|
|
Testimonies
| Help us spread the word. Share this with your social network. | | | |
|
|
|
Shame Can't Stick to Me
|
Lauren
Indiana,
United States
|
|
|
I was 15 when I decided to get on birth control. My high school boyfriend and I had been having sex using a condom for a year, and he didn't want to do that anymore. He wanted to feel what it "really felt like". So I let him, once, and he promised he'd pull out. Two months later we went to Planned Parenthood for free birth control since my mom wouldn't help me get any.
They asked me when my last period was, and I thought about it and wrote it down. “Huh, 2 months ago, that's weird,” I thought. I did a urine sample. I remember looking at the pee and thinking, "Is that pregnant pee?" She came into the office where my boyfriend and I were waiting and said we were pregnant. I can't remember if I cried or if I went into shock right then, but I can tell you every detail of that office, down to the paneling and carpet.
She gave us information on having an abortion, said I needed parental consent because of my age. And we left.
We drove to a Mexican restaurant, sat in the parking lot, and had one of the only conversations I remember having about it. He said he was scared to tell my older brother. He said we wouldn't be able to provide for a baby, that he was going to college in the fall. I was thinking about when I was younger and used to march in the Pro-Life rallies with my dad. I held a sign with a baby in a jar. What would he think now? What would my mom do? The house was already too full of people and not enough money, would I have a crib in my room? I just started a new school and now I was going to be the pregnant new girl? I already didn't have any friends.
We decided not to tell anyone. I asked a girl in my class who I knew was promiscuous what to do. She said she could give me her next month worth of birth control and tell her mom she lost it. It would take care of it. She brought it the next day.
It was Christmas, and my big brother patted my belly and told me I was getting chubby.
I took it the next day. It took a week to work, and I panicked. What if it didn't work, would it hurt the baby but not enough for it to come out?
It came out in math class. The teacher wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. I was cramping and crying. Other kids tried to help and let him to get me to go the bathroom. He gave in. I went to the nurse’s office, to the bathroom, and spent the next minutes cramping, crying, and bleeding alone in the bathroom. They called my mom.
She picked me up, and I told her my period was bad. I went home and went to bed and didn't talk about it for years. Not even to my boyfriend. I cried at church, I broke up with him, I cut off my friends, and I changed my college plans. I started dating an older musician. I moved out of the house with him when I was 16.
After him, I met someone more controlling and isolating. I figured I made horrible life decisions, and I couldn't be trusted to make decisions. So I got married at 20. No more decisions necessary. And, boy, he was happy to control. Seven years and two kids later I was able to leave through the help of a women's shelter and slowly rebuild myself.
My self-esteem is a slow process. I didn't connect these dots until therapy, really. The shame, guilt, pain, they change you. Change you from a blossoming teenage girl to a quiet, submissive person who wants the world to end.
And now I share my story and am silent no more so that guilt and shame can't stick to me. I was a child, and I made decisions like a child. Now that I am adult I can help those who are hurting.
I can tell pro-lifers that—those picket signs? Those don't make change. Relationships make change. What if I had someone loving me when I was a teenager? What if one of the youth group leaders noticed me and, instead of punishing me for being promiscuous, helped me see my value and better myself?
I will never know, but that is what I want to do for others now.
I still have dreams about that baby. He would be 16 and his name would be Torian.
|
JOIN US
| Help us spread the word. Share this with your social network. | | | |
Back |
|
|