Any Day Now Part 1

Please Note: Strong trigger warning for the topic of abortion.

Did you know that a fetus has fingernails? The real question should be: why does it matter?

I’m scanning through my journal for snippets to help me remember how everything felt back then. Almost two years ago I quit caffeine to balance my hormones. A few weeks later I went on a camping trip with my husband and woke up next to him in our tent. A gorgeous sunset rose over the lake and I knew something was different. It’s safe to say that quitting caffeine changed my life. It had only been a month and I had accidentally gotten pregnant.

Body: You want balanced hormones? You got it!

Me: Wait… what?

_____

It’s the end of June 2021 and I’m writing down my emotions in an exercise to process them. I’m working through a book called The Healing Choice, because after a thousand Amazon searches and podcast suggestions, it’s all, as a modern society, we’ve come up with.

I write down:

Depression

Anxiety & Panic

Stress over sexual intimacy

Discomfort in response to religion – I note that’s nothing new, however.

Shame or secrecy around professionals, clients, friends, and some family

Stress and fear over menstrual pain and cramping

Confusion

Acceptance

Anger

Shock

Lack of guilt

Grateful

Surprise that I feel most of these things.

Looking back now, the most interesting word that I note on several occasions in a variety of contexts is “grateful.” Despite what else I wrote down, despite the confusion and trauma, I was grateful for the experience because I felt a connection to something unmistakably divine. Paradigm shifting. Life altering.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that the magic did not come to sit inside me temporarily, but rather, exists within me always, simply amplified by the turbulence.

_____

The thing about getting an abortion that no one wants to talk about (other than essentially everything about it) is that it is an emotional war. It is anything but black and white, and feels exactly like the Frederica Mathewes-Green quote from the 1996 article for the Washington Post: –Seeking Abortion’s Middle Ground:

“There is a tremendous sadness and loneliness in the cry ‘A woman’s right to choose.’ No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”

She is pro-life, and yet her quote floats around social media being shared from person to person, out of context, and usually associated with a pro-choice agenda. What I’ve learned throughout this process is that I think she’s right – this sentiment seems to be shared by a spectrum of individuals on both sides of the political scales because, quite simply, no one wants to gnaw off their own leg.

However, the worst of it actually isn’t the gnawing, believe it or not. After that excruciating experience, the best solace society has to offer you is silence. So you drag your heavy, broken body up from whatever dark corner you’ve stuffed yourself into, wrap your bloody stump inside the secrecy of your own home after ordering the bandages from Amazon Prime, and flush the gruesome remains of your leg down the toilet before anyone sees. Then just go on with your life. Because nothing has really happened, and you’re fine. *Insert smooth clapping motion, swooshing hands together up and down to indicate that’s done. Like you just took the trash out.*

I remember racking my brain for any media representation I could watch to help me process my experience. I needed to feel seen, rather than invisible. All I came up with was Juno – that teen pregnancy movie from the mid 2000s where Jason Bateman plays a creepy pervert, and that episode of Sex and the City where Miranda gets knocked up. She asks Carrie (who’s had one abortion) if she ever felt normal again afterward, to which her response was “Any day now.”

It helped, kind of. But watching a high schooler pregnant with her clueless boyfriend’s baby, reluctantly choosing not to have an abortion after learning that the fetus would, at some point grow fingernais, and watching a nearing middle age woman with a “lazy ovary” choose a baby mostly out of fear that another “miracle” would unlikely occur, didn’t really reflect what I was going through. But I did hear the media message loud and clear: What you’re doing is wrong, and that’s why they chose their babies.

I wanted the recounted experiences of women like myself. Happily married, good jobs, no bum reproductive parts. Just choosing what’s best for them and their family – end of story. What I found out, though, was that really isn’t the end of the story at all. At least not for me. It wasn’t simple or easy or without trauma. It was complicated. Likely the hardest decision I’ve made up until that point in my life, and I wouldn’t doubt it if after all is said and done one of the most isolating and depressing times in my life.

But I “chose” it. It’s what I “wanted.” So how could that be? And more importantly, what gives me the right to express my pain and struggle, let alone feel pain and struggle, when every emotion and consequence I’m experiencing is a direct result of my own actions? It would appear that these questions have kept most of us silent on the topic, stewing in the self loathing and secrecy that society doles out easily to those of us experiencing abortion.

I discovered that killing a part of yourself is never easy. But the denial of your reality and experience can be worse.

It’s been nearly two years and rather than tell my story in an attempt to validate my reality and hopefully help others, I’ve kept largely silent out of fear. Fear of judgment, misunderstanding, and confrontation. Not just from others, but from myself also. When everything around you is manufactured to gaslight you into denying your own reality, it feels easier to choose to forget it. Replace all your own truths with society’s truths:

Your pain was your fault.

You deserved to suffer.

You feel shame because what you did was shameful.

You don’t deserve the comfort of processing your experience with others.

No one relates to you because you did something only bad people do.

You wanted this; this is your penance.

_____

I knew I was pregnant at five weeks because I track my cycle so closely, and my period was a week late. Truth be told, getting my period a bit late or early is not completely uncommon, but I felt different before I officially took the three tests – I knew. Still, I was in pure shock when all of the tests came back instantaneously positive, texting my husband who was out of town at the time. He was supportive and asked me “what I was going to do.”

My tidal wave of confusing emotions really began with that simple question. All of a sudden I felt alone. The weight of the world and this decision were wholly on my shoulders. We want the freedom to choose, but no one really explains to you how devastating that reality feels. How lonely. My husband and I would discuss what vacation to go on, what’s for dinner, and what dog food to buy, but this? This was one hundred percent me. “My choice.” My husband gets to opt out. The truth of course, is that I want him to. The punch to the gut is that this want, our want, my want … gives him the privilege of not choosing.

In that moment, I’d have given anything to be him. To pass the baton, not make a decision, to sit this game out. But obviously, I couldn’t. I was trapped inside of my own body -and mind- deep inside a hole no one else knew I was in, lost, trying to muster up the resolve to gnaw my own limb off to save my life. At least the guy in 27 Hours got a movie. I would get my “freedom,” but it would come at a significant cost. And that is why I’m choosing to share this with anyone who cares to read it.

You can be “pro-choice,” you can be 100% certain you do not want children, ever (like my husband and I), you can support Planned Parenthood and donate and volunteer, and do everything you can to support our choice to make these decisions for ourselves. AND you can be devastated when it happens you. Two things can be true at the same time. You can still think abortion is horrible.

You can make the decision you are positive that you want, and that’s best for your family and still fall into a pit of despair so deep that you do not know if you’ll ever find yourself again. You can be fully sure you made the right choice and still cry on the way to work every day for a year. You can experience excruciating pain, realize your body is different, your hormones have been hijacked, and hate every moment of it while being so glad that you’re no longer pregnant.

No one talks about this. This duality exists within us because of the situation of abortion – the choice – the options really are just shit. And the experience is shit. But we’re forced to be grateful for it, because we are, lest we say the wrong thing. One side will say that we must regret our immoral decision, and that’s why our life has derailed, while the other side would rather erase our individual experiences in order to focus on how “safe,” “simple,” and “routine” the procedure is. Fear keeping us all silent when it comes to the truth. The truth is that it’s way more complicated than that.

I made the appointment on Planned Parenthood’s website. I didn’t know where else to go, and honestly, the humor was not lost on me – it was like scheduling a massage or an oil change. Scroll down > Abortion > What’s your preferred time? No phone call or pre-op is required. Getting Botox requires more consultation. How does our society simultaneously treat abortion like this colossal political issue while minimizing the real, lived experiences that women go through literally every day? It’s confusing. Is this a big deal or not?

My brain says it must not be that serious if it’s this simple.

My body says I’d rather die than make this decision.

My husband says to do whatever I want.

My state government says I’m allowed to do this, but it’s shrouded in shame.

No one talks about it out loud.

Google either tries to talk you out of it or tells you everything will be fine.

I just wanted the truth. I scoured the internet for the entire two days I had to process the information, but I never found it. So if this helps even ONE person feel less alone, writing this down will have been worth it for me. The truth is that we’re all different, so you never really know. But from my experience, yes, if you have access and support, you will be fine. In California it is currently legal, and safe, and you’re in good hands (shout out to EVERY person at the Eureka Planned Parenthood). However, if you’re anything like me, it will be excruciating. Mentally, physically, and emotionally. You will miss work, you’ll be depressed, and you will be in pain. You will be confused, your hormones will go haywire, you will feel exhausted, isolated, and alone. You will likely feel some resentment toward your partner. For me, the physical consequences took about a year to resolve, the emotional ones, as Carrie said, may resolve “any day now.” And that doesn’t mean you made the wrong decision. It means that your body and mind have endured something big – it means that you are a human woman with a beating heart.

_____

I went into Planned Parenthood (somewhere I hadn’t been in more than ten years) nervous, and feeling out of place. Like, the time to be here, in this position should have been over a decade ago. My husband offered to go with me, but because of COVID, he wasn’t allowed in, so I went alone. Honestly, the diversity of the folks waiting for appointments, and the calming, kind demeanor of the people working there put me at ease enough to sit and watch the movie they had playing. My only critique of the PP office (aside from my overall critique of how abortion is handled in this country in general) – why in the actual fuck is The Pursuit of Happiness the movie you’re playing in your waiting room? I’m sitting there like an emotional cannon and the best option we’ve got is to watch a teary-eyed Will Smith clutch his son to him in desperation trying to keep him safe while spending the night in a train station bathroom? I laughed. At that point, you have to.

I forgot to mention that when I checked in I also gave them my health insurance information. Something that I was not aware of, that is important to note here if you receive your health insurance through the Federal Government: Due to the Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government Appropriations Act that went into effect on January 1, 1996 (yes, during the Clinton administration) Federal insurance plans

“will not pay or provide benefits for an abortion except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term, or when the pregnancy is a direct result of an act of rape or incest.”

The last time I had received services from Planned Parenthood I was getting my annual exam as a newly graduated broke 21-year-old, using government subsidized aid, aka “the teal card.” Now I’m a grown up with health insurance who thought I was aware of the laws surrounding abortion access, at least in the state of California, and that insurance card may as well have been a post it with an I Owe You written on it. Because I’m an adult who is able and grateful for these services, I chose to tell the truth when they asked me my income and my abortion pill ended up costing us about $650 if I remember correctly. I texted my husband that I had put it on our Venture card, you know, to get the miles.

Everything else is a blur, so I’ll do my absolute best to recount it here. Obviously, some parts stand out more than others, and due to the nature of this content, you may want to discontinue reading onto part two if you’re unsure if reading about my lived reality may cause more harm than good for you. It’s one thing to discuss abortion through a logical lens, using laws and dry humor and metaphor. It’s something entirely different when recounting from the perspective of a real lived experience. And I get that. So here would be your cue to exit – I appreciate every single one of you who has read this far. And for the rest of you who continue to read, I hope that if you’ve gone through this already, my story can help you feel less alone. I’m so sorry if this is the first time you’ve felt seen. But I’m also so glad I can help. And if you’re currently going through this, I hope my story puts into perspective the complexity of your situation. It’s neither good nor bad. You will feel everything and nothing, and that’s okay.

Notes:

Part two will be published on Saturday 5/20 at 9am. Thank you so much for reading.

From the picture header:

It’s fitting that on the eve of deciding to put my writing back into the world, to choose to move forward and heal, it would be time for a full moon eclipse ritual.

“For every Nesta out there – climb the mountain.”

I’m definitely channeling my inner Lady Death as I move forward into this new stage of my life. I surrounded myself with all the things that make me feel strongest as I let go of what no longer serves me to make space for everything I’m ready for.