My Not-So-Little Secret
Hello everyone reading this, my name is...
Actually, I'm not going to tell you my name cause I can already feel you judging me. You don't have the full story, yet you're judging me based on the title of my story.
Well, I’ll start here. I was not a naive 16-year- old when it happened, like how we often hear in the stories. I was 23 when I realized I was pregnant.
My parents were definitely going to disown me if they knew and I couldn't even afford to have a child on my own. The father? I am not even going to talk about him.
I told nobody because I was afraid of being judged and ashamed. I didn't tell anyone about the baby in me, so let's call it my secret. I did not tell my mother, father, sister or friends.
On that day, I went somewhere and bought some drugs. I hid in my room and took the drugs. I had read online that the combination of the drugs I bought would help me be free of my secret.
I didn't buy any painkillers because I knew I deserved the pain. I cried that day as I bled, it was horrible, I rolled on the floor, drenched in my blood and the blood of my secret and as much as the pain was I never screamed for help as I told myself I deserved the pain.
So I stayed on the floor bleeding, running a fever and vomiting, because if anyone ever knew my secret my life would be over. I bled for four days straight, almost like I was on my period. After those four days, I had another secret, one I would never tell anybody.
I wondered if my first secret was over, I pondered on going to the hospital for a check up just to make sure there was no more secret retained in me. Eventually, I went to the hospital but I could not voice the words out so instead I told the doctor that I had malaria. I brought the antimalarial tablets home and cried again.
I now had a two-in-one secret—a baby, a dead baby. For the next three months, I did not get my period and I worried. Did something go wrong? I bought pregnancy strips to check at home. This time it said negative.
Still I told not a single soul. When I Googled, I saw that not getting my period after an abortion was nothing to be worried about.
The fourth month after my second secret, I got my period. It was heavy and painful and for the next year that was how all my periods came. I used to have my periods for four days and now I have them for 5-7 days.
It's been two years now and I've never told anyone about it. I still haven't gone for a full check up because I'm ashamed and afraid of being judged. There's a stigma of shame associated with people who have carried out an abortion. I can't even tell myself I had an abortion, I just think about it as my secret.
I'm writing this now to tell you about it. I wonder if there is anyone going through what I experienced.
I could have died, anything could have happened to me and my secret. I did not get a safe abortion just because I was afraid of what you would call me and now I wonder how many other girls have lost their lives through something like this.
Now I'm dedicating this paragraph to you;
Stop judging and shaming.
Let that culture die.
Help me, help her, help them.
It's been two years now and I still haven't gone for any medical check up. It's been two years now and I still haven't spoken to anyone about it.
Well now that you know about it, will you judge me or will you curse me. Safe abortion can only be possible if we stop shaming people for it.