A Secret, Friend

Heti speaks my truth

Two years ago I had an abortion. 

I will tell you some things that are shameful. Firstly, that I was reckless about birth control in part because I assumed, after roughly twenty years of being less than careful and never becoming pregnant, that I was infertile and so I decided, sort of, to test fate. And secondly, that as soon as I knew I would terminate the pregnancy, I felt a sudden kinship with all the women I knew who had had abortions. Even before the procedure, I felt a part of something bigger than me. I won't say it provided comfort, because comfort was not what I sought. It made me feel I was part of some special underground community. What I felt approached pride.

I found out I was pregnant when I was home in Chicago for a work thing. I was with my mother. It was May. My father's mother died that weekend. Years prior, my mother's mother had died around this time, around Mother's Day. So much about motherhood, and birth, and death, all swirling around me at once. Seeming ripe with some unspoken meaning of what it is to be a woman, to give birth to generations, all evolving to that moment. 

Of course, I knew even before I took the test (which I took in my childhood bathroom, where I'd gotten my first ever period). I'd always been regular and at Day + Four I was certain. To know was thrilling and decimating in equal measures. Because while I wanted a child desperately, I knew I did not want this one. I did not love the father, did not want to propagate his genes. Did not want to be tethered to him forever. Did not want to look down into my baby's face and see his. All the other reasons were circumstantial -- I was farming, my work was physical, I had barely enough income to support myself and no community. And then the more ambiguous reasons -- that I was still irresponsible and selfish to a fault, that I still wanted every choice available to me, and having a child meant the snuffing out of so many other choices, the erasure of other possible futures. 

When I had the irrefutable proof of the plus sign on the pee stick, I marveled that my body did in fact work the way it had been designed to work. I knew that I would not carry the pregnancy, and began instantly to make the financial and logistical plans to have an abortion. But for those six weeks that I was pregnant, I felt like a superhero, like I had a friend with me all the time, a secret friend that I carried strapped to my stomach. 

For those fleeting weeks I enjoyed being pregnant. It was still so early that the only physical symptoms I experienced were a sudden violent intolerance to coffee and a heaviness in my muscles. I would wake up in the night and feel an extra presence in my bed with me, and it made me feel invincible. 

These days, you are given the option of a medical or a surgical abortion. The medical one, you are given a pill, then ordered to go home and rest -- you shed the fetus like you would a heavy period. The recovery is longer (though not terribly long) and you have to go for a follow up appointment to make sure all the tissue has been properly evacuated. The surgical procedure is just that. A little numbing injection, an anti-anxiety pill and a vacuum to sweep up your insides and deposit them neatly into an appropriate receptacle. As I did not want to have to take time off of work (did not want to have to make up an excuse for why I needed a day off or be so vague as to arouse suspicion), I opted for this method. I would have the procedure on a Friday, rest on Saturday and be back to the farm Sunday. 

I remember the morning of the abortion, contemplating what would be best to wear -- not that I had many options. Realizing too late that the tapered leg of my stretch jeans would be hard to maneuver in and out of easily. Agnes drove me, waited for me, sat with me the whole time, in the room when the procedure took place. An abortion doula. When they came to give me my little anti-anxiety pill in a paper cup, they also delivered merch-- sunglasses, a beer kozie. Abortion swag.

I elected to see the sonogram of the fetus beforehand. I wanted to know everything. See what I'd be missing. It was the size of a poppyseed.

The whole thing was over fast and I felt pretty ok. I went home and slept, watched Auntie Mame on my computer as I faded in and out of consciousness, waves of nausea rolling over me. The worst part was having to wear maxi pads until I stopped bleeding, and wondering whether the padding in the crotch of my work pants was noticeable or not. The only time I got emotional was the first day back at work, out in the pasture, surrounded by the goats, all of them mothers, creatures whose value in this context was determined by their ability to be mothers. All of them possessing a bodily knowledge I might never have, imbued with some innate wisdom of the ages that transcends the boundaries of species. We were at the tail end of kidding season, and babies were everywhere. I knelt down on the grass and cried, because I felt sorry for being reckless and because I knew that I had eradicated what might have been my only shot at being a mother, and because I felt alone. The goats swarmed me and licked the tears from my cheeks.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. And the anniversary of my becoming a not-mother. I am, appropriately, reading Sheila Heti's new book. I am living next door to a dear friend who became a mom a mere two weeks ago. And I am back at the farm with Laini, who despite having no children, embodies an alternative definition of what it is to be a mother, as supplied by Ann Friedman: "A mother is a woman with authority, or with the wisdom of years. A mother is a source or origin. The mother is an 'extreme or ultimate example of its kind.' To mother is to express tenderness or affection." 

I find endless comfort in this definition, and in the fact of Laini's life and the lives of other women I admire who remain childless but whose creative output is so profound and significant. 

Perhaps we should all strive to be mothers in this particular way.