No. #16

"I started getting around to the idea of being a father, almost telling my own family about that. I never got that far because out-of-the-blue, she told me that she wanted to have an abortion."

We were in college. I was 22, she was 21. We were on-and-off, not even together. We didn’t want to be together. Didn’t want anything to do with each other at that point. It was a really ugly break-up. She didn’t even tell me she was pregnant at first. She was gonna keep it from me, but she ended up telling me while she was really drunk.

When she first told me she was pregnant, I kind of heard it and went into myself. Mostly just trying to calm her down more than anything. The whole time trying to not panic myself. I thought I was gonna be a dad. She said she wanted to keep it, she had no intention of getting rid of it at that point. I believed her.

I started getting around to the idea of being a father, almost telling my own family about that. I never got that far because out-of-the-blue, she told me that she wanted to have an abortion. It was hard. A woman's body is her own, and I respected that choice throughout the whole thing, whether she wanted to keep it or not. But, I invested so much in that idea of being a father for those couple months.

She thought she wasn’t ready to be a mother yet. She said that her mom was also a single mom, and she didn’t want to do that again.

I was on the phone with her to support her emotionally throughout the whole process when she went to the clinic. After that, though, I gradually stopped talking to her. After her abortion, she was very guilt-ridden. I never told her how I felt about it, because I didn’t want to set her off. She was very unstable to begin with, and this made her more so. She kept blaming herself, calling it murder.

Sometimes I just feel like I lost something that wasn’t a kid yet, but it was. Maybe like a future kid. She said she wanted to keep it at first, so I invested into it. Then when it was gone, it just hit me. It was really heartbreaking.

Neither of us came from reasonable means at all, so we were really worried about that. We were planning on finding a way to compromise with both our families supporting us, have this kid.

Before that experience, I wanted to go into academics and get my PhD. After this whole experience, I appreciated family and what I have to put after me.

I spoke with her a couple months ago on the phone. She’s from Arizona, so she went back there. She’s been working there, but she’s doing ok from what I hear.

Before this experience, I saw my life as just me, myself. Afterwards, I asked myself how I can help other people. Preferably younger people and students. I decided I wanted to be a teacher, actually. I’ve always loved teaching students, and I’m pretty good at math, so I’m trying to work on getting my teaching credential to be a math teacher.