when i was 25, 5 years ago, i was with a man that i thought was the one. we had been together for 7 years at that point, living together, everything except marriage. he was an atheist, so his opinion of marriage was- why do something in the eyes of god? we had talked about having kids, buying a house, going back to school. now i know that he was just playing house, leading me along. every year he wormed a new rule on me, became more controlling.

it was around thanksgiving of 2010 that i took a test, positive. i told him, and he said it was not the time; that we needed to have better jobs and have bought a house before we had kids. i almost told him that i would raise it on my own then, but with nowhere to go, no family to turn to, no job without his car, on and on, and now i realize that’s just the way he wanted me- with nowhere to go, nothing of my own, no friends, nobody but him, not even his child. when pondering how to raise a child while begging on the streets, i could not bear the thought, nor could i imagine carrying someone i would love so much just to give him away, so i knew he was right. i told my boss i’d need a week off, booked it at the cheapest place i could find, glanced at the ultrasound (which they do more so they can tell how far along it is), was given a shot, and told to fill a prescription. ya, it hurt -as much as a period would. at the follow up 2 weeks later, they said something was still there, fill the prescription again. same deal, until the morning of december 12th i woke in the bathroom in a pool of blood, blood in the toilet, on my clothes, over the whole floor. he was so mad. i felt so groggy. days later, no better. somehow i made it to the follow up. there was nothing left. i had to call into work every morning, and every morning i was weaker. he would come home from work and find me under a blanket in the hall, on the bedroom floor, on the couch. “i got stuck” was all i could manage. he would not bring me food or water, what little i ate or drank was by pure forcing myself to ignore my pounding head, my quivering knees, my shaking hands, then collapse from the effort. finally, one of his friends took it upon herself to help me. i had missed christmas, it was almost new year’s. i told her i was not going to the er, like he told me, so we went to the “by pay scale” clinic i normally went to when i got the flu. they stuck my finger and told me to go the er. god bless them, they finally got him to listen. my hemoglobin was at 6.5. normal is 12, below 8 you get a transfusion, the nurses were awed that i could stand. bags of blood and fluid later, i started to perk up. yes, this is a horror story, something went wrong. too much of those pills, but i don’t hold it against anybody. the chances of this happening to you are 1 in a billion. if given the chance to do it over, i would still have it the exact same. all of that made me realize that he did not care for me, he would have let me go to a doctor before i wallowed around for 3 weeks not eating or drinking. i lost 30lbs in 3 weeks. i was not ready for a baby, and the mother in me could not give one up. i’m glad that baby did not have to live with him as a father, and having a child with him would have made it more difficult to leave him. i now have a loving husband and 2 children, both under 3. yes, i wonder what his face would have looked like, what his personality would have been, but those are selfish wants. i know that he is in a better place than i could have given him, and i would not change any of it. on a funny end note though, the girl who helped me became his next house-playmate after me. well, she can’t say she wasn’t warned.