.
Man I have been kind of raring to write this shit about my experiences as some kind of exercise of camaraderie with women or whatever, but all it does is leave me fucking angry. Like why the fuck do I need to write my shitty experience down at all? Will it make me feel better to relive that shit? Will it somehow then make me valuable to discuss this shit with, because I am speaking from experience and not on some bullshit pulpit built on spite? I am clearly not a spiteful person. I have no hate in my body for anyone but some politicians at the end of the day. I fucking love religiously and I am all in if you are all in with me.

I really am not sure because some things I thought I knew are clearly not things I know anymore. People are fucking mean and pretty resolute in their spitefulness and judgment and I am just sitting here like who the hell are we to judge.

Yeah. I was adopted. Yes, because I was fucking adopted I did not want to do that to another kid and wanted my own. I wanted my own baby of my own stock and my own methods of conditioning. I wanted a baby to hold to take care of, to fucking protect and teach and grow and learn and all of the other shit so many of you people get to do. I wanted a daughter. But it wasn’t something I was able to do and sometimes, some women just can’t and in other times, some women just shouldn’t.

I know, there’s always a snarky asshole among you chuckling yeah, she shouldn’t which is fine. Because I won’t and I cannot. There is no amount of wishing or positive thinking this shit away because it is what it is. I have accepted this and it is my story.

I was pregnant once. I am not going to spend some insane time reliving all the gory details right now because number one, you do not care, and number two, I have been caring and carrying this burden long enough.
As you may have guessed, a really good friend from childhood got pregnant the same week I did, just about and had her son who I do get to get reminders about peering online. I have a very visual marker of development for said human being that never was, so I am not without punishment.

There are a few facts about this pregnancy that I will reveal but this is probably not the full story or anything else I feel comfortable relaying right now. But there are some facts.

One, I didn’t think I could ever get pregnant. The blood thinners and blood pressure and I mean honestly howwww? So when I did one day it was a goddamn shock to all. Come to find out as we were discussing with my cardiologist, the suggestion was not that I could not but that I should not. But let’s just relay to you there were many opportunities for this to happen and it just never ever did.

The medication I was on was not great for any baby, number two. My body clearly already had some aortic stresses was number three and what would I do with that giant scar on my belly? Would my baby bulge around that? Would it tear and rip that scar tissue up? So I didn’t think I COULD get pregnant but if I did, the medicine was bad and even if it wasn’t, medical situations would have made the pregnancy probably incredibly painful if there were not larger issues to contend with because I have been sliced in half from groin up and around the shoulder blade. Not a hell of a lot of wiggle room to grow a thing but I was willing to try. One day…

But that day was not that day that I went and found out and discussed the options though clearly my first inclination was I live in fucking New York City, how the hell am I going to do this? And with what resources and money? And once you get past that obstacle comes the others. How practical is this for me? Can I survive the pain of my belly tearing its sutures open with a baby? Will the baby inherit the problem that affected me? Was it fair to bring a baby who would likely eventually suffer my fate with no to zero resources? I had a few years of innocent freedom, basically wrecking my chances for a happy life at 19–imagine having a baby and knowing its life was pretty fucked from birth instead of at 19 like I did?

So we went through the choices and there really was no choice. They did tell me that if I wanted to ever get pregnant, it would have to be well-planned and monitored. So I said okay…next time, then. Next time, baby, my medicine won’t hurt you and I will have lots of people watching over us. Next time, baby, I thought.

The process to do this during this time was not an easy one and I had to bridge down my coumadin which is a week long process at minimum and generally involves a combination oral to injected in your fat or ass shot of lovenox. It takes time and I have had to do a it a few times for planned procedures because of that whole your blood doesn’t clot thing and going through surgery is clearly not something you want to bleed to death through. It was weeks before they let me go in and at the end of the day I don’t even count it as a medical surgery though it certainly was that. 9, 10 surgeries if we don’t count the life and death ones then. I realize the irony and I’d take that back if I could. But I’ll leave that to ponder.

I cannot even remember the day anymore. I mean, I should. It was July. I have the fucking blog but I went in and I did it. I went in to the hospital and waited in the room with all its pyrex and pipettes and I can remember one monitor coming in at one point and grasping my wrist like he expected me to run the fuck out of there as fast as I could. I wanted to, oh my god did I want to, but–it wasn’t right. I didn’t even know then what the fuck I was passing down to a baby to endure. Now I definitely do know what and would like to assume I was not so obsessed with my own image that I would not want to make sure I did not sentence a baby to such a terrible future of pain and suffering and guaranteed poverty. Not to mention the whole the world is on fire and the kids of my generation get to watch a bunch of stuff fade out of existence and die. Of course if I felt I had any other choice I might have tried to convince myself of something different, but–I made the choice I did. And it was right for me but the worst fucking thing I have ever had to endure emotionally in terms of any of it. Fucking heart surgery, whatever.

On top of it was a tricky situation that resulted in me making out with an ex-boyfriend in the span of time I became pregnant and trying to convince my then boyfriend I did not fuck the ex was a job in itself. But I did not fucking fuck him. And the one time I cheated, as in stepped out to make out with someone else, this shit happened. There would be zero point in me lying about this now. Everyone involved is now married with other sons of their own. No kidding.

The months afterwards I was drowning in my own shit basically…trying desperately to save a relationship and the trust I broke and a baby I always dreamt of having was no longer and though I absolutely fucking knew it was the right thing to do, it haunted me. I cried, I cried so much in NY, it was sometimes that kind of place.

That December I was working as a bartender and moved a keg I shouldn’t have. Yeah, post dissection I fucking did that. I felt the tear I knew it happened but I waited. And the next morning at Brunch I felt another tear rip through and I told him and we went. We went to the ER and the question was posed had I just had a baby to which my snarky reply was, yeah, I think you should know that, but no. But I did have a termination 5 months ago.

Your body’s arteries are engorged like you are pregnant and there’s been a tear and it’s the arch and the subclavian carotid next to the vertebral arteries that have split. We need to fix that, they said. Granted my memory sucks for specifics but they said I had a few dissections, something to that effect, though the splits are exactly what happened in its eloquent action.

Natural deduction? I would have died had I tried. But that was the first last and only time I could ever be pregnant and yeah, sometimes it is fucking hard not to wonder what if? I felt I had no choice and maybe I did and maybe it was better and maybe I would have died and maybe not. Point is we could never know all of it, every outcome, and why should we endure it all?