How My Abortions Changed My Life
I had two abortions in one month. Here are 5 Lessons I learned in the process.
Written by: Chelsie Bennett
Illustration: Camille Allen
You know how the fine print of a prescription drug label outlines the risks and side effects, and you responsibly scan through the label to get the gist but continue about your pain-relieving mission with the confidence that you will not be affected on whichever god-given day it is? Surely I’m not the only one that does this in confidence. Well, the paperwork I received before moving forward with the “Abortion Pill” informed me that it had a 98% success rate for women within their first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Of course, I think nothing of it. Guess who became the closeted poster child of the 2%?
Hello there, it’s me. Because the focus here is in the lessons learned, rather than the technicalities, I’ll spare the details. What’s important for context is that three weeks after invoking a pseudo-miscarriage on myself in a lonesome hotel room, I landed myself in the procedure room — the very place I intended to avoid. My uterus said, “A ha ha.”
All jokes aside, reminiscing on this period of my life takes me back to picture day in first grade. On this particular day, I was crying because my dad and I forgot it was picture day — freaking yearbook picture day — so neither my hair nor my outfit was meeting my conditioned expectations. Because I was crying at the time of the shoot, the photographer handed me a button to pull the trigger and take my picture when I was ready. Needless to say, your girl was straight-faced. As a child, I was the epitome of one of my favorite Ariana Grande lyrics: “F*** a fake smile.” This little anecdote describes how I wish I could’ve handled the reality of being pregnant. Ms. Bennett — the teacher, the mentor, the responsible one of the friend group — didn’t want to ruin everyone’s perception, and especially not her perception of who she was. Somewhere along the journey, the part of my inner child who marched to her own beat and showed emotion without fear died a sudden death. Therefore, fake smile and drown-in-my-sorrows-privately was the disillusioned name of the game until, honestly, very recently. In the words of my beloved petty friends, you hate to see it. Eventually, though, we process. We do the inner work, and are met with immeasurable success — thus yielding life-changing lessons:
Birth control is like abstinence-only education.
I remember my mom telling me the summer before college, “If you’re serious about getting your Master’s in 5 years, you may want to get on birth control.” I’ll be honest, this stung. At the time, I said nothing because she and I both knew good and damn well I was sexually active. Additionally, my mom has always had my best interest at heart, so I imagine she just wanted to prevent me from enduring the stresses of being a young mother, as she was with my brother and me. Given my experiences, I’m grateful for the advice. However, that statement operates on a “this or that” belief system and instills fear and ignorance masked as the freedom to do as I please without immediate consequence. Similar to abstinence-only education, in which one is taught not to have sex as the only alternative to doing so, my pathway was laid out as “Get your Master’s or Have a Baby Trying” — well, at least that was my interpretation of the situation. In this type of education, no one takes the time to divulge the details and risks once you do decide to have sex, or, in my case, stop using birth control. So, I successfully graduated with my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and stopped taking it. Less than one year, one “situationship,” and three Plan B’s later, I see two pink lines staring back at me. Yikes.
Just like a Band-Aid alone can’t heal a physical wound, abortion can’t erase the associated emotional trauma of a relationship.
Situationships, whether or not we intend for them to be, come with their fair share of emotions. For those a little less hip to the terminology, a “situationship” is a more modern way of saying “friends with benefits” or “fuck buddies,” if that better tickles your fancy. The only thing about these situations is that we don’t get to choose how emotions will surface. After all, there is no real planning. Therefore, these relationships are often met with misfortune, stinging much more than we thought and stringing us along in permanent ways, even though the goal was to remain detached.
Whew, that’s an entirely different story for another day — Back to it: The day I told the father that I was pregnant is a day I’ll never forget. My pregnancy was confirmed the day before he was scheduled to travel. Me being me, I didn’t want to mess up the trajectory of his trip with the heaviness I’d already brought upon myself. Therefore, I waited until he returned. When we finally sat down and the words “I’m pregnant” flowed from my mouth, his body language was enough for me to understand that following through with the pregnancy wasn’t an option. He didn’t even want to see the sonogram. Luckily, I had already made the decision myself.
He, of course, was on the edge of his seat awaiting his fate. He quickly gathered himself and sat up just enough to fix his lips and somewhat maturely ask, “So what’s next?” — to which I replied, “I’m not keeping it.” For what came out of his mouth next, so simple and typically a term of respect, I wasn’t ready. Enthusiastically, he said, “Queen!” Again, this is a title that many desire to be called, and for my self-loving, confident women, nothing less is expected when being addressed out of their name. But umm… this time it hit differently.
Remember, the pregnancy was a product of a “situationship,” so I never wanted anything more than what we were doing. But, that doesn’t mean I didn’t also want him to look at me as someone worthy of having his baby. Why was I suddenly a queen to him at this moment versus the other 999 we had spent together? Let me be clear — I’m not writing this to infer he is a bad person. I think he’s a good person whose actions, much like mine, were rooted in trauma much deeper than what transpired between the two of us. As a fellow former achievement-driven person, I imagine he didn’t want to alter his image or way of life at the time, either. Or, perhaps he didn’t want to perpetuate a lifestyle for his child that he experienced growing up. Again, we had no plans of being together and each of us had endured some type of separation or absence of a parent growing up. Not to mention, he was just freely dropping his life force into me, knowing there was no commitment. There’s a certain level of self-control we both lacked and, arguably, levels of self-respect and love too. Why would we continue shallowly pouring into each other when we both had other people on the side who wanted to be committed to us? Messy. We were a dysfunctional comfort to each other in ways that we wouldn’t allow the “right” people to be. He probably has no clue that his words hurt me the way they did, but I can’t help but wonder if I equally hurt him. Neither of us wanted a baby at the time, but I imagine there’s a sense of rejection felt knowing a woman, with whom you’ve spent all this time, made an effortless decision to abort your child. Needless to say, sucking the life out of me in vacuum fashion isn’t enough to stop the hurting child within us both. I just hope he’s taken the time to do the inner work so that we can both guide our kids in ways that make this type of experience foreign to their realities.
Your pain, in the hands of the wrong people, becomes entertainment.
India.Arie once said, “One shot to your heart without breaking your skin, no one has the power to hurt you like your friends.” I knew for sure there were two people I could trust with the secret of my pregnancy as well as my plans to go through with the abortion. Or so I thought. They were there via FaceTime when I took the test in the public guest restroom of a friends’ luxury apartment building. If I shed tears when I found out, they were there to see them. My memory is a bit fuzzy regarding that moment because, baby, I was shooketh. Even the weekend before I went in for my consultation, when I was nauseous just from the scent of margaritas, they were there. They knew everything, except for one thing: I was ashamed to tell them who the father was. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of him, but of myself for getting caught up. Plus, I didn’t want to put his business in the street like that. I felt he deserved that much respect. But you know, not everyone thinks alike, so I’ve learned. I was on my couch, in solitude, when I found out all the girls had been sitting at happy hour discussing my pregnancy over well-drinks and 50 cent wings, even down to who they thought the father was. Ouch. To find out that the confidentiality of my most personal truth was compromised and reduced to cheap bird and even cheaper liquor is one of the most disrespectful, hurtful, gut-wrenching moments I’ve ever experienced. But, at least now my eyes are open and I’m able to see who, if no one else, will always be a true friend to me: Me.
Solitude is necessary for growth and transformation.
Feeling like I’d been “betrayed” by some of those closest to me, you can imagine how lonely of a time this was for me. I moved into my first one-bedroom apartment on June 29, 2017, about a week after the procedure. I was able to fully furnish the apartment from my first year of teaching and staying home with my mom. I loved it from day one — location, convenience, view, price. It was perfect. But none of that even mattered. I just desperately longed to be alone. It’s almost like I was in a rush to get out of my mom’s house that last month because I just needed to be one with my feelings.
I didn’t tell her anything about the abortion until over two years later.
Since I’ve lived on my own, people always rave about how comfortable my couch is. It’s been that way since day one, but I believe the tears shed on that couch were the magic touch in breaking it in. The number of Uber Eats orders eaten in a half-upright position, the number of hours spent staring at the Google Chromecast images in silence, and the number of nights Netflix and a half-full glass of red wine watched me sleep after unsuccessfully attempting to grade papers — all magical touches. There was so much space to think. So much space to feel. And it was all done on that couch, alone.Going home to the couch on weekdays and getting drunk and partying on the weekends were the highlights of my life at the time. It was an uncomfortable time in my life, and while I spent most of it running and numbing the pain, the purpose was to find comfort in me. To be fully accepting of me, especially in my flaws and downfalls. While my realization came through force, I’ll never voluntarily depart from this truth again. Loving myself and sitting in silence with myself has provided space to transform into the perfectly imperfect human being I am today. I fully accept her and am grateful for her presence.
Owning your truth is the ultimate form of gratitude.
Through this process, I’m thankful for getting in tune with my body. There’s no way we can own who we are if we don’t pay attention to what’s happening inside. Before, I never gave myself a fair chance to be in tune. I looked at my body in shame and treated her most delicate parts as disposable, almost as if she were a weapon, capable of being used as frequently and as freely as these nationalist terrorists are with our ever-so-strict gun laws. Rather than treating my body as a vessel, a treasure chest only capable of inhabiting royalty, I often became the storehouse of unhealthily energized artillery at the expense of immediate gratification. In other words, I was sharing this kitty with ding-a-lings that weren’t worthy. I’m not sitting here blaming the men, nor am I shaming myself for my mistakes. For children, no matter what age, can only treat their bodies and others’ bodies, as well as they are treating their minds. And to continue in the fashion of my girl Ari, “If I’m being honest, I done been through way too much” to always make the best decisions.
So, to all of the men who’ve said to me, “Smile” with an attitude, rather than asking how my day is or what I have going on — if you’re reading this, here’s a glimpse. Instead of a fake smile, I can sit here today with a genuine one because I’ve made it through [quite a bit of] my mess, and I’m grateful for the opening of my throat chakra to finally share and hopefully help others cross over and live in their truth. I’ve never liked being called the mother of my friend groups, but perhaps that’s one of my purposes for being here on earth. There’s a renewed sense of gratitude and understanding within me. This process has birthed so much more for me, that will one day make me a great mother to my children when the time is right.
The Final Takeaways:
You don’t have to run or hide, beloved. We tend to isolate ourselves after “negative” experiences and move forward as if no one else in the world can relate or help us through. Let it out, that’s where the freedom lies. And it’s okay to let pieces of you die. You’re better off without the ego attachments anyway. It’s all preparation for who you were sent here to be. May the complications on your journey birth the wisdom you need to live in your truth, joyfully and unapologetically.
Read more like this in The Love Issue of our Journal
The Love Issue explores what love looks like in action. It expands our definition of the famous four-letter word, in ways both traditional and untraditional.
