This is my story of my experience. I still live in the fear of getting pregnant again and having to have another abortion. I find it hard to have sex or even find pleasure in it. I'm trying to find groups near me to talk to and to get over my fears. I feel I need something to make me feel safe inside.

There wasn’t a single protestor to throw red colored water on my white tank top. The only water splashing me in the face was the rain. There weren’t any picket signs to tell me how horrible a monster I was or that it had fingernails. “People are people no matter how small!” they would quote Doctor Suess, and then I’d have to listen. I wore gray sweats to the procedure. I wasn’t in the mood to dress up on a cold drizzling day. The clinic was just a building, not impressive or even a two story. Its mosaic ruby window on the side facing the road was the only sense of artistic texture. I guess you could say I was disappointed with it. You could miss the clinic if you drove by it a million times, and I had. I understood why I never noticed it before; I never had to. There was just a “one way” driveway parking lot with one exit out around the back of the building. There was no turning back. This way.

J and I parked facing the back of a Chinese restaurant; the best in town according to its name. There, mocking me was a billboard on the brick wall: “Have an Unwanted Pregnancy? We can help..” I promised myself to never eat at that restaurant, something about the insinuation in my head make me sick. It took all my effort to unlock my seat belt and open the fogged up door on the passenger side. If J hadn’t driven me there, I doubt I would’ve left my seat. He coaxed me out, and reminded me it was for the best. Best, yeah.

The eyes of the world were on me and the walk to the front door was a dream. I don’t even remember how I got there, and I was greeted by a load of posters taped to the tinted door: No cell phones; have ID ready, search required. I opened the door and found the metal detector gateway greeting me. A chubby security guard with a shaven beard stood and snatched up my bag. The mint green pads I stuffed in there for protection padded the bottom of my bag. That’s pretty much all I possessed other than the cash and my card. It was then I realized that the walls, the desk, the doors, and the man’s uniform all matched a powder blue. Just blue. A simplistic color to give an ease to this airport security check. He unlocked the door to the waiting room, and we stepped through.

A pristine yellow and white play of colors touched everything in the room. It calmed the visitor from the first experience of seeing a receptionist behind a bulletproof window. The hard plastic was thick enough to stop a bullet, but even if it wasn’t, the distance between the lady and I was excessive. I felt suffocated even though I wasn’t behind the window. Or maybe I was. It’s hard to remember anymore with all the locks and plastic. Girls of all sizes and ages strolled in every few minutes. You could tell which ones were getting a procedure like me; their face was a mirror of my own. Nervous, lost, sick and the feeling of premature regret. All of us shoved our noses toward the paperwork on the clip board. The frame bulged from the thickness. Sign this. Don’t sign that. Sign this. Wait to sign this. Sign that… A pink form caught my eye on the door that led to the doctors. My mouth dropped. I had to go alone: “Patients Only Past This Point.” What is the point in allowing you to bring one person with you if they can’t even come in with you past the waiting room?

So I went alone. The gray walls greeting me with swirls of confusion and fear: Black… White. …Gray. All the swirling in the direction of the pee room. I was humiliated. It was just a cup between my thighs and a metal door to place it in afterwards. There was no connection between me and the nurses. They never talked straight to me. It was always through another person and I felt like a subject. Prick of the finger and swallowing the blood through a test tube. Rub the ruby liquid on a slab of glass and they categorize me as positive. No letter; just positive; so very black and white. A paper wheel spinning in their hand like in “Wheel of Fortune”…”6 weeks…” they whisper and they show me how far along I am. They just happened to point out when the delivery would’ve taken place… December 15th. You don’t forget a date like that. Forever that day is ruined. And like that they shove you into a room alone for a half hour to think about it.

The ultrasound room was like any Doctor’s room, but the large machine with the clock screensaver ticking next to me drove me mad. A painting by Picasso, “The Three Bathers” hung on the wall across from the bed: Purple, red, and blue. The bathers were in the order of my heart. I began analyzing the painting. The first bather sat on the sand looking out to sea. Her purple suit twisted so you couldn’t see her face, but you didn’t have to. The loss and confusion as she stared away mimicked my own thoughts. The second bather lay on the sand in her red suit with her eyes closed. The decision is made. She was making the initiative. Her heart was bleeding. The third was a beautiful woman standing in a blue and white striped suit. Her hands tugged at her hair as she cried out to the sky. I feared that I’d feel the misery this woman felt.

The painting was appropriate and I felt a companionship to the cheap copy art in the discount frame. I wondered if they put it there on purpose or if other girls felt the same when they looked at it. For the rest of the time I stared at the light fixture. Blinding myself.

The doctor came in and she shoved the cold plastic in me. No kindness. She asked me if I wanted to know if it could’ve been twins. I wanted nothing to do with it, but the curiosity pinged at my head. So when she printed out the picture of the 6 week old thing growing inside me, I wanted to see it. My friend Marie warned me not to look, told me how hard it had been for her to see her own, but I needed to. I’d gone this far. It was sunny side up yolk on a black and white fuzzy screen. A dot in the middle of the egg creature gave the only indication that it was living according to the doctor. My sunny side up and I intended on scrambling it. I felt sick.

Out the door like that, and they put me into an office to talk to a counselor. It was routine policy to talk to me about of it. Go for it. I already tried reasoning with myself. A girl about my age sat in the prior seat I was placed in before going into the ultrasound room. Her face connected with mine, but neither of us spoke. No wave or smile. It was too hard.

I looked up at the wall above me where all the preventative measures of sexual intercourse hung on pins: 97.6% effective, 99.4% effective and 76% effective… the list went on. The female condoms drooped down in their awkward latex form. The contraceptives placed within the body formed “T”s with octopus wires dangling down out of the top. Thinking about those being placed in me made me cringe, but I knew I’d better think about it now before it was brought up.

The woman who talked to me was only a few years older than me. Fresh out of college and ready to analyze me. I was worried about the money; she was worried about my mental state. Two different ideas that would clash together at some point. That point wasn’t now, and I tried every fiber in my being not to cry. I told her I knew I would be depressed. I told her I rationally thought it over. No adoption. It’d kill me. Not enough money to support it, and I honestly told her how I felt. She couldn’t share it, so why not.

She was surprised how blunt I was, but she didn’t hassle me about rethinking as much as I thought she would; One pill. One pill would take my body into a rollercoaster of emotions and pain. It was better than getting a “vacuum” procedure. I’d wake up and feel violated to no end. Never knowing the process until the scarring pain left by a scalpel haunted my subconscious. At least with the pill I was there with it; in the moment. Maybe that is even harder. Hell, everything about this was hard.

Maroon, the chair I sat in was matching to hers, but she was across a blue speckled table of professionalism. She wasn’t in my seat. Choices and careers separated us, but we both felt the churn of emotions. She could sense my hesitation. She knew I wanted to keep it with all my heart, but it just wasn’t possible. It didn’t work. It never works.

I was back in the chair again. The ultrasound screen was left on and the empty screen seemed to call out to me. I expected a face to appear. I mouth whispering of the sorrow I’d feel and regret. Whispering of the days unlived and the drifting nightmare of this moment.

The door that led me out brought me back to the metal detector entrance on the other side. The guard unlocked the door for me to the waiting room. J waited in the back. I rushed him out, pulling him by the hand the way we came in. As soon as I slammed the door to the car I cried. No, I bawled my eyes out. Why was there so much silence here? The pinging of the rain drops hitting the window shield; my eyes glazed with salty tears. What now?