let it matter
CW: pregnancy, abortion, loss, motherhood, please please please skip if you are struggling with thoughts around infertility or pregnancy loss.
I made a playlist for the abortion I had in 2014 and it felt like a funeral that had to happen.
Why?
I was a baby feminist. I got on my own case for feeling anything BUT relief and happiness and empowerment. I said thank God I wasn’t bound to that dickhead for the rest of my life. All the Internet articles and well-meaning friends encouraged me to diminish it to a blob of cells, an unwanted bit of cosmic trash left inside me by someone I hated (still hate), from a violation of my bodily autonomy.
I was in deep denial that what I wanted was to be a mother. It wasn’t the only thing I wanted. But it was something I wanted. And you don’t get a lot of second dates if you tell the dude you’re with that you want kids (but not necessarily with you, man).
I was in survival mode at the time. There was just no time. My internship and life savings were running out. Between interviews, work assignments, and aggressive, adversarial negotiations with the evasive inseminator, there wasn’t psychological space or time.
Practically speaking, I could never have been a single mother at the time. I wanted to, really badly. I know single mothers make it work. But I was in China, and he was powerful. There was no due process, there would have been no way to claim child support, no such thing as social welfare, and I had no idea what (if any) other aid was available or feasible to procure. The public hospitals were terrifying, though I know women give birth in them all the time. I couldn’t tell my parents. I had no support system, which led to my extensive spreadsheet of what I would need to become a mother, with somebody else or on my own. I am done having children, but I still fight for those things for others. Paid maternity leave. Affordable childcare. Affordable health insurance. A living wage. Wage parity with men. No workplace discrimination. Inclusive policies. A separation of population policy from individual women’s rights and decisions. A decoupling of a woman’s welfare from whether or not she is an appendage of a man via marriage.
But, as I stated to the inseminator, years later - we do not live in a perfect world.
I’m a realist. The child would have been half-Asian, and not the desirable white-Asian hybrid that was highly adoptable. If I died in childbirth, they would be sent to an orphanage. I’ve worked in Chinese orphanages. I would not want to put another child into such an overburdened system. If I lived, I have a genetic propensity for health issues that might or might not have orphaned them anyway and left them to the mercy of a world that would have been geared against them from conception.
The inseminator indicated that he wanted a child, but not with me. I offered him the child, no strings attached. He said he wasn’t sure and needed more time.
When you’re five weeks pregnant, you don’t have (that much) time.
“Not sure” isn’t enough when you are talking about a human being you’re about to bring into existence and all its accompanying suffering.
“Not sure” is a little terrifying, when the person you’re about to entrust your child to is…not a great person.
I am pro-choice. Fundamentally. And to his relief, I went the route of an abortion. To his dismay, I insisted on a medical abortion (less invasive) to preserve my mental and physical integrity. I didn’t want to be a faceless woman in a row of women in a hospital in China. Again, I know this is a privilege afforded to me by class, by fluency in English, by my feminist indoctrination. I insist that women have unfettered access to medical abortion as long as it is feasible for this reason. I am even more pro-choice and pro-financial-independence for women, now. But he should never have had a say in whether or not I had an abortion and where and why and how. Money let him have that power over me.
And with all his money and power, he’s done jack fucking shit for the world.
So I said to the little cluster of cells, I’m so sorry, baby. For the man that made you happen.
I might suffer for it, but I won’t let you.
But I never gave the grief time to just sit. I couldn’t afford to. There was money to be made, a career to build, savings and investments to accumulate, my child’s father to be found, a biological clock to contend with.
And now, I have time.
The thought of twenty-something me and a daughter (it was always, to me, a girl) with curly hair and big cheeks, hand-in-hand, alone against the world together. Nursing her. Seeing her throw broccoli to the floor. Hugging her. Letting her slam her door in my face. Teaching her about men and feminism and having her ignore all my advice and fuck the bad boys anyway. Teaching her to decenter men. Cuddling her on the couch every time she gets her heart broken for the rest of her life, because with me as her mother, how could she not? Heartbreak runs in our blood. I wanted to be the mother that I needed and did not have.
Today, I cherish (and yes, suffer through) every tantrum, every poop in the bath, every time my toddler screams, “Mommy! GO AWAY!” - I think, Jesus Christ. What wouldn’t I have given to have this, so many years ago.
Don’t get me wrong. My husband and toddler are not my consolation prize, not even my prize, for the years of planning and waiting and doing it “right.” They are the sweetest and best part of my life. I live for them, and I would die for them.
And yet. Postpartum psychosis felt like that very first whisper of a potential child calling to me. A touch of sibling rivalry. A bit of anger. A lot of sadness. And I understood.
And it’s okay.
It’s okay to love my life now. It’s okay to mourn the life that could have been. Yes, it would have been harder, but I’m not less for not choosing the harder way. I had my reasons.
Like I always said, deep down, the moment the test came up positive, I became a mother, and it never stopped.
This doesn’t have to be true for everyone who has ever had an unwanted pregnancy. And not all women who gestate to term have to be mothers. And you don’t have to gestate to be a mother. And not every woman has to want to be a mother. And if I had not become a mother, I would still have been able to live a happy and complete life. But I owed it to myself, to us, to do my best.
Every decision from that day on was made in an attempt to honour that.
Because it was real for me.
It was not nothing.
You were not nothing.
And I can see her rolling her eyes at me now.
God, mom, you’re so embarrassing.
I can have that now.
No guilt. No justification. No secrets.
And you know, the thing that drives my entire moral framework is making sure that someone in my position will have better options and more resources than I did at that time.
And that’s a legacy.
So thank you.
In case you were curious, or are going through something similar:
Lost Woman Song (of course)
Written all the way through by a human being, without edits.
If it matters, let it matter
If your heart's breaking, let it ache
Catch those pieces as they scatter
Know your hurt is not in vain
Don't hide yourself from the horror
Hurt today, here tomorrow
If it's fragile and it shatters
Let it matter, let it matter
If it's fragile and it shatters
Let it matter, it matters