I have a really hard time with talking about this. I never really got over the shock of it, and people usually tell me I need to move on. I know that it happens to plenty of women, and I guess most of them move on.

Three years ago I was 17, a senior in high school dating a drug-addicted and slightly alcoholic dropout. He couldn’t keep a job, he basically lived off of me and he had a relatively crappy home life. I don’t know what I saw in him. At 17, I was relatively healthy (aside from a temporary period where I starved myself out of a need for control and beauty, even though I had only weighed 115 lbs to begin with). I smoked pot and cigarettes and drank occasionally (AKA every time I was with him). I was on birth control and my period was pretty damn regular. We didn’t use any other kind of protection and weren’t careful in any sense of the word. I remember that month my birth control pills were all crushed up in the pack, and if they weren’t already destroyed they fell apart when I popped them out. I remember thinking how very reassuring that was.

When I didn’t get my period and felt like throwing up every time I entered a new room, I added everything up and hit the panic button. I told the guy and a couple of close friends, who encouraged me to go get a free pregnancy test done at Planned Parenthood. I kept yeahing them and kept putting it off. One day in shop a girl I had gone to school with for years told me she’d just found out she was pregnant. I told her I was pretty sure I was, and she gave me an extra test she hadn’t needed. I took the test and the lines, which were supposed to be negative, came out positive. Now that I knew for certain, I continued to procrastinate going to a doctor. I didn’t tell my parents. I think I told the guy, but it’s hard to remember. I agonized over it, scared and lost. The guy did not work and hadn’t been able to keep a job in forever. He lived an hour and a half away from me. I didn’t and still don’t believe in abortion unless absolutely necessary (ie, rape victim or life-threatening pregnancy) so that thought never crossed my mind.

I remember it was a Sunday morning and I had to get up for work. (Back then I still hadn’t wizened up enough yet to never work on a Sunday. Heh.) I won’t go into the details, but I’ll say that it lasted about ten to fifteen minutes and didn’t hurt — at least not physically. I knew instantly what had happened and I kind of sat there in numb shock. I called out of work, cleaned up and went back to sleep, because I didn’t want to deal with it any more than that. Later I told the guy, and he had been especially unhelpful. He wasn’t very comforting, and only said that it had probably happened for a reason, that there was probably something wrong with it. He asked if I was okay and of course I lied to him, and hung up the phone. For the next few weeks I kind of lived in a numb bubble. I blamed myself, of course. I thought there was something wrong with me. I felt guilty, for not having gone to see a doctor and for continuing to smoke cigarettes (I had dropped the pot and alcohol).

Eventually I told my mom and she took me to the doctor. The doctor ran a pregnancy test but didn’t pick up the hormone, so she told me that it had probably happened but wasn’t likely. (Mind you, this was at least a month after I’d taken the test on my own, so of course the hormone wasn’t there anymore.) My mom said that it happened to women all of the time and most of the time they don’t even know it. I remember being angry with the doctor, who had brushed me off so easily without even an attempt to offer me some kind of support or help. (To this day, I still refuse to see this particular doctor. I still go to her office but I always ask for someone else. I’m afraid that I might punch her for being so insensitive and brisk about such a sad experience. I’ve come to the conclusion, after dealing with other types of doctors in the years since, that it is very hard to find a doctor who actually wants to take the time to help you. Most of them just want their money and to call it a day.)

The icing on the cake was, about a month after, the would-be father cheated on me. He had never bothered to console me and basically ignored the subject. I had no one to talk to. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to talk about it.

If I had carried to term, he would be about two and a half now. There are some days when I mourn the loss, wondering what it would be like to have little feet running through my house. I wonder what it would be like to hold that little boy and hear him call me Momma. It’s no secret that I absolutely adore kids and always have. I know that I was 17 and it would have been tough. The guy I was dating would have cheated on me anyway, probably. One way or another, I would have ended up a single mom. I probably wouldn’t be in college, and I definitely wouldn’t be with Mike. (At the time we met, I would have been ready to pop. No one wants that kind of responsibility that early in a relationship.) There are two sides to the coin. Still, there are some days when I would give anything to have that baby in my life. I would sacrifice my education, my career and the love of my life if I could go back in time and find a way to save it.

I just hope every day that I can have another chance.