I never thought I’d have the courage to share this because of the internalised shame I’ve had since having my abortion, but I’m at a point in time where that shame’s finally going away. I want to share this for any other girls who had to undergo treatment at a young age, I promise it gets better.
I found out I was pregnant when I was 17; I’d missed a pill, my period was late and the ‘menstrual’ symptoms I was getting at the time were abnormal. I took a test – lo and behold it was positive – and totally freaked out – I didn’t even have the courage to call my local clinic myself, so my friend did it for me. Telling my mum was the hardest part, but she was so much more supportive than I had anticipated, mostly due to falling pregnant at the same age herself with my older sister, giving up her whole life to have a kid because she never had the options I had.
The treatment itself was, I won’t lie, excruciatingly painful, despite being told it’d be similar to having a period, but that wasn’t the hardest part. I spent the most part of 2 years coming to terms with what I had been to to the point that I completely underperformed on exams as a result of the depression, and despite having so many people around me, I felt entirely alone in my experience. I was at a stalemate all that time, never quite progressing, always falling back into the same mental pit – I lost all motivation, my social battery was always drained, I lost a sense of myself. I went to university, thinking I could start anew and forget the trauma I’d been through, but it only made it worse.
After some time, I finally realised I’d never let myself fully heal; I wasn’t doing something I loved, I never really took the time to learn who I was after all that I had been through, and so I left. I dropped out of university, re-applied for an entirely different course the following year, and started making plans to get back into the things I used to love doing, to learn to drive, go back to the gym and spend time with the people I loved. I’d never felt more free and like my old self again.
What I’m trying to get across here is, to anyone young and naive like I was when I experienced my abortion, don’t ever think it’s not the right time to heal. Take that time for yourself, dive into things that give you comfort, feel all of the emotions fully. No one ever achieves anything bottling up traumas in order to ‘keep going’ – you aren’t really going anywhere if you haven’t come to terms with what you’ve experience and how great of a trauma it is to undertake. To those in my position, I give you all of my love wherever you are, and I promise you it gets better.
