Fifteen

I got pregnant twice with X. The first time was early in our relationship before we were married and still just shacking up. It was a stupid accident, it happened one night while we were out of town visiting his college buddy, and it was a holiday and he was drunk and we just didn't use protection. I was terrified when my period was so so so late, and the little stick showed me the sign I did not want to see. He told me, I don't want any children, if you keep this baby I am out of here. If you want to be with me, you are going to have to make a choice between me or having the baby. Well, he couldn't have laid it out more plainly than that. So, at almost three months pregnant, I allowed him to take me to another city to secure our secrecy, and I had an abortion. He was such a caring guy that after the procedure instead of taking me straight home to bed, while I was still groggy and in pain, he left me splayed out across the back seat of the car while he stopped here and there around town to run errands, pick up dinner for himself. No one even knew I was pregnant, although I missed a great deal of work due to horrible 24-hour "morning" sickness, and lost my job over it. But I couldn't keep it to myself and told several friends and family members I'd been pregnant, and had a terrible miscarriage. I got a great deal of sympathy and all the cliches like it wasn't meant to be or don't worry you're still young enough to try again. My no nonsense sibling said, well good, you aren't married to him, you have no business having a baby with the man. To this day, only A knows that it was an abortion and not a miscarriage, not even my best friend in the whole world, or even my one sibling, knows that I had an abortion. I don't feel evil or ashamed for doing it, and I believe that every woman has the right to make that choice and to have that option available to her. I just feel it's not necessary for others to know, not even now. But at the time I didn't feel it had been my decision or my choice, I felt as though X had forced me into it, had cheated me out of experiencing pregnancy and giving birth. It's me or the baby, that's what he had said. His loving gift to me was the choice of an abortion and a continued relationship with him, or life as a single, unwed mother without him. Oh, afterward I cried and cried about that for months, even years, would sob until I thought my heart would explode with the grief and anger and emptiness- maybe even now I still hate X for it, still harbor serious thoughts of bodily harm against him in retaliation. Here, let me rip your balls off, see how much you like that- oh sorry, does that hurt, do you miss them?? And back then X would have the nerve to try to comfort me whenever I saw a cute little baby and I would bust out into tears, sad and longing for the child he'd manipulated me into destroying. Maybe I made the right decision, maybe I made the wrong decision. I don't know, I will never know. I say now that I don't like kids, but if I'd had that one, would I have changed? Would I now be a completely different and happy person, or would my depression be even deeper with more things to worry over? Would I have suddenly been filled with the sweet and caring maternal instinct I now lack? Or would I have given birth to a child and grown to be indifferent, or resentful because the child belonged to X and I hated him? Would I have even had another one? Would having children change our marriage, and I would still be- suddenly happily- married to X?? All I know is that I would now have a child who was about to enter college, possibly marriage, and even possibly with a child of their own- a grandchild for ME. On one hand, I'm glad I did not have this child, because I would forever be bound to the asshole known as X, and fuck it all but I can't even imagine that right now because he was such a bastard, and GOOD RIDDANCE. And since he did drugs, I could have ended up with a child who had health problems, or special needs, because his spunk was loaded with pot-filled DNA. The second time I got pregnant by X was later on, after we were married and older, and I did not and never did tell him I was pregnant, even after I lost it. What was the point? He wouldn't have cared, he probably would have said something super comforting like whew, we missed a bullet with that one. It happened quickly and quietly, as one day I was headed out to an evening college course I was taking, and I was running late. I was trying to swing a backpack over my shoulder as I ran across the deck of the house, and I tripped. I fell down the entire flight of steps in one long cartwheel, landing hard enough on my back that I got the wind knocked out of me and actually blacked out for a second or two. As I was on the ground in the driveway, staring up at the sky, I screamed for X over and over and over again, but he never came out of the house and I would like to believe he simply did not hear me and just wasn't ignoring me. After I could breathe properly again, I got up, brushed off my clothes, and went on my way. The next day I bled just a little bit, and then that was it, I was no longer pregnant. I don't know what would have happened had I not miscarried, perhaps X would have been a different man by that point in our life together. I do know I would not have had another abortion, not for him, not for anyone, whether or not he "wanted" me to, whether or not he threatened me again with abandoning me. We were married, much older, renting a house and not an apartment, although he was still smoking pot like it was free, and his job situation was shaky, as it always was. But perhaps he would have accepted a pregnancy, been happy about it, maybe a child would have changed his life around. But I doubt it, he was always the most self-centered man I'd ever met, even to this day. I can't imagine he would have been a good father, in fact I picture him as that man who runs around all night long while the frazzled wife is at home doing all of the child rearing. X refused to ever change for me, for our marriage, so I don't believe he would have changed for a baby either. Years later, when A and I started dating, one of the issues in our relationship was having children. I was already in my late 30's, he was slightly younger, but not much. He didn't have children either. In fact, I used the idea of having children together to convince him to marry me, although I would hope he would have made that decision on his own after 2 1/2 years of dating. I was going to be 40 the year we got married, so we knew our window was short for getting pregnant, and I used it against him, so to speak. And at that point, for an extremely short little time, I loved A enough that I also convinced myself I wanted children, with him, because he is such a beautiful and loving man, and I knew he would be a magnificent father. I told him if he wanted even a small chance at having a family, we'd better get married asap and start trying right away. I admit in the first few months, maybe the first year, I was very hopeful and I did everything I could to help us get pregnant and have a healthy baby- I gave up caffeine and soft cheeses and lunch meats and took folic acid, we used an ovulation kit to time our sex perfectly, I would even stay there for an extra twenty minutes in bed with my hips raised up (that's supposed to help the little spermies get to where they're going). He even gave up smoking and drinking while we were trying to conceive- wow, what a man!! After the first few years passed by and we didn't get pregnant, I grew more and more content with the idea of no children, and I think so did A. Now, at our age, we are both glad we didn't have children, both for the financial strains, the time constraints, and the carefree comfortable life we now lead. Life with children would be extremely different- no more jet-setting or packing bags for a quick weekend getaway, or spontaneous dinners out, or doing whatever the hell we want when we want, sleeping in on the weekends, having sex whenever the mood strikes and not worrying about being loud or worrying about the kids hearing daddy spanking mommy, cussing at the dinner table, watching porn right there in the living room. You can tell me about all the joys of raising children that I'm missing out on, how children would complete me, how children would make me happy and make my marriage stronger. Blah, don't care, don't want to hear it. A and I have no regrets, and instead of putting all our extra money into a college savings account for a child who may turn out to be an ungrateful unemployed dope fiend (like X) or a mass murderer, we put it all into stocks and 401K's and savings for OUR retirement, our life together, our future. Ours. Call me selfish, but if I'm happy about anything in life, it's that I do not have kids.