When I was 15 I got my first boyfriend. He was older than me by 3 years and we waited a year to have sex. When he asked me to be his girlfriend I told him he had to stop doing drugs if I was going to be with him. He did for a time and we waited a year to have sex. I thought he loved me and was so kind to wait, it feels so dumb now to think it was “kind” for someone to want me to want to have sex with them before doing it.
Eventually he started doing drugs again but I didn’t know that until after we broke up three years later.
It started out with pushing.
Then it was following me in his car.
Then it was his hands on my neck.
I got pregnant even though I was diligent about birth control. I’ll never forget the night I found out. I was vacuuming up the t-shirt store I worked at before closing and my breasts felt so itchy I thought it must be my bra. I thought I wasn’t late for my period but I knew something was up. I took a test at home and I cried and cried and wondered how the fuck I was going to tell my parents.
We went to Phoenix and I got an abortion. It hurt so much afterwards and I had some complications that I ended up going through all alone. He kept hitting me and every now and then he would hurl a “you’ll never kill a child of mine again” or two at me.
We broke up when I was 18. I left my hometown and never looked back. I left everything behind and moved before I was ready because I was sick of seeing his face.
For years afterwards I would think about what had happened and the choice I made and I felt sad about the experience but (and this is important) I NEVER ONCE REGRETTED IT. Not when he was hitting me, not when he hurled mean words, not when I went to college and he became a meth addict, not when I graduated magna cum laude, not when I moved to Boston and then out of the country twice, not when I became a teacher, not when I became a writer, NOT ONE SINGLE TIME.
As I’ve gotten older I see a lot of what I was going through more clearly and I’m proud of myself for knowing at such a young age that I didn’t want that man forever or a child yet. Now I’m engaged to a great guy and maybe we will have kids maybe we won’t but I owe my whole wonderful strange crazy life to making that decision and I am really fucking proud of myself.
