This happened to someone. I'm only giving it a story form.
✉️
I was twenty-one when I met him.
I didn't know he was married.
If I had known, maybe I would have walked away before anything had a chance to become real.
But I didn't.
I fell in love first.
And I fell hard.
We were the kind of couple who seemed incapable of staying apart. Every goodbye felt temporary. Every time he left, I was already looking forward to seeing him again.
I thought I had found something rare.
Something worth holding onto.
Then came his thirtieth birthday.
I wanted to make it special.
So I planned a romantic dinner on the beach.
I brought everything myself—food, candles, music, champagne. I found a quiet spot where the sound of the waves could fill the silence between songs.
I kept checking the champagne.
Still cold.
The candle was still burning.
The food was still waiting.
And so was I.
I looked toward the road every few minutes.
"He'll be here," I whispered to myself.
Another song played.
Then another.
I started eating a little because I was hungry.
"He probably got held up."
I smiled at the thought.
Then I stopped smiling.
The sun disappeared completely.
The candle burned lower.
Eventually, I opened the champagne myself.
The sound of the bottle popping made me flinch.
I poured myself a glass.
"Happy birthday," I whispered.
There was nobody there to hear it.
Eventually, the tears came.
I packed everything up and went home.
There were no cellphones back then.
So I couldn't call him every five minutes.
I couldn't send a message.
I couldn't demand an explanation.
I simply went home and waited.
Two days later, he finally contacted me.
And then I learned the truth.
His wife had come home unexpectedly that night.
His wife.
I remember staring at him when he told me.
"You're married?"
He looked down.
"I'm sorry."
I laughed, but there was nothing funny about it.
"You're sorry?"
"I didn't know how to tell you."
"You could've started with the truth."
He didn't answer.
I cried.
He apologized.
I told myself I hated him.
But I didn't.
That was the worst part.
I still loved him.
I couldn't pull myself away from him completely.
So I stayed.
But something inside me had changed.
I started seeing other people.
Not because I had stopped loving him.
Maybe because I was trying to remember that I could exist without him.
Then one day, I went to the doctor to get more birth control pills.
It was supposed to be routine.
Nothing special.
A normal appointment.
Until the doctor looked at the results.
"You're pregnant."
I stared at her.
"What?"
"You're pregnant."
For a moment, I couldn't breathe.
Pregnant.
Me.
For the first time.
I was terrified.
And somewhere underneath that fear was something I didn't want to admit.
I was already attached to the tiny life inside me.
I told him.
He went quiet.
"What are we going to do?" I asked.
He didn't answer immediately.
Then came the words that changed everything.
"There isn't really another option."
I looked at him.
"There is."
He knew what I meant.
I shook my head.
"If I do this, we're over."
He looked at me.
"You understand?"
"Yes."
"I mean it."
"I know."
I made the appointment.
I remember sitting there before the procedure, feeling like I was outside my own body.
I kept thinking:
This can't be happening.
I don't want to do this.
And then it was happening.
During the procedure, I wanted to stop.
"Wait."
My heart was screaming.
Stop.
I wanted to say it.
I wanted someone to hear me.
But it was too late.
And that was the moment I knew.
I knew I didn't want this.
Afterward, he took care of me.
He stayed with me that weekend.
He brought me things.
He made sure I rested.
He was gentle.
And somehow, that made everything even more confusing.
Because how could someone hurt you and comfort you at the same time?
I never forgot what happened.
Years passed.
Eventually, I met the man who became my husband.
This time, I was loved differently.
We talked about having children.
We dreamed about them.
Names.
Little clothes.
A house filled with noise.
We wanted a family.
And then I got pregnant.
We were so happy.
"We're really going to have a baby," my husband said.
I smiled.
"I hope so."
But I lost the pregnancy.
The first trimester.
We tried again.
Another pregnancy.
Another loss.
Again.
And again.
Twelve pregnancies.
Twelve times we hoped.
Twelve times we lost.
Every time, the beginning was filled with excitement.
And every time, it ended with silence.
Eventually, the doctors could only tell us that it was unexplained infertility.
There was no simple answer.
No treatment that could guarantee anything.
Nothing we could do.
I remember sitting beside my husband after one of the losses.
He held my hand.
"We'll get through this."
I looked at him.
"How?"
He didn't have an answer.
Neither did I.
I carried every pregnancy in my heart.
Even the ones that lasted only weeks.
I remembered every positive test.
Every appointment.
Every tiny heartbeat.
Every time I imagined who they might become.
And then I remembered the first one.
The pregnancy I had ended when I was twenty-one.
The one I had wanted to stop the procedure for.
The one I couldn't take back.
And somewhere along the way, grief became guilt.
I began counting.
One abortion.
Twelve miscarriages.
Thirteen pregnancies that never became the children I had imagined.
Thirteen little lives I mourned.
I started telling myself a story.
If I hadn't had that abortion, maybe everything would've been different.
Maybe that baby would've been born.
Maybe my body wouldn't have been damaged.
Maybe I wouldn't have lost the others.
Maybe I wouldn't be here.
I couldn't prove any of it.
The doctors couldn't prove it either.
But grief doesn't always care about proof.
It wants an explanation.
It wants someone to blame.
And for years, I blamed myself.
One night, I sat beside my husband and finally said it aloud.
"I think it was my fault."
He looked at me.
"What do you mean?"
"The abortion."
He was quiet.
"I think that's why I couldn't keep our babies."
He squeezed my hand.
"You don't know that."
"I feel like I do."
"But feeling it doesn't make it true."
I started crying.
"I killed them."
He shook his head.
"No."
"You don't understand."
"I understand that you're hurting."
"I should've stopped."
"You were twenty-one."
"I should've known."
"You made the best decision you could with what you knew and what you were facing then."
I looked away.
"But I wanted that baby."
"I know."
"I knew it was wrong when it was happening."
"I know."
The room went quiet.
And for the first time, I realized something painful.
I had been carrying the same twenty-one-year-old woman inside me for years.
The girl sitting alone on that beach.
The girl who opened the champagne by herself.
The girl who discovered the man she loved was married.
The girl who became pregnant.
The girl who was afraid.
The girl who regretted her decision before the procedure was even over.
I had hated her for years.
But maybe she didn't deserve my hatred.
Maybe she deserved the same compassion I would give to anyone else who was scared, confused, and trying to survive something she didn't know how to handle.
I still grieved.
I still counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
All thirteen.
But eventually, I stopped calling them thirteen deaths caused by one decision.
They were thirteen losses.
Thirteen little hopes.
Thirteen chapters of a life I desperately wished had been different.
And I would probably always wonder what if?
But wondering isn't the same as knowing.
And guilt isn't the same thing as truth.
I couldn't go back to twenty-one.
I couldn't change that night on the beach.
I couldn't undo the procedure.
I couldn't rewrite the pregnancies that followed.
All I could do was finally put down some of the blame I had carried for so many years.
Not because the loss didn't matter.
It mattered enormously.
But because I was hurting enough already.
I didn't need to punish myself forever for being a frightened young woman who made a decision she later regretted.
I could remember.
I could grieve.
I could love the children I never got to meet.
And, finally, I could forgive the girl who had once been me.
