Unimaginable grief

One year ago I had an abortion. This year has been the hardest one of my life. This abortion has destroyed and built me back up in ways that I didn’t even know were possible. When I found out I was pregnant an immediate wave of happiness hit me. I was with a partner who I knew I wanted to have children with one day and although it wasn’t the right time at all I felt an immediate connection with the bundle of cells growing in my stomach. Even though I had my partner’s full support in whatever I decided, deep down I felt that he didn’t want this. Up to this point we’ve had a pretty tumultuous relationship and I wasn’t in a good state mentally. But especially because I grew up in very difficult circumstances I wanted to have my own family so bad that I started loving this little something more than anything I’ve ever loved before. What followed were horrible three weeks of nausea, uncertainty and sadness. I thought about it long and hard and in the end listened to my gut and had an abortion. The experience itself was positive and not as scary as I thought. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the sadness that would hit me afterwards. Right after I woke up from the anesthesia I started crying uncontrollably. They had to put me on sedatives. The following weeks I tried to forget about it and focused on my new job and the fact that I didn’t feel nauseous 24/7 like I did while I was pregnant. I still wrote to my child quite often but thought I was over it. Then around the time of my due date, I started having these really realistic dreams about my baby. I started feeling extreme sadness again. Like a part of me was missing. I wasn’t able to eat, sleep or do anything else. I have been dealing with depression for about ten years but this feeling was a whole nother level of numbness and sadness. I felt like the person who was closest to me died and I was the only one mourning them. I felt my partner’s feeling of relief everyday and it broke me. I became suicidal. I actually don’t really know what helped me at that point. Maybe time, maybe that I went to therapy again and really worked through it. Although it’s still hard today and I think about my child and what could’ve been everyday, it got easier. Everyday it gets easier. I will never stop missing them but I’ve accepted that it was the right decision at that time and that it enabled my life to turn into a totally different direction. I’m loving my life at the moment. I love how this has changed me and made me into a better person, friend, partner and I know one day is gonna make me a freaking great mother.