I was only fifteen years old, and my boyfriend at the time, “Chase,” was eighteen. We had been together on and off since I was fourteen and my aunt and uncle (legal guardians) hated him. He was a liar, a cheater, and I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. I think I had sex with him for acceptance, which wasn’t a smart idea, but it got him to say, “I love you” so for some reason, it was worth it. My aunt and uncle were pretty strict on me so going to a boy’s house was always out of the question, and I had never really asked until one day, Chase asked me to go to his grandparent’s house the day after Thanksgiving to meet his family, and I actually got permission to go.
My aunt dropped us off there, and made sure to tell me to behave, and even though I was really excited to finally be apart of his home life, I was pretty surprised to find out that no one was actually at the house when we got there. “Oh, they just went to go get groceries,” Chase told me. It was uncomfortable being in a stranger’s house, much less without the strangers even being there themselves, so I just kept to myself, sat on the couch and watched the news. Chase kept trying to get me to go “lay down with him” in the guest room but I knew that his intentions were nothing close to being pure. After a while, he just said, “fine, I’ll go lay down by myself,” and left me there in his grandparent’s house all by myself while he went to sulk in the guest room. I’m almost certain he was just trying to guilt trip me, and being the attentive girlfriend that I was, I followed him so that he wouldn’t be upset with me. The next few minutes, he swore he just wanted to cuddle, but I eventually felt a hand go down my pants, and my zipper being pulled down. I was scared, but I thought I would have the will power to tell him to stop, but no matter how much I told him that I didn’t want to do it, he promised, “it’ll be okay baby, just for a few seconds…please?” He put himself in me and for some reason, I felt so dirty and ashamed and two seconds later, I shoved him off of me. I hated him for knowing that I had no intention of having sex with him, and he still proceeded to convince me otherwise.
A few weeks had gone by, and I was so excited for my sixteenth birthday that I paid no attention to my period, or to the cramping pains I had in my stomach. “It’s just gas, you have nothing to worry about,” my aunt told me, but I knew she was wrong. “Maybe it’s cancer,” I thought, or some other deadly disease that I was unaware of, but pregnancy never crossed my mind until my aunt noticed that I hadn’t asked her to buy me tampons yet. I had never considered adoption or abortion because I was one of those girls who thought, “No, it can’t happen to me,” but when my period didn’t show up that month, I knew that I was carrying Chase’s baby, and I definitely didn’t want it. He had no job, and I was only fifteen so I couldn’t even have a job. He smoked pot all day, and didn’t even have a car. His mother didn’t have money, his father hated him, and the family that did have money to spare didn’t want anything to do with him either. I was a sophomore in high school and I didn’t want to be one of those girls I saw in the hallways thinking, “Wow, who’s her baby daddy?” I made Chase gather up some money to buy me a pregnancy test to take at his mom’s apartment without my aunt having a clue as to what was happening, and as soon as I saw two pink lines show up, I fell to my knees. Was this really happening? With HIM? I wanted to die. It felt like I was carrying around Satan’s spawn.
I finally got the courage to tell my aunt, and she told my uncle and my father. She always told me that if I got pregnant that I would be forced to keep the baby, but with knowing who the father was, she thought an abortion would be the best choice. Chase said he would pay for it in the beginning, but slowly changed his mind and said he should only have to pay for half, because it was my fault, too, but kept telling me that abortion would be the best for me and my life. My aunt resented me for giving up a child because she was having such a hard time having kids of her own, but she eventually forgave me.
The doctor’s office was about an hour away, and I was scared. I didn’t know if it would hurt, or if I would regret it, but either way, I needed to do this. I could see the pain in my aunt, uncle, and daddy’s eyes: they were so disappointed, but they were there with me and that let me know that they would love me no matter what. The doctor met with the four of us and made sure that this was what I wanted to do, and then a kind nurse took me to a room that I could change in, and put on a hospital gown. She guided me to the room that the procedure would be done in and as soon as I saw the vacuum machine, I wanted to run. It looked like it would hurt, but I had to reassure myself that it was for the best. They sedated me with something that relaxed me, but kept me conscious and gave me headphones so that I wouldn’t hear the machine when they were doing the actual abortion: the headphones were pretty much useless because I heard all the sucking and gurgling of the machine and it hurt so bad. I grasped the nurse’s hand and she just told me, “it’ll be okay, sweetie, it’s just like really bad cramps.” Before I knew it, it was over, but it felt like it lasted a lifetime. I was awake for two days straight after that, feeling sorry for myself, but so relieved. Chase only paid back $150 out of the $600 he was supposed to pay, but eventually blamed the abortion on me, and that he only told me it was the right choice because he was telling me what I wanted to hear. In the end, I know I made the right decision and I don’t live with regret over it anymore.
