Hello Free and Flaweders! Below is the anonymous post sent to me for BlogSecret. There are more than 50 blogs participating. “What you will read below does not come from me, but it is someone else’s truth. Someone else’s life. Treat it with care. And, be sure to share your thoughts in the comment section as the author knows where their secret is posted.”
I made the mistake of thinking I was invincible. But to be fair, I was in high school, and everyone in high school thinks they’re invincible. I thought I could do everything, be everything, and never suffer the consequences. While my classmates explored American history, I explored my sexuality. I tried to fall in love, but even then, I knew there was a distinct separation between sex and love. So I had sex, and forgot the basic rules.
Small clues built up to the big realization. There was the fact that my boobs hurt; something I wasn’t used to, even during my period. There was the fact that I was paler than usual, and somehow managed to shed ten pounds where I didn’t have five pounds to lose. There was also the constant nausea, even when I ate my favorite foods. The answer came to me in a blue plus sign in the bathroom of a Burger King while my boyfriend stood outside the door, waiting.
So I made a plan. I was good at making plans. I called Planned Parenthood and made an appointment for the following week. I recruited my boyfriend to drive me there, as I didn’t even have my permit yet. I really thought I could get away with it, taking care of the details and taking steps to resolve my problem. But then I passed out while volunteering in the hospital. If there’s ever a place to pass out, it’s the emergency room - doctors and nurses at your disposal and rushing to your side - it’s enough to make you feel like an extra on ER. By then there were official tests to confirm my blue plus, but thankfully, due to patient confidentiality laws, my secret was safe.
It was Thanksgiving that weekend, but I didn’t want to put it off any longer, especially now that I had been so casually betrayed by my body. I called clinics, looking for a place to make all this go away. I lied to my friends. I lied to my mother, pretended everything was alright as she narrowed her eyes in suspicion. There was nothing available until Saturday, closed for Thanksgiving and celebrating Black Friday. I made the appointment and wrote down all the details I needed to know.
The money was the hardest part. I simply didn’t have it. But I did have a white envelope full of bills that had not yet been deposited from my organization’s latest fundraiser. So I sat on my bedroom floor, counting out the bills until they equaled three hundred and change that would make things right again. I promised to pay it back, convincing myself that I was only borrowing, and not stealing. One more piece of the puzzle fell into place.
I remember that Thanksgiving in snippets. I remember my boyfriend coming over that evening and holding me in his arms, as though I were something to be cradled and rocked. I remember my grandparents and cousins and aunt and uncle and parents watching me carefully, afraid I would pass out again, like I did the night before. I remember begging off to bed early, tired of being watched. But I don’t remember the meal, the turkey, the stuffing, or the general atmosphere. Only the concern and suspicion. Perhaps that’s why I don’t enjoy Thanksgiving anymore.
When I came home that Saturday, woozy from the general anesthesia and cramps in my stomach, I was met with a belated intervention. It was the first time I had seen my parents united on anything since childhood. My mom called my dad and he drove out with his girlfriend. They offered me a snow globe with a dolphin swimming inside, a reward for making the right decision. My stepdad stood there, stoic, while my mom barely hissed anger and disappointment, so upset was she. I wasn’t her perfect daughter anymore, of the A grades and talent and compassion. I was a teenager who made a mistake. A big one.
I told my best friend that weekend, a pillow held to my stomach as she sat quietly with me. I cringed when I went back to school and judged the pregnant girls there, forgetting that I was once one of them too.
The memory stays hidden until something brings it up to the surface. But every Thanksgiving, I remember the decision I made, knowing it was the right one for me. Every July, I count back the years to add them up to how old my child would be now. I always think of it as a boy, even though it was too soon to know the gender and I didn’t want to know anything else.
He would be six now.
When I play with my cousins’ children, building lego towers with them and knocking them down, my cousins ask if I will ever have children. I shrug, thinking to myself what would they say if they knew I would have had a child older than any of theirs.
Do I regret it? No. It was the right decision for me. I wasn’t ready to be a mother then, and I’m not now. But that doesn’t stop me from marveling at how much my body has changed, at how the smallest things can stay with you for so long, how once upon a time, I might have been returning home from a play date with a classmate tonight instead of sharing a distant memory from long ago.
