I did what was best for ME

To start, I never had a good relationship with my parents. I was an only child. Mom worked nights and from an early age, I barely remember her existence. Dad was my friend, my ally. We did everything together because mom was always sleeping. I was a white girl who chose to date a black boy in high school. Big mistake. Parental relationship went from bad to worse. Once I had a place at college, I had no reason to visit home, so I didn’t. My mom came to visit me at my apartment in college. Laid into me about never coming home to visit. I gave the “I’m busy at school” excuse. She looks me in the eye and tells me that my dad thinks it’s because I’m PREGNANT! Which I wasn’t. I was on birth control, no thanks to her, but to my first friend in college who could not believe I wasn’t on it. I was PISSED! So I stopped taking my birth control. I was seriously seeing someone and I decided NOT to tell him I wasn’t on birth control. Guess what. Two months later I’m at planned parenthood getting a pregnancy test. Positive. Boyfriend said he wasn’t going to marry me. He didn’t want adoption because he didn’t want to be found years later by a child he didn’t want. So my BFF at the time went with me through the consult as well as the abortion. I was upset, of course, because I DID THIS. I knowingly got myself pregnant. But even 23 years later, I know I made the right decision FOR ME. I got my college degree. I traveled through Europe. I have a husband who loves me, who knows I had an abortion and really doesn’t care. And now I have  a son and daughter that I adore. Sure, maybe I would have accomplished what I did with my first baby, but I doubt it. Do I wish I never had to do it? Of course! But “my younger me” had to make a decision for the “older me”. And I’m extremely proud of how courageous she was.