“Empty and Angry”

1980

After my hysterectomy, the anger and resentment I had stuffed down inside of me because of the abortions began to erupt, and I knew then my marriage would never survive my hatred for Jesse.  “It’s me or the baby,” he’d said every time I’d gotten pregnant.  Then he would lead me on.  “Someday we’ll have kids.  There’s plenty of time for that.”  He’d never meant it, and I finally realized that.  And there hadn’t been plenty of time.  Now I was twenty-two years old and going through surgically induced menopause.

I was sick beyond sick, and I didn’t think I would ever get over it. I couldn’t watch a diaper commercial on TV without falling apart.   More than anything in the world I had wanted to be a mother.  Even as a little girl I would stuff a pillow under my baby-doll pajamas and walk around pretending I was pregnant.

God must have intended me to be a mother of many; I was a Fertile Myrtle, and I got pregnant every year from the ages of seventeen to twenty-one.  Except for the first pregnancy, I was using birth control.  But because of my drug use, I would forget and miss taking a pill here and there.  I invariably got pregnant.  Then I had an IUD for a while, but I took it out because it was painful…  So I went back on the pill . . . and still managed to get pregnant.

But not anymore.  The chance for that was gone forever.  And as I began to realize that, I was incredibly angry with Jesse for taking away my dream. I was angry with myself too, because abortion was ultimately my choice.

Motherhood – Part 1
Motherhood – Part 2
Motherhood – Part 4
Motherhood – Part 5
Motherhood – Part 6
Motherhood – Part 7