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Eight years ago, I woke up one morning and was immediately overcome by a terrible sense of nausea. I ran to the bathroom and from there a thousand doubts began to arise. I consider myself a pretty smart person, so my first thought was to buy a pregnancy test, or rather, I asked my son’s father to buy it for me. I was 18 and I had to run to school for final exams. Needless to say, I wasn’t very focused that day, but I still graduated with the highest mark in my class.
In the afternoon, I took the second test of that day. Very positive too, too much actually for an 18-year-old girl.
The world has collapsed on me.
My very first thoughts were:
- I’m going to disappoint my parents a lot.
- I will have to stop doing rhythmic gymnastics.and
- I don’t want this guy to be the father of my children.
Barely an adult and with a baby in my womb, the thought that my life was going to be ruined forever wasn’t even in my top three. I was definitely terrified, but not at the idea of becoming a mother, rather at the thought of how I would be labeled by people from then on. So yeah, I thought about abortion. I had more than thought about it; I had done all the preliminary visits (all with my parents completely in the dark) and had been touring hospitals for weeks to find an available date and someone who would like to do it within the limit allowed by law. And I made it.
On the appointed day I got up early, got into the car, and went to the beach with my parents. I told them everything, that I had decided to become a mother, and to my surprise, they were understanding and very supportive. A few weeks later I made another decision, which was to do it by myself. I knew the person next to me would never make me happy and consequently, my son would never be happy either.
So we broke up and chose to raise him together but apart.
Was it an easy thing? Of course not. I conflict with myself every day and raising a child as a separate couple is terrible, both for parents but especially for children. But I’m gonna tell you, I’d do it all over again.
When they ask me who the hell made me do it I simply say myself.
I would really like to give logical explanations as to how I made that difficult decision instead of going through with the abortion, but there are none. I felt that it was just right, and I still feel it every day, in happy moments, and even in those that suck.
I always tell everyone that I may have raised my son, but above all, he raised me and made me the person I am today.
Did I plan my life like this? Obviously not. But I learned that planning is useless, and the beauty is just accepting and taking things as they come because in the end everything always has a purpose.
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This post was previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: Julien Pouplard on Unsplash