No. #14

"He wasn’t really talking mostly, he was mostly crying. He was just like, 'I can’t believe she did that to me.'"

My brother's girlfriend had an unplanned pregnancy. My brother didn't even know she had gotten pregnant. They had broken up, and they hadn’t seen each other for a while. Then my brother ran into a close friend of hers, and as they talked and I guess by accident she just let it slip out that my brother's girlfriend had gotten an abortion and that’s when he found out. And he was freaking out after that, of course, so then he called me and he told me about it. He called to meet up with me in person. And he wasn’t really talking mostly, he was mostly crying. He was just like, "I can’t believe she did that to me." He just was crying the whole time; he wasn’t really talking, just bits and pieces.

I was just trying to comfort him. I’m not really good help with the emotions part, so I didn’t say much to him. He was just talking and crying mostly. We talked for almost an hour. He had to go to work after, so we didn’t have a whole thorough discussion.

They were just really young, and she wasn’t that close with her family. She was always moving in and out with her friends, couch-surfing. And she just didn’t really have any structure going on in her life. Her parents were around, but she just wasn’t as close to her parents. She didn’t want to be. It was kind of difficult for her to be open with her parents about that. She didn’t always have a job, so that definitely would’ve sucked if she was unemployed and a mother at the same time.

What surprised me the most was how my brother took the news. I didn’t really expect that from my brother at all. He wasn’t even that invested into the relationship, so I was just surprised to hear him say all those things, that he was freaking out, and how he’d never be able to be a father, stuff like that.

There was definitely a long period of time where he was grieving over that. He wasn’t himself completely. He was just really mad. Not at her, of course, but more towards himself. He really thought that he just wasn’t suited to be the type of person that could just be there for anyone, and it really hit him hard, and there were times where he wouldn’t get out of bed to go to work, go to school. He couldn’t do anything, and it really messed with him for a while. It was difficult seeing that.