Murderer.
A title many of my friends have given me unknowingly - according to their Facebook posts anyway - echoes in my head daily.
Never have I held a knife to someone's throat.
Never have I pointed a gun at someone's head.
Yet many of my "friends" believe I destroyed a life that hadn't had the chance to live.
I believe that too.
There were days that I woke up and wished I hadn't. The first few months after I killed my baby, I was severely depressed. I went to bed at night wondering how many pills I should wash down with the tequila in my freezer - how many would be enough to end the pain? to end me? - and I wondered how anyone could love a girl who had done what I did.
I wondered how many days it would take for someone to realize something was wrong. I lived alone, relatives never visited, I often went days without talking to friends. It could be a week before anyone would find me, only after missing work.
But I went through day after day. Still hating myself. Still feeling guilty every time I looked in the mirror.
I didn't deserve anything in life that made me happy.
I didn't deserve to have anyone care about me romantically. I didn't deserve friends. I didn't deserve a family. I didn't deserve an education. I didn't deserve to be healthy.
I deserved nothing in life for what I had done, so I gave myself nothing.
I allowed myself to be used by guys who didn't care about me emotionally. I cut off my friends, aside from the scattered suicide-scare texts. I refused to talk to my family. I dropped out of school, and blamed it on my financial situation. I would go days without eating, and then binge eat on my days home from work.
Not only did I punish myself afterward, but the universe punished me that day too.
I spent hours in the bathroom crying because the pain was so excruciating I couldn't move.
At 8am, my body started to empty my stomach - an unpleasant experience that lasted an hour.
By 9am, I was bleeding profusely as the drug kicked in - painkillers did nothing to alleviate the agony of my uterus wringing itself out like a washcloth.
By 10am, I fell asleep on the bathroom floor - my own stifled sobs comforting me to sleep.
Around 11am, I managed to crawl back to my bed - literally on my hands and knees.
Every centimeter I moved sent a dozen new knives into my abdomen, a reminder that my body was angry with me. It wanted to nurture this life, not destroy it.
But the drugs kept forcing it to expel, and around noon, it was physically over.
Emotionally, the pain never ends.
I looked at my still-developing baby and wept.
Out of sadness. Out of anger. Out of relief. Out of shame.
Out of disbelief that as easy as it was to create this life, it was just as easy to end it.
I'll never know if he would've been a boy who looked like his father.
Maybe she would've been a beautiful baby girl.
Knowing that I took away her life without ever meeting her breaks my heart.
Today I would have been approximately 35 weeks.
Every day that my pro-life friends call me a murderer online rips my soul a tiny bit more because they will never know.
They will never know how terrifying it was to sit in a waiting room hoping the doctor tells me it's just stress, only to realize I was going to have to terminate a pregnancy.
They will never know how heartless I felt hearing the heartbeat of a baby that I knew wouldn't be beating a week later.
They will never know how ashamed I felt when I had to drive past protesters and security just to get into Planned Parenthood for an ultrasound.
They will never know how traumatizing it was to suffer through the medical procedure at home with nobody there to comfort me and reassure me that I was making the right decision.
They will never know how much I question my choice every day, and how much was taken from me that day.
Unless you are 1 in 3 women who has experienced abortion, you will never know.
And for that, you are lucky.
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If you would like more detail regarding my experience with Planned Parenthood and why I #StandWithPP, please click here.
