Choices

An account of the impact of teenage abortion on two young lives, and the unforeseen consequences years later.

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Why did you go through with it? Why did you do it? You didn't have to. And now you know you made a mistake. A terrible mistake. One that can never be undone. Ever. How sad. How stubborn. But I'll still love you, always.

I can still see your beautiful face as we lay alone on the shores of the lake on that beautiful summer day. Not another soul around. Your pretty blue eyes filled with love, framed by the beautiful small flowers under your arms. The warm, soft wind caressing us. Your wind tossed hair framing your bright sparkling blue eyes, filled with love. A day that we would always remember. All alone, in a secret place by the reservoir. Our first kiss. The start of a passionate life changing relationship.

Our passion was epic. Our love intense. A love that comes maybe just once in a lifetime. So why did it end this way? No regrets. Life takes different courses, winding here and there, unable to see what lies around the bend ahead. But to see how things unfolded reminds me how incredibly awful the consequences of our choices can be.

I was choked with emotion when I saw your obituary, and so shocked to learn that you had died. A beautiful young woman in the prime of her life. Successful, alive, vibrant, yet stone cold dead. I wept when I read the news. Damn internet. Maybe it would have been better to remember you in another way. Not to know that you were gone. But there is was. Your obituary in the hometown paper. "Aged 44, died of cancer," it read.

My eyes widened. Must be someone else with the same name. My heart stopped. My stomach sank. Oh my god, it is her! She is dead! I couldn't believe it. Not someone as strong willed and determined as you. So, death has no mortal conqueror. I read it again, then wept bitterly. My chest heaving sobs. Why was this impacting me like this?

And I see you again in my mind's eye. Another time. Standing in the bitter cold, shivering in the cold northern wind, with just a light sweatshirt wrapped around you. Me walking ahead of you and turning to look back. Another terrible fight about something insignificant. Isn't is always a hard heart that separates lovers? Seeing your vulnerability. Wanting to protect you, without being able to do so.

We experienced so many firsts together. First kiss, first intercourse, first head, only woman to have taken my cum in her mouth, only woman who asked for it, first simultaneous orgasm, first fuck in public on the beach, first ropes, first diamond, first engagement. And first fists (yours).

We were so foolish. Repeated passionate love without protection. We even wondered if we were infertile! But we knew the day it happened. It was in your childhood bedroom in your family's house. Passionately loving each other on a sweet summer afternoon. Then your cunt convulsed around my cock, and I blasted my cum inside you, for the thousandth time. And it was magical, not just like all the other times. We looked at each other and knew something different had happened. Something very special. A peace was in the air, a graceful peace between us, and a special energy. We said nothing as you got up and went to the bathroom.

Soon your periods stopped. That awful feeling would occur many times again in the years ahead, conjuring up the same dread. But this was the first time.

"Oh, that happens sometimes," you would reassure.

But that sickening feeling would not go away. So you took the test and the nightmare began. The questioning, the debates.

"It is my body."

"It is our child."

"I know it's a boy."

"I do too."

"I love you."

"What should we do?"

Now I can see us a different time. Having lunch in a local cafeteria after learning the test results. The panic had ceased for a moment, and there was a peaceful bliss between us. A happiness. We looked lovingly at each other and smiled. Knowing our baby was inside you. Knowing that we were a family. Feeling that peace and joy in the midst of what we both knew was the coming storm. The tempest, and the pain.

In the end, you made up your mind against my will. I begged you not to, during those days of tormented decisioning. I knew we could make it if we tried. Get an apartment. Stay in school. Other folks did it. But that bastard friend of yours who thought abortion was a form of birth control. Four times already for her. And of course Planned Parenthood, where fathers have no voice, and their bias is unadulterated. Did those bastards also tell you that an abortion at 19 significantly increased your risk of cancer? After that, you were never able to have children. And now cancer has taken your life at the age of 44. A cancer that started near your womb.

You achieved the goals you set out to pursue, and I am so proud of you for that. You fulfilled your heart's ambition. But you contracted cancer a year after achieving your goal, and then battled it for years and years. You were so strong, and I am so sad that you are gone.

We kept in touch throughout the years. Remarkably, we would call each other out of the blue at precise moments of significant decisions in the other person's life. We were connected in a special way, and the song lyrics I quoted to you in another letter after we broke up still ring true to this day: "We're already one, already one, now only time can come between us. Cause we're already one, our little son, won't let us forget."

I first recognized that special connection when we took that hypnosis class together. You had a terrible migraine at the time, and as we lay there on the floor being hypnotized together, holding hands, the damn headache passed from you to me! Many years later, you called me out of the blue the night before I was about to act on a significant decision. Then I called you several years later at the exact moment you were contemplating the same. Then after many more years, I tried calling you again, but you did not reply this time. You were fighting your cancer, although I was not aware of it. I knew something was wrong.

I still remember the horrible day we went to the clinic. We saved our money for a cab so we wouldn't have to cry on the bus, and then walked into that dreadful place, paying cash as they had requested. They took you in the back room while I fidgeted in the waiting room, looking at all the empty faces. Even after they doped you up, I rushed back to the receptionist, telling her to go and tell you that you didn't need to go through with it.

Then I came back to see you and hold you. And caught a glimpse of that dreadful machine.

I took you back to the dorm room, and we lay there, crying in each other's arms. Then we fucked each other again, right there, in defiance of the dreadful events we had just gone through. My cum filled you once again. I can still see the antiseptic on your pussy, my cum dripping out of you. Not the wisest thing to do, but we didn't care. It was a real "fuck the world" moment.

I have since researched the effects of teenage abortion on young woman later in life, and I'm sure you did the same. Difficulty having children, uterine damage, and a highly elevated risk of cancer, particularly if it was prior to a first child, and prior to age 20. I want to believe the events of your abortion and cancer were unconnected, but you may know more about that than I do, in discussions with your doctor. I did know that you never had children, although we never discussed that.

You will always reside in a special place in my heart and memory, though I now know I will never see you again in this life. And as you look down now from where you are now, you can see the wonderful young man I have since raised as a son. The son that could have been ours. How sad for you. I am happy thinking that you are now reunited with our son from long ago.

It is strange to think that I have a family that has passed before me. A family that never was. And yet I know that someday we will all meet again. But it also makes me reflect on the hardness in people's hearts. You had a hard, stubborn heart, and the decision was your own choice, against my will.

But I don't judge you for that. You were who you were. And like all of us, with both good and bad qualities. Otherwise, I could never have loved you so much. I do forgive you for your choice. And now that you're dead, I can write this down. I can't believe it. You are dead. That beautiful girl with the bright, sparkling eyes. Stone cold dead.