It’s been four years, and I still think about you every day. In my head, you have a name. I speak to you sometimes. You live in me, just as you did before. Your presence however is much bigger than the little clump of cells you inhabited before. I have over the years tried to understand this presence. At first, I felt you were the Tell Tale Heart — occupying my mind, reminding me of my sins, there to punish me for what I had done. I was to be haunted by you – a specter meant to remind me of my worst days. But then, just like that – you’d become the soaring sound of a marching band echoing through the streets, a beautiful melody of celebration and pride. I would settle into these feelings, wrapping myself in their comfort, only then for them to be ripped away. In again would come the haunting specter, there to remind me of all that I had done.
I have tried everything to understand this presence and these feelings – from reiki to EMDR to therapy to support groups to loved ones who have also had abortions – but each time I think I have begun to unravel the feelings that keep you trapped in my head, I end up knotting them tighter. Plain and simple, I have no idea how I feel. Or maybe, I do, but I just don’t know to whom I turn to start to understand those feelings. To whom will help me unravel those feelings knotted deep in my chest, instead of tightening them to the point of constriction at times.
So, I sit here on the four year anniversary of my loss, and I type to the oblivion in hopes that perhaps here in the anonymity of the internet, I may find that space. I share these feelings in an effort to find those who feel this presence as strongly as I do. Who see their abortion as what it was – a loss – but also what it has become – a freedom. By losing you, I gained my freedom of choice. By losing you, I gained my freedom from a man who sought to break me. By losing you, I gained my freedom in experiencing life.
By losing you, I gained me.
And that, and just that, is what causes the tears to well in my eyes and my chest to tighten. I will never get to see you smile. I will never get to hear you laugh. I will never get to watch you grow and flourish. All the things that I wanted so bad. But I will get to see myself smile. To hear myself laugh. To watch myself grow and flourish. All the things that I wanted so bad.
Your presence is a reminder of all that I have done, and perhaps that is not a bad thing. Your presence reminds me of all that I have experienced and all that I have overcome. Your presence is a reminder of my strength and of my resilience. So, perhaps, there will be days you float through my head like the haunting of a ghost, but more so there will be days that you echo through my head as the sounds of my laughter and the memories of my joy.
