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How To Say Goodbye
Published: 2012-03-05 18:53:04 +0000 UTC; Views: 21758; Favourites: 872; Downloads: 614
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Dear Unborn Child, Whom I Let Go;When I was thirteen and four months old, and you were thirteen years younger, I decided to let you go. You squirmed in opposition beneath my ribcage, up against my pelvis, and I licked my lips and tried to smile while I leaned my forehead on the cool glass of the car, hellbound.
I remember sea weed insertion, dilation, cramps and bleeding. Orange smoothies from Dairy Queen that I threw up, and I hoped you were mingling in the remains of my summer day treat, so I could put this behind me. Pretend I was 'moving on'. I laid in the bathtub of a hotel room for six hours, trying to melt you away in scalding water from a rusty tap, yet you clung on, holding tightly to the walls of my pelvic region. Wiggling upwards, towards my throat. Past my teeth. You're trying to get out, but my family has decided you won't breathe when you're released from your bloody shackles; you may as well settle down now, sweet son, settle down.
The rest of this, to me, is a blur. There is a car ride, and protestors. I know you had finger nails, eyelids, heft and weight. I know how you were created. I am (was) just stupid, and I knew (thought) I was in love with a deviant, and a bastard, but after you are expelled I will go back to him. I think we both knew that. There is a chair, and an elderly woman, forceps, an injection. And after...there is a hazy forty-five minutes where I believe that I have died. Hope I have died. Realize I have not, and blink slowly under the glare of clinical lighting.
I caught a glimpse of you, my boy, before you were completely removed from this world; bloody chunks quiet and gleaming, no longer moving, no longer clawing your way up my windpipe to exit through the gaps in my teeth.
I don't know if I will miss you.
Antibiotics. My mother cried as she handed me the bulky package. I don't know if she cried for you, or for me, or for herself at my age. I will never know, I won't ever care. I don't even know why I remember that she asked me, after, if I was sure. I believe the proper question would have been are YOU sure, Mother. Are you sure the steps you've taken in your life that have brought us to this point were the ones you intended. Are you sure?
I remember you, small being, as I hold my daughter's hand, now. In a crowded mall, or sweeping dust bunnies from the floor in my kitchen. When my youngest wears blue, I wonder if she looks like you would have, and when my eldest stares at me in that unsettling way, that way only children know how to do, I believe that somewhere, somehow, you're staring at me like that too.
Always;
Your Mother
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Comments: 1187
Thank you for reading it. I'm glad that the emotions I was going for were expressed, and understood.
I'm glad you've never been in a situation like that, though. =]
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This is powerful. I don't really have more to say on it. I've never been in this sitution. It's courageous that you posted this. I know that.
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Thank you for taking the time to comment. 
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Every time I see it happen or know it to happen, whether it is behind closed doors or in front of me, I feel a fraction of what you have described - a fraction, and still it leaves me upside down and I could never put it down into words as well as you have. I admire your courage and your lucid approach, your clarity of vision. Thank you for writing this and sharing it with us.
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It's always quite nice to see commentary from you. Thank you for taking the time to read my work, truly. It must be exhausting reading the same sad stuff, over and over. /chuckles
I find that it helps greatly, if I share - It used to be so private, so very much a part of me that nobody should ever know. It was my secret, and secrets tend to hurt a lot after a while; learning to express and then post, where even one person might see it, has helped so much.
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The first thing you should know about me as a reader is that I love heartbreaking stuff. I believe strength comes from pain and adversity - to experience it by reading other people's experiences (be it real or fictional) is to gain strength, too. And also, heartbreak makes us human. If I did not feel heartbreak, I would be no different to a robot. So you should never apologise to me for posting sad stuff. 
I agree with what you say about secrets, and I can relate (as, I imagine, many people can). Too many things remain our private experiences, to churn around on the inside, never to see any light. As somebody who keeps many secrets to avoid hurting others, I can certainly relate to that.
I learn from you and a few others like you who share with such clarity experiences which are everything but calm - and I hope that some day I, too, will be able to do this.
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Ah, you're speaking my language, really. I love heartbreak, human emotion, true stories told well enough to make you actually feel like you've been there, even if you haven't. I aspire to be as true to the actual event as I can be when I share something personal, because that way, I am actually sharing as opposed to just retelling. I'd hate to be monotone, flat and boring.
I know I haven't lived a life that is that bad, I just had some experiences that I feel people can relate to, even if they've never had it happen to them before. The more real it is to me, the more I realize (now) that someone else out there has suffered through the same thing. I know my homeland isn't war torn, I know I don't suffer from debilitating illness and starvation, etc, and it took a lot to learn to look past considering human, every day emotions and instances as just as vital to a story as something more profound.
Secrets are a cancer. They eat at you, eventually they have to come out. Considering my life from 12-21, if I sat on them any longer and didn't expose them to somebody, somewhere, they would probably destroy me - no matter how inconsequential they may seem in the long run. But getting to that point was like pulling out my own teeth.
If you have any recommendations on others who write with clarity, I would love to hear them. I'm always looking for new writers to read.
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Oh my goodness. This is so heartbreaking, it made me cry. It was beautifully and skillfully written, all the raw emotions you were able to push through into this.
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You flatter me. I'm glad that there is emotion in this, though. If there wasn't, then I wasn't ready to write about it, even now - 18 years later. Thank you so much for reading it; and the comment. The time it takes to comment is precious time, and you lent some of that to me. Thank you. 
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It's no problem, and this is actually time I wanted to spend, just writing this comment.
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This is so heartbreaking...I started crying after I finished reading this. Beautifully written though, I can tell that your emotions are genuine.
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Thank you.
I should hope they are genuine! Seeing as it is non-fiction, I was very concerned that I wouldn't be able to accurately relay how it felt then, as to how it feels now. I am glad that you read it and enjoyed it, and that it seems to have come out exactly as I intended.
I'm sorry about the crying, though.
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I just felt so bad for that poor unborn child. If you don't mind me asking...would you have kept him, if you could go back and do it all over again?
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Interesting question.
I think we're really defined by our pasts, good, or bad. I don't know if I'd ever want to go back and experience the entire ordeal again, and I don't know if I would have wanted to keep the baby, though I would not change what happened to me. I was only thirteen...I certainly didn't want to kill it, though. That was my families decision. If I could go back, and change things, I would have put the baby up for adoption, I think. There were a lot of other deciding factors, for me not keeping him, though. I was addicted to drugs, the baby may not have been normal, and of course - I was young. And homeless. If anything, I would have given him a chance to live, most definitely. But keep? I don't think that would have been a good situation. It doesn't mean I didn't (and don't) love the little baby with everything, however skewed the emotions and thoughts came out. I would have wished better for him.
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That's a good enough answer for me, and thank you for answering it. I really do admire your strength and your ability to accept the situation and move past it. You see I used to know a girl at my school who had something similar happen to her. She got pregnant, and her mother forced her to abort the baby, even though she begged and pleaded with her mother to keep it--she really wanted to give that baby a chance at life. Her mother forced her to go along with the abortion, though, and afterwards she became severely depressed. At the time she was already drinking and on drugs, but she was willing to give that up for the baby. She took more of them as her depression worsened, and eventually she made an attempt at taking her life...and she was partially successful, too. She was pronounced dead for about 5 minutes after she hung herself, but she was quickly taken to the hospital and soon after revived. She's the only person that's relatively close to me that went through a situation like this, and I just wanted to get a different viewpoint on in by asking you that question. Thank you again for answering it...and so sorry for ranting to you with this story!
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Please don't be sorry for sharing your story with me, whether or not it happened to you. It's always enlightening to see that others, even if you don't know them, have been through something similiar. I feel for your friend; our situations were close, it was my grandmother who gave me no other option. She sort of ruled our family. My mother showed remorse, after the fact.
I wouldn't say that I attempted suicide, though the feelings were certainly there. I battled that kind of intense, severe depression for years afterwards though. I think in a situation like that, it's a given - you'll become sad, sucked under.
I didn't beg to save the child though. I was reared with my grandmother being the be all and end all of decisions, until she became senile. I think in the last few months of her life, she was incredibly sorry, though. Hopefully your friends mother is sorry as well. It's the least she could do now.
Thank you for asking, too. Conversations like this are always fascinating and interesting to have, and they rarely happen at all. I am pleased to report that this has been a success, at least to me! Even though the subject matter is sad and confusing.
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I'm not sure if that is a good, or a bad, reaction.
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its a good one, i cried because i could really get the mood and connect with the character even though ive never been in the situation. very well written
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:] no problem. and so am i, 6 grade aint no place for pregnancy
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Gah, no. Not at /all/.
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Wow, that must have been a horrible experience and I think you are a very brave woman to write this. I can kind of relate, as when I was 17 years old I had a miscarriage. I desperately wanted the little girl I was sure I was going to have, I was only a few months so I couldn't know but I felt it. I had even picked out a name; Evelyn. Evie for short. But I lost her on the way to school one day. And a part of me still thinks of her today, every day. And misses her. And I always think of her on her birthday. This year, January, she would have been 3 years old.
If you ever want to talk, you know where I am love 
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I am devastated to hear that you had to go through something like that. Every time I got pregant, afterwards (which I know was too early to get pregnant in the first place, but still...) until I was 20, I couldn't hold the child due to the procedure, so I have been there many, many times. I stopped naming them after a while, but the pain doesn't go away. In some ways, miscarriage is worse, because you don't get to choose. You don't have the option. It just happens.
You were young, too - do you ever feel like it was, in some ways, easier and better to not have that child right now? I know I thought about that a lot, afterwards. I was only thirteen, so I am sure, in some way, it was. That is a fairly morose way to end this comment but I can't think of anything else to put...
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I'm sorry to hear that you went through something similar in later pregnancies. My friend, Vikki, was the same as you. She got rid of her child early on and then had a few miscarriages a few years on. She was told she'd never be able to have children again, but she proved them wrong with her first child, Ella, and is now expecting her second child, a little boy!
I couldn't comment on whether miscarriage is worse, as I've never experienced an abortion. That was the first time, and last actually, that I'd been pregnant and although I was petrified and didn't know how I'd manage I knew I was gonna keep her. Because I've always wanted to be a mum. But miscarriages are hard. Whether or not you want the child, having that option taken away from you is just cruel.
I don't think it was better to have lost Evie, if I'm honest. Every day I wonder what I'd be doing now, what my life would be like with her in it. But I do realise that, in hindsight, it would not have been a good life for either of us and maybe it was for the best, although it often doesn't feel like that. She would have been loved, unconditionally, but I wouldn't have been able to provide for her the life I would like to give a child. It was harder because she was a product of rape, and there were moments, brief though they were, that it was better to get rid of her. I was terrified she would look like him, and be a constant reminder of what had happened.
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Speaking as somebody who has had both an abortion, and a miscarriage, I think I would honestly rather have the option, as opposed to having something taken from me suddenly, and without choice. That is not to say that your experience is in any way less awful, though. Hopefully that didn't come across as such.
Miscarriages ARE hard. No matter how one becomes pregnant (and I am so sorry to hear that you became with child in such a harsh and brutal way) that baby did nothing wrong. I hear sayings, all the time, about how if a baby dies before being born, or shortly after, they were just too sweet and innocent for the world. So God took them home. Now, I don't believe in God, but I do believe that they carry no crime on their shoulders. So each time a little baby passes away, it's going to be rough. The loss is painful, no matter how it happens.
At least you were honest, when you said you wouldn't have the best life at that point in time. Being so young, after all, would hamper some of the enthusiasm you would achieve by having your little girl. The unconditional love makes up for some of that, though, because ultimately, love is what pulls people through. It's such a powerful emotion.
In my instance, it was best that it happened. It took me years to realize that. I wouldn't have had a good home, I was homeless after all. And thirteen. I was addicted to drugs. The father was a man eight years older then I was, also a drug addict, and abusive. I might not have had the choice to make, seeing as my family made it for me, but I think (now) it was the best one. I'm glad to have been given another chance, and then another, no matter how hard it was on me in the end. Both pregnancies left me sick, tired, weak, HUGE, and then after, it took years to recover. I wasn't meant to have children, I don't think.
I sincerely hope that one day you will have another child, another chance. Maybe you'll be in a better place. And from our other conversation we have going, on another piece, I think you're in a good place, judgement wise, to know what a child needs, as opposed to what you need instead of the baby. You will make a lovely mother, when the time comes.
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I'm inclined to agree with you. I think to have the choice to keep a child or lose it is a better option, if better is even applicable in this situation. But to not be given a choice in the matter is horrible. Especially if you want your child. I suppose if you weren't overly fussed or had planned not to keep it then it wouldn't be so painful. It would still be horrible, of course. It's horrible either way, I'm sure. But at least you didn't want that child, at least you hadn't planned your life with that child in it. To lose the child when you've named her, planned how you're going to work your life around her. That's hard. Really hard.
That's a sweet saying, although I'm with you on not believing in God it's certainly true that babies do not deserve to die in any way. Despite that, though, I'm pro-choice. I'd never have an abortion myself now. For a few reasons; a) I'm old enough, I think, to cope if I were pregnant, b) I'll be lucky to conceive a child again with my polycystic ovaries and I wouldn't pass up the opportunity if I did fall pregnant, c) after losing my girl a few years ago I could never willingly give up a child now. But I do understand why people do it and do think that in some cases it is necessary.
Love is the most important thing. You can have no material possessions and still be happy as long as you have a loving, caring relationship. But I know that children are expensive and that they deserve more than I could have given back then. So it was, I suppose, for the best.
Although it was horrible, I think you're right and it's good that you can see now that you were not in the right place to raise a child. At least you can justify it, for lack of a better word, and perhaps not feel quite so bad because you know your child wouldn't have had the best life.
Your later pregnancies sound hard :/ Maybe you're body wasn't but your personality, I'm sure, was! You seem like a very loving and caring woman and I am sure you're a wonderful mother to your children now. And that's all they can ask for; a mother that loves them.
As you said, I think you're quite the same; you know what a child needs and I am positive that you provide your children with all your own mother didn't provide you with. As long as you love them unconditionally and care for them and are interested in them I think you'll be doing much better than your own mother!
Thank you - I too hope that I will have another chance and that I will have another child. And I hope you're right - I hope I will be able to be a good mother to that child
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I've just read your whole conversation here, and I just wanted to say I'm really sorry this happened to you!
I hope you can have another child, at some stage!
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Thanks - I appreciate your sympathy.
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I don't know what to say to this, except that I am in awe of you. For being able to write this. For being able to post it. You are very brave, and this is absolutely gorgeous.
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It's strange seeing 'gorgeous' in a comment about this particular piece, but you know what? I'm going to take it.
It was tough to come to the decision to post it, but ultimately I am glad I did. I felt that it belonged uploaded, finally, alongside the rest of my little confessionals.
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I agree. I think it does belong here. But I still think you are very brave; I have trouble even telling my fiance about things that bother me, about the past... To tell the world... I don't think I could do it.
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I didn't think I could do it for a long time.
I know this is just Deviant Art, but to post it takes a lot of courage, yes, but to keep it bottled up hurts more. I used to sit on these things, until I figured out that expressing myself might help me deal with it a little better. Then, when that didn't seem enough, I had to tell someone. Anybody. So I started posting. I took down a lot of work when I first started, it is a gradual process that I am still not sure of. Sometimes, I get right up to the submit button, and I delete everything. It's an odd state of affairs.
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I know how that goes. There are pieces I've written that I've felt the same about, that need to be shared... But I always end up chickening out at the last minute. Maybe one day I'll get there, but I'm not ready just yet. ^.^
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If you ever are ready to share, I would love to read whatever you write. But if you're not totally sure, don't post. The internet is such a hard place sometimes - the critique people sometimes give without warrent really isn't censored on it, anywhere. It's almost stopped me quite a few times.
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Yes. I will definitely let you know if I ever do post; there are a few things in my gallery that I worked up the nerve to submit and then forgot about completely that are more truth than fiction, but there are still other things I'm afraid to let through. And you're right. People, especially on the internet, where they can be whoever they want to be, are often more harsh than receptive to things.
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Too true. The internet is a haven for people out to hurt.
And thank you. I'd certainly /love/ to read it. That and anything else actually. I should pay more attention to your gallery.
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My pleasure, I assure you.
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This in unbelievably powerful and raw with emotion. You've taken a topic that is frowned upon by so many and really shown it how it is. Even if it's short, it is extremely powerful. After reading, I had to just stop and stare at the screen for a few moments - comprehending. This is beautifully written, just like all your work, and all I can say is, "Wow."
In the paragraph just before the end, I believe it should be "my daughter's hand". You forgot the apostrophe; just pointing it out.
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Wow.. couldn't have put it any better....
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