I am 16 and had an abortion six weeks ago. It was the worst and best decision I've made in my life.
By anonymous on 05/10/2008
I am 16 and had an abortion six weeks ago. It was the worst and best decision I've made in my life. In the beginning, I felt amazing like I'd done the right thing and my life would be perfect. I'd be able to have children when it was right for me. I was going to college and enjoying my life. I'd made a new start; it was a new beginning to leave everything behind, but about two weeks ago my parents went away and everything just poured out. I felt so alone without that security blanket. I'd get stressed and worked up and become so disgusted in myself I’d be physically sick. More and more I'd think of what I'd done. I'd block out the world, stay in bed with a bucket and some tissues thinking about what I'd become. I felt like a murderer. It got to the point where looking in the mirror without a face plastered with make-up would make me want to slit my wrists. I'd sit at night going over everything in my head. I couldn't understand what I had done and I couldn't see the upside of it. When my parents came home, I tried to keep strong because I knew how much it hurt them as well, but one night I couldn't hold it in. My mum walked in my room to find me fainted in a pool of sick with blood dripping off my arms. Luckily it was nothing fatal.
The next day I went to a drop in clinic. I discovered I had a urine infection which had affected my behaviour and how I felt. It had run me down and made everything seem ten times worse. After the course of antibiotics, I decided it was time to make some life decisions. I decided to put off college for a year to come to terms with everything and try to discover myself. I feel as though I don’t want other people’s help but I do. It helped to hear someone else say what I had done was the right thing. I realized that there are second chances for everything in life and although maybe morally this wasn’t the right thing to do, raising a child when I am not secure with myself and my situation is not right.
I am now happy with the decision and, although this will never go away and it is important not to forget, I understand it and that is the most important thing to me. What happened is the only way I could have dealt with the pregnancy without becoming something that would not be good for anyone. I wouldn’t have been able to care for a child. And for whatever reason you have, if it’s the right thing for you and you know the child wouldn’t have had a good or nice life, it’s the right thing everyone has second chances, and better days. The most important thing that got me through my situation is realising not why you shouldn’t have done it but why you should have and how the child would have been affected. Never forget but try to understand. Xxx
Editor’s note: Thanks for sharing your story…it sounds as if you had quite a severe emotional reaction to your abortion, ‘hibernating’ and getting away from the world, to say the least, to block out the pain of it when your parents went away. The pain in your heart was spilling over and you were really trying to keep it all under control, it seems, but couldn’t. What I notice is that you now have jumped out of the heart’s pain and into the logic of why this was the best decision for you. That’s what’s working for you at the moment, and that’s OK. There may be times when your heart’s pain surfaces again and you may then need some support for coming to terms with it in a healthy way. If that is ever the case, then you can get in touch and find out more about our post-abortion recovery programme. We’d be very happy to help you in whatever way is needed.
