I often imagine a world where one human sits in front of another human, openly sharing the grief, the pain, the loneliness and the experience of what it is to be beautifully messy. It includes uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

What would we call this? I crave a name.

Brené Brown calls it vulnerability. 

If I were to write from the deepest, most tender part of my heart, I’d write a whole lot more than what you see. 

If I were to write from the deep well of grief inside of me, it would feel like an ocean wave crashing down—hard and powerful, knocking the breath right out of you. 

There are some things we experience that feel safer left inside of us, alone. 

And yet I want to shout from where I’m sitting, “HOW LONELY IS THAT.” 

I’ve been pondering whether or not it actually is safer to leave it inside, tucked away where it’s just ours to hold. Do we keep it inside because we are worried of judgement, of the thoughts that you might think, of the burden you might have to hold if we were to fully share how we feel? 

I know where this desire comes from within myself, the desire to tuck away the parts that desperately need help but feel too painful to ask for fear of judgement, misunderstanding or disbelief. It comes from a place that was created long long ago. 

If I were to tell you I got an abortion a year and a half ago, what would you think of me?

If I were to tell you I actively breathe so that I can keep going, so that I can catch my breath and hold onto it and feel what I am feeling, would you believe me? Does it matter? 

As I sit here and write and talk and explore and explain, I find myself asking: why does it matter so much what you think of me? I think it’s because I usually help you. I am always here to help you, to inspire you and invigorate you. To support, to please, to process and to make you feel good. Help others above all else. Put others first. Let yourself be uncomfortable if it means they feel good. You’ll survive. 

And yet survival is a funny thing. What is it to survive if you’re never actually able to be all there? What if your fear of disappointing and upsetting and letting down is so big that you disconnect from what you need and feel in moments of deep need yourself?

The day I had the abortion I felt like there was no other option. The hyperemesis—the nausea, the discomfort, the medication, the IVs, the disconnect—it all felt too big. I was incapable of helping others in the way I knew how to, in the way I felt that I should. 

“If I just take care of it myself, then I can continue to take care of others.”

But in my heart and in my body, I couldn’t keep following that story line. It was time for the narrative to change. The spirit I held for eight weeks and four days I think knew that I needed to crash and burn in order to rise back up.

I lay on the table, alone.

The nurse walked in and asked what type of music I like. She was wearing purple scrubs and had faded blurry tattoos on her arms. One of them had a name written in old English script. The other had an illustration of a little girl being held in her mother’s arms. 

I couldn’t think of anything. As soon as she left the room I called out “Alexa, play Billie Holiday.”

The soft hum of “I’ll Be Seeing You” filled the room and then it was just me again. 

Staring at the roman blinds, I wondered how many people had tried to peek in to see what was going on inside that room. Wondering if I were to open one, just a tiny bit, would I be met with a sign that reads “BABIES HAVE FINGERPRINTS AT 18 DAYS.”

The doctor came in. 

“You’ll feel a pinch when we numb your cervix and then it’ll be over. You’re doing great.” 

I couldn’t hear the music anymore. I got up, pulled on my sweatpants and walked to a big lazy boy chair. I asked for food and water. I hadn’t been able to eat or drink without severe nausea in weeks. I felt immediate relief. The nurse offered me cookies. I asked for a second pack. 

As I lay there with a heating pad on my abdomen, I took stock of how kind everyone was. How open and inviting and warm and connected I felt. Everyone there knew I had had an abortion. There was nothing to hide. I felt free. 

I dozed in and out of sleep. My girlfriend came to pick me up, holding my arm and my heart all at the same time. I crawled into bed and fell asleep. Reunited with my able body and mind, I knew I could—if I wanted to—once again continue caring for others. 

Finally able to eat and sleep without feeling like the world was spinning around me. Finally feeling like I wasn’t a useless human, and more importantly to me, a useless mother. Finally feeling like I was able to be present and accounted for so that should someone need me, I could hop to and not skip a beat. 

On the day I had my abortion I returned to my body, but somewhere along the way, my heart had left. I was no longer the whole person I had been before becoming pregnant on July 7, I was simply pieces. Broken but safe. Because everything had changed. I made an impossible choice that shifted the narrative I had held about myself for the better part of 35 years. 

It wasn’t until 24 hours later when I lay in darkness in the tightly made bed of the Days Inn that I texted my husband: “I made a mistake.” I was alone, listening to my two living children breathing in the bed next to me. The bright red lights of the alarm clock staring back at me, blinking, blinking, blinking again. 

“I feel empty,” I texted again. And yet I had made the decision. How lonely is that?

I am no longer surrendering myself to others’ needs at the cost of myself. Or rather, I am on the twisting windy road—I am straddling the in-between. The spirit that landed in my womb for eight weeks and four days offered me the gift of seeing me outside of myself and for that I will be forever grateful. This wasn’t a method of birth control and this wasn’t an easy decision. This was the heaviest, hardest decision I’ve ever made and since making it I have felt myself leaving an old identity behind—not the one in my everyday, tender close knit life, the one that is connected to my heartwork. Because when you lose your heart in order to finally ask for the help you need, everything changes. 

—Anonymous