Not sure why I’m sad.

I’m having a hard time moving on after my experience, which happened several days ago. I thought I would feel relief, or nothing, and to an extent I do. But there’s also this heavy feeling trailing along behind me, something I feel has been changing me bit by bit and that I’m not going back to how I was, I’m not coming out of this unscathed.

Which is stupid. It’s so incredibly stupid. The fetus was only 3-4 weeks old. I took three pregnancy tests on Friday and they were negative, then another one on Monday and it was positive. I took the pill to abort that very Monday. This should be no big deal. A blip on the radar. A spot on the horizon. A tiny little issue, as big as the half-formed tadpole thing that I found on my pad. As big as a pinhead.

I’m hoping if I just try to focus on studies and work and my life as I wanted it to go before the pregnancy, I will forget. I will start to feel like the person I was. This deep sadness inside of me will go away, this deep feeling of “I’m sorry.”

I’m not sorry! I didn’t want a baby. If it were still inside me right now I’d feel as terrible and as panicked and as angry as the morning I found out.

But still, I wish I had kept the fetus a little longer. I wish I had said something respectful and loving before I took the pill. That I hadn’t looked down at my stomach in the shower and hissed “I am not your fucking mother,” in a panicked rage. I regret those words in such a raw and aching way, even though I’m eternally grateful I had access to the pill I took moments afterwards.

I’ve never felt maternal once in my entire life. My personality has come across as very cool-girl, calls everyone “bro,” rolls her eyes at kids crying in the store, snidely remarks to her friends “use your birth control.” But I’ve felt a tiny bit maternal and sad in the last few days, for some reason–and I hate it. It’s scary. The feeling. It’s scary in the way things felt scary the day I realized I was in love. I have a soft spot in my chest that I realize is open now, without my consent it opened up and now it’s vulnerable, vulnerable to be nurtured or to be hurt, and if it got hurt it would wound me integrally–back then, when I fell in love with my partner, it was a feeling of, “oh shit. oh fuck. I’m in love.”

And now, oh shit. Oh fuck. I feel maternal and sad. For this stupid dumb little tadpole that would have been EXPENSIVE and
NOISY
and
ANNOYING
and very painful to push out and it would have taken over the next 25 years of my life and handicapped my goals and permanently changed my body and made me far less able to succeed in this cut-throat world–

Can somebody please tell me, why am I sad?

My boyfriend of 2 years who got me pregnant isn’t sad at all, was never sad at all. I keep asking him if he feels anything but relief but he says no. Not sure what to tell him about how I feel, because I don’t understand it myself. That soft grief feeling in my chest swells up sometimes, the sadness for the little tadpole I saw on my pad. I try to forget what happened. I try to convince myself I had my period plus a little extra tissue, and nothing more. Nothing to worry about, or to remember. But the grief feeling won’t let me forget.

I’m afraid the baby exists in some other realm and is lost, without caretakers, I guess. I’m emotional about the fact that it was half my DNA and half the DNA of someone I love. I have this strange hormonal, very girly, very STUPID feeling that it was “our baby.”

How can I wipe these feelings from my brain and just feel relieved to continue with my life? My plan is to stop dwelling, starting now. To focus on other things. Maybe these confusing sentiments will even out and form some kind of understandable order over time, settling like sediment or something. Maybe when I’m older I’ll be able to look back at that geological record and track the layers, see what happened, why I felt this way.

For now I have literally no idea and that frightens me.

Submitted by: Maddie

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