I watched that baby die as I said goodbye to my career. She didn’t know of my past and now I hear she wants to be a nurse. The chain continues.
My whole family said I was always the mothering, nurturing type and I would have the most kids. I am childless and not married. Tortured by bad memories. Too lost for words.
You don’t forget but you learn to live with it. Its a silent shame for me but I see now with my history of abuse I needed to feel some control over my body. I don’t feel it was the answer now, and in retrospect I would like to say I had all this courage to stand up to this invisible community who bad mouthed people but I was a young vulnerable frightened girl. While I was being accused of being a baby murderer I was saving their lives in hospital.
I think now about it more in philosophical ways. The things we should terminate in our minds and and how a new beginning can start for us to live a happier life. My God believes in redemption and love.