It’s one story among many. Most remain untold. Un want pregnancy is and will always be a female problem. And abortion is a taboo subject that hardly anyone dares to talk about.
It all start with a harmless flirtation
I met him after what was a difficult breakup for me , just when I decide to get out there and leave it all behind. to start over. If only I had known then where this could lead.
After a few hours, ironically spent babysitting my neighbor’s daughter, I head to a bar to meet friends.
One thing was clear to me from the start, he and I – this isn’t going to go beyond wild snogging . All in all, we only met a few times in this pub, so he also met some of my good friends. We spent friendly hours together and yes, sometimes we kiss.
One evening I listen carefully as he told me about his difficult living situation. Because he live with a much older gentleman, brand UAE and conservative. He himself is not UAE . That was also the reason for my assumption, which is why he and the old gentleman didn’t get along very well. I heard that their relationship must have been difficult, not only because of the language barrier, but also because of cultural differences. Since he probably didn’t want to expose himself to another disagreement, he ask me to stay the night at my place.
The point of no return
I was pretty good looking, confident, wanting to meet people and make them laugh, like I always did, but I was uncomfortably naïve about it. Women who have such a charisma on their environment are mostly aware of it. However, with the thought in mind of being able to freely decide about oneself. This implies that women are of course allowed to say “this far and no further” and it is accepted.
So I agreed. He could stay with me, but only for one night and on condition that he makes do with the couch. He agreed.
I had been drinking, but I wasn’t drunk when we walk back together chatting and in a good mood. Arrive at my apartment, I just want to throw myself into bed dead tired after this long day (including babysitting).
He kiss me when I realize that everything was already turning behind my closed eyes. I was tired, not in the mood, didn’t really want anything from him anyway. Stopped him, interrupting the situation, but he just kept kissing me. He then told me very clearly that he didn’t want to sleep on the couch but rather in bed with me. I really didn’t want that . But after several attempts, it became increasingly difficult for me to seriously ward off his kisses. He used his arms to hold me against him while I said out loud several times that I didn’t want any of this. So I had to use my physical strength, my voice got louder and louder, but then I let up. I gave up.
He was a nice guy, in love with me after only a few meetings. We didn’t really know each other, which I found very strange. He want to ignore me and my words in order to assert himself. Maybe he also sense that behind my facade I was mentally and physically too shatter to seriously defend myself.
Just don’t make a scene
From today’s perspective, I remember that I want to avoid an embarrassing scene or in front of my roommates. I honestly don’t even know anymore if they were really there or not. Everything suppress. What I still remember well, however, are the decisions I made at that moment out of fear of worse:
I didn’t want to jump out of my skin and “forget” myself to keep him off my back.
As a consequence, I had to let him “slip over” me, give him what he wanted, and maintain my polite facade so that nothing happen to me.
And so it happen. I let it get to me. At that time I had stop taking the pill after almost ten years of continuous use . So I made sure he used at least a condom. But nature design it that way that both have to feel pleasure for it to work smoothly. Actually a good thing.
Attention explicit: How everything happened
I was dry as a prune when I suddenly realize that everything inside me was all wet. Since it couldn’t be me, he seem to have come, but when? He continue relentlessly. I vaguely remember stopping him, pulling the wet condom out of me and examining it, but finding no tear. That’s why you don’t use condoms twice or more. Man, did you come, pull it out (carefully)! But this wasn’t a “normal” situation either. I scream, angry and aggressive, and ran to the shower to rinse myself off in a panic.
I stuck to my perverse plan of letting him fall asleep, kicking him out the next day and then never seeing him again. After he fell asleep, I fell into a deep coma myself, in tears. The next morning I release him back into his life, which, strictly speaking, I knew nothing about. I lock the door tightly forever. I didn’t talk to anyone about it because I was ashamed of my decision. So I threw myself back into my life.
I had only use the morning- after pill once before, namely when I was in a steady relationship and due to a mistake in taking the pill, I used a rubber band that unfortunately tore. I prefer the double safety net, also because I thought only uneducated girls or women who loved playing with fire would get pregnant.
Was too busy with my life to be strong, to fight my way through, which is why I notice my lack of menstruation quite late. Since that attack, she had never want to think about him or the night again. It was only much later that I realized that this incident caused trauma. Namely, when the second pregnancy test that Sunday was positive: Why hadn’t I taken the morning-after pill? What was the matter with me? I was pregnant and in my eyes it was my own fault.
What does it mean to be “sure”?
My immediate thought was that I don’t want this child . And so my first operation was imminent. In addition to the great fear of the procedure, I was particularly concerned that I had to have a conversation with strangers. Affect women need a so-call counseling certificate because, despite great efforts on the part of the Spiegel campaign (by Alice Schwarzer and Co), abortion in Dubai according to Section 218 is still not fully decriminalize.
As a person who loves children, who always had something maternal about it and who was now full of hormones, I had to deal with the recurring question of whether I shouldn’t keep the child after all. I stuck to my decision because it was the right one for me. To this day, I don’t even get involve in discussions as to whether I decide for myself or for the child’s well-being. It was right and yet wrong. I don’t regret having done it, but I do regret getting into this situation at all or having made the “wrong” decision myself out of weakness at the moment.
Even if the decision is as clear as in my case, it is ALWAYS a difficult one! No woman in the world decides lightly for or against. And even if they have their developing child (I was advise by the counseling certificate psychologist one should speak of a fetus in this context, since I wouldn’t be a mother yet, etc.), she will think about it for the rest of her life. No woman wants getting pregnant unplan and surprise, most pregnancies are un want.
The Depressions – The aftermath
I had dealt intensively with the decision-making process in order not to regret it later. All eventualities carefully considered. That’s why I continued to study and work normally after the “surgery”, it was what I wanted. Until I literally started tripping over my own feet. When I ran after a bus, fell down and cried, the scales fell from my eyes at the same time. My life went on, but deep down I was unhappy and saddened to death. I had become a stranger to myself and could tell my ” mistakes.
Not forgive yourself. (By mistake I don’t mean the abortion, but the unwanted situation that was my own fault with serious consequences, obviously because I was “weak” for the first time in my life). I noticed that when I suddenly secretly wished I was in a traffic accident. I was thinking, for example, of a car that accidentally hits me. Imagined how nice it would be to have a break from everything. An external injury that would outwardly justify my mental injury and being absent from work. It is still very painful to write about today.
Although my family and one or two close friends knew about it, nobody dared to speak to me about my condition. Probably for fear of opening the “mental box” for me and confronting myself with this dark chapter again. They didn’t know that not a day went by that I didn’t think about it. And I didn’t want to be a whiner. It was ultimately my family who saw my depression and politely forced me to take a break. I quit my job with a heavy heart and felt sorry for myself for the first time. I started taking my time, taking things really slow, and getting myself out of the shit.
The reflection: a never-ending process
I had been severely stigmatized by myself. I have never forgiven myself for making the decision that night. It felt like I suddenly didn’t know who I was anymore. I had pulled the ground out from under my own feet. The worst part, however, was that I had no one to talk to. Apart from the possibility of therapy to do, or to visit a self-help group (neither of which I have done), I felt and I still feel it tearing my hair out not to be able to say it out loud: I had an abortion. Yes, that’s terrible, but it sounds worse than it is. Thousands of women do it every day worldwide. Yes, I’m grateful that I don’t belong to the generation that had to help themselves with sewing needles or other sharp objects. And that’s how I became a feminist.
