Photo by Kevin Pongracz on Unsplash

If you read my first essay, Oh Baby, you weren’t getting the full, complete story.

Don’t get me wrong, everything in there was the absolute truth - except maybe I did not give you the full picture. Especially when I said,

While I was married and ending my twenties, I did come close to having a child, but to my great sadness at the time, it didn’t work out. Looking back I am grateful for not having a child with him because it would have meant being tied to a monster for the rest of my life.

Well, folks, I’ve been wanting to write about this for a very long time, even before Oh Baby was written, but never had the courage to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Now, (which is probably the completely wrong time to do it), it feels like maybe it might be exactly the right time to do it.

Ok, inhale… deep breath in. And exhale, push all of that air out.

And repeat.

Ok, here it goes…

It was not too long after I left my husband. There was a brief, complicated relationship that immediately became sexual. And I have to say, and I know it will be hard to believe, but I knew the moment I conceived. This person came over to talk after not seeing each other for months. He was there for me when I left my husband, helped me out and had so much empathy for my situation. He was kind, funny and understanding. I became wildly attracted to him. I think for him the pull was my situation - being somewhat “helpless” at the time. Vulnerable. Knowing what I had been through, I think he felt like the ‘hero’ at the time, which is very… well, gross, in hindsight, but at the time I thought he was being caring, almost heroic.

The first time it happened, we were having drinks and smoking cigarettes (I was smoking from stress). We talked for hours about my situation about music, his memories from childhood, mine. The radio was on in the background with the volume very low so we could talk. He told me I was easy to talk to, that I really listened to him in a way he never experienced before. He told me he felt connected to me. Then this song came on, and he said it was his song for me - that the words described us completely. Magnet and Steel was the name of the song. I knew it from my childhood. Then he started looking at me funny. I don’t know if it was the beer, the drowsy late night getting to us both or what, but he looked at me in a way that was strange - almost sympathetic. Before I knew it we were kissing. And I melted. Everything was a blurr of lips and hands and hair and suddenly I was being lifted off the bar stool and when I realized I wasn’t flying but was on the ground and he was inside me I was horrified. I tried to push him off me and say no but he kept going and I succumbed. I wanted him there. I remember saying out loud “He’s going to kill me, kill me” wasn’t talking about him but suddenly thoughts of my husband finishing what he had started just days before horrified me. I knew what this meant; I was technically still married, just a few days after the beatings and being thrown out of my house by my husband when this happened. I wasn’t ready. It was a surprise. We were both a little drunk. I was confused for sure. It was passionate and scary and wrong wrong wrong. I wanted him off me and in me at the same time. I never would have thought it, but twenty years later my therapist would declare,

”Maria, you were raped.”

Rape. The word seemed so harsh. Too harsh. It couldn’t have been rape if it became an affair. Could it? I always thought of rape as being violent, in a dark ally at gunpoint or something. Years before I had established that I was raped by my husband when he was drunk and high and I was not and he was beating me and it was violent, it was forced intercourse. I punched and cried. And although I did not consent this time, nor did I expect or want it. I was completely thrown off by his sudden advance. And though it was not violent, because of what I had just been through days before, I interpreted it as a building attraction, passionate and lustful. I was so naive.

We continued what might be classified as an “affair” for about six months. He was married. I was too, technically. Things were different after that night. We had become close. Friends almost but we continued our relationship, coupled with long talks and more than occasional sex during that time. It was not ok, not a good thing, but at the time, I remember wanting him, longing for him. He became a friend, almost brother-like. But I never wanted him for myself. He was happy in his marriage and had a house and kids - things were very different in his life. But I think that during that time, the kind of deep conversations we had, were unique and exclusive to our time together. At least that’s what he told me, and I truly felt the same.

About a year later, when I had my own place and long after things had ended because neither of us wanted it to continue, he came by my place to visit and just say hi. We talked for a long time, took a walk around the woods near the cottage where I was living and caught up with each other. By then I hired a lawyer to begin divorce proceedings (although it would take four more years for the divorce to finalize) and I started working my first teaching job. When I saw him, it was like seeing a very close old friend. We held hands the whole time and I felt very connected to him, but it ended at hand-holding, and he left. He came around again about a week later and this time we walked down to the riverside behind the cottage. We sat and talked for a bit. We kissed and laid down together in a bed of leaves. It was the beginning of Spring. He was on top of me and I remember looking up through the bare trees, their buds just beginning to form, the sun shining in my eyes, and the sound of the river’s rush behind us as he finished and I thought, My God, I’m pregnant. Somehow, I knew. Our love making was just that; so tender and beautiful out in nature and I really felt it the moment it happened. He did too. I won’t repeat what he said, but he knew. We stayed there for a bit in a very tender moment, and when we finally got up, he asked if he could come back the following week. I told him that wasn’t a good idea. He smiled and agreed. We hugged and said goodbye.

A few weeks later I started to feel weird. A bit spacey. My period did not come but that was not unusual because I’d had an erratic menstrual cycle history. One day while having lunch with some friends at work, a close friend of mine looked at me and asked what was wrong with me. Just tired, I said. “You have pregnant eyes. Are you pregnant?” she said in her Puerto Rican accent. “What me? No way - it would be a miracle.” We all started laughing. The girls knew my story and knew I was “alone”. Later, that same friend pulled me aside and said she wanted me to hang out with her after work, that I should come to her house. So I did. She had a pregnancy test and we did it. It was positive.

“You have to take it out”. She declared and offered to help me.

I didn’t believe it. I thought it was a joke she was playing on me. She knew nothing about what happened with this other man. I went home that night and on my way picked up two more pregnancy tests. Both positive. It was true.

I called my best friend at the time who lived in Michigan. We talked about it for a long time. She was a mom herself and tried to convince me we could have the baby and raise it together. At first I thought that would be a good idea. But then I started thinking I was a teacher, single and barely able to afford rent and a car and insurance and the lawyer… no savings at all and the lawyer was also going to file Chapter 11 (bankruptcy) with the state of New York because of the credit card bills my ex had run up in the last days before that last beating - $27,000 in debt he put me. Not to mention if my ex found out I became pregnant with another man, he would surely go out of his way to end both our lives. And this man was married - what would this do to his wife? His kids? The more I thought about it, the more irrational the idea of having a child this way seemed to me. I had no family to help, no money saved, in the process of trying to get divorced, and I was on medication for panic attacks from the trauma I suffered under my ex-husband’s hands. I felt flutters in my belly. My breast became tender. I felt pregnant. I kept teetering between my rational mind and my monkey brain; Having a child felt like the most irrational, selfish act. If I was going to have a baby, now was the time I was about to turn 30. I thought I might not get this opportunity again. I told the father. I told him I thought I should abort. He agreed I should not have it. He gave me the money to take care of it and offered to take me to the doctor on the day of the procedure. I made arrangements with a doctor. My friend from work came with me. I did not want him there. After the procedure, I woke up crying and begging for a priest to come, but they did not honor my request. I was inconsolable for days. He showed up at my cottage. We sat together and cried. I was sure I would burn in hell for this. That child would have been twenty-seven years old this year. I think about it all the time. I know it was the right thing for me. I know it would have been a horrible experience for that child. I think I would have only brought a child into the world with less of a chance of normalcy. As a teacher I see children who have so many disadvantages and families that struggle and I knew I couldn’t do this to a child. I knew that not having a familial support system would have been doing an injustice to an innocent child. I struggle with thoughts of eternal damnation (I am a Catholic and what I have done is a grave sin). When things go wrong for me, I think, well, I guess I deserve this because I prevented a life. When I did what I did a part of me died too. The part of me that was pro-life until I was in that situation. The part of me that naively thought I could make it work alone. The part of me that hoped one day I could become a mother again. I truly believe it wasn’t my path. It wasn’t right.

The affair was the big sin, not the abortion.

Years after I went to a priest and told him all of this. I felt I needed to confess and tell him, and have a good confession and blessing. He told me that in the eyes of the Catholic Church that my marriage, “did’t count” because I was not married in the Catholic Church - I had a civil marriage. And as far as the aborion was concerned I have confessed my sin, made a good confession and was blessed by him and God and could go on to live my life, but of course I would have to live knowing what happened. It took many years for me to feel that what I had done was the right thing for me to do in my situation.

I’ve wanted to tell this story for somewhat selfish reasons for a long time. To get my story out there and talk about my situation. But actually, the reason I decided to do it now, is because I want people to know this was not a decision I made lightly. I struggled with this, and still do sometimes. I am a woman who was raised in the Catholic Church. Despite the flaws of that institution, and there are many, I have this faith embedded so deeply inside me. I am also human and made a grave error. I have flaws. I have made mistakes. Making that choice was not a mistake. I believe it was a way for me to stop the cycle of suffering at ME. I am human and I sin. I have spent my life in the service of children. Advocating for their education, teaching them, doing right by and for them. I took on the burden of suffering in place of placing that burden on a new life. Maybe that’s why it had to be the way it was.

I do believe things work out as they should.

This is one part of my story. And now I have written it.

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