Guilt

Guilt

It comes sharply sometimes, as a pain, in my head in the image of a flashback to that sunny and bright, dare I say beautiful day. It comes as a dull pain, like one that doesn’t necessarily stop me from my day going on, but one that constantly reminds me that it’ś there, whenever women bring up certain struggles they’re having. But sometimes I don’t see it or feel it for a while, my life is moving and I’m happy and then I feel bad for not feeling bad.

It was a Friday and I was living with the love of my life, and his two daughters. I loved them more than life, literally. I had slowly but surely transformed my identity of Kelley, to step mom. I didn’t identify myself as a woman with step daughters, the part of me being a whole woman always came last in the statement. I didn’t do much because I loved it,  I was always striving to achieve things, attaching the love that I received to how much I got done/ made other people happy. I strived to be the most chill, the most organized, the most peppy, the most on time and thoughtful, the most loving.

That Friday, I told him, I said ¨I know this is going to be positive,¨ and sure enough, as the love of my life and his friend were playing video games, I started to cry. He came in, I was crying on the bed. I said ¨what are we going to do,¨ he wouldn’t tell me. He kept saying it was my decision. The next morning I called my mom, and couldn’t even manage smalltalk, I told her I was pregnant, and she literally said ¨that’s wonderful!¨ I didn’t want it. Actually, I never even stopped to consider if I wanted it. We just couldn’t do it. Financially we were trying to fund my love going back to school, had a ton of credit card debt, and I was a teacher/bartender.

I am 28 now, no kids anytime soon, sometimes I feel behind and sometimes I wish I would have kept them and sometimes when it’s May I am reminded of that one May where I would have become a mother. I think of the protesters outside of the women’s center or the two days I spent recovering, my world stopping while the rest of the world kept turning. I think of how thankful I am that I am not tied to that man who I loved, because love was not enough to keep us together, and that’s real. I worry that someday I’ll be too old to have kids and wish I wouldn’t have made that choice, then I realize that it’s not too late and I’m not too behind and I made the right choice for myself at that time.

Maybe I’ll never get over it and maybe I’ll never fully heal but I am not ashamed for making the choice that was right for me in that moment, and for that, I will NEVER apologize.