So many times in my life, I’ve told myself “that’s not going to be me”, as if I were somehow immune to the effects of my decisions and experiences.

But every time, life catches up to me and kicks me right in the ass. Perhaps it’s karma. Perhaps it’s just the result of being human. As much as I try to hide it, as much as I try to manage it all on my own, to suffer in silence, it wears on me.

I wrote this status Tuesday morning, the day after I made one of the hardest decisions of my life.

I keep doing this to myself. I keep telling myself that somehow, it’s going to be different for me. And it never is.

I make bad decisions. I don’t think of the consequences. I used and told myself I’d never be an addict. I drank and told myself I’d never be an alcoholic. I smoked and told myself I’d never be sick. And yet I am all of those things.

I get involved with people I shouldn’t. I do things I don’t really want to do, but I don’t know any different. I don’t know how to say no. I’m not sure I’m allowed to.  So I do it and convince myself that nothing bad will come out of it.

Until something did.

I tried to ignore it. I hoped that somehow, I would wake up one day and everything would be back to normal. But that wasn’t happening. And I didn’t know what to do.

I wanted to die. The sadness, the hopelessness, and the shame were damaging me from the inside out. I wanted someone to know, I wanted someone to help me, but I couldn’t find the words to say what I had done. All I could say was I don’t want to live anymore.

I hid my reality for weeks. I battled with myself, trying to stay alive when part of me just wanted to give up. I wanted someone to tell me it was going to be okay, yet I was so afraid of telling the truth. But it became too much to hide. The weight gain. The nausea. The emotional clusterfuck I had become.

I sat down with the nurse at PHP. I told her there was something I needed to tell her. I handed her my heart medication, which I had been hoarding. But that wasn’t all that I was hiding, and the nurse knew that. I tried to hold it in, but she kept pushing. Then I finally uttered the truth I tried so hard to deny — I’m pregnant.

I couldn’t look her in the face because I was so ashamed. I wanted to run away. I wanted to take back the truth. You can never unsay what’s been said. It took everything in me just to mutter those two words to her. I sat there begging her not to tell anyone. But part of me knew that she had to tell my therapist. And she did.

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting. Anger. Disappointment. Frustration. Judgment. I sat there shaking, afraid of what my therapist was going to say. But she wasn’t mad. She wasn’t disappointed. She wasn’t even surprised. I think she already knew.

I thought telling someone would make things better, but I was still a mess. And I was running out of time. I didn’t tell anyone how far along I was. I knew I had to make a decision.

I knew logically I could never have this baby. I have COPD. I have a heart condition. My body can barely handle taking care of me. I can barely handle taking care of me. I have no money, no job, and no sense of how to be a parent. I smoked. I drank. I starved myself. I took medications that shouldn’t be taken while pregnant. I did all the wrong things in the worst ways.

But this baby would have been my chance at having a real family. Someone who shares my blood, my genes, and my biology. The connection I have been missing since I ran away. A reason to live. And yet the fear of being a mother, of being my mother, is strong enough that it overrides any benefits of having a child.

I didn’t expect it to be so hard. I wasn’t attached. I knew it was for the better. Yet hours before my appointment, I broke down. I started to doubt my decision. I started to doubt everything. Why am I crying? My therapist sat me down and told me it was okay to cry. She told me it was okay to feel however I was feeling. The decision was mine to make.

So I went through with it. No one outside of therapy knew what was going on. I went home and pretended like everything was okay. I did laundry. I cooked dinner. I baked dozens of cookies. I went to therapy. I acted like it was a regular day. And yet, at the same time, I was losing my baby.

I don’t think I’ve ever cried more than I have this past week. And I can’t understand it. They say it’s grieving. But how can I grieve something I caused the loss of? How can I grieve someone I never met? How can I grieve what I knew I could never have?

All I can think is how I’ve done what my mother should have done to me. I spared a child a life of misery and pain. I saved her in a way I wish I would’ve been saved.