The author of this story wishes to share it without her name.
For most of my life, I had never had a real boyfriend. I grew up in a conservative, religious household, where sex was a sin and I wasn’t allowed to date. I even got in trouble once for holding hands with a boy on the church van in high school. When I went to college, I was allowed to date (because at this point, I’m supposed to be searching for a husband), but none of the Christian boys from my college youth group wanted to date me. So I kinda just stayed single.
Eventually I stepped away from religion and started living my own life, and started dating. While I got some great stories out of it, nothing really stuck, because dating men in your early twenties seems like constantly dodging sexual advances. And I was scared to have sex. Even without the religious pressure, I still had this deep seated fear of my first time, because I had spent my whole life hearing how this was supposed to be a special thing, and if you didn’t do it right, you were used up and would be full of shame and regret. So while I had opted out from the belief I couldn’t have sex until I was married, I still didn’t want to have sex until I was certain that the person I had my first time with really loved me and wasn’t using me.
Then I met Connor. He was very sweet and cared about me in a way that no one I had dated before him did. I was honestly very suspicious of him, because why was he being so kind and thoughtful? He had to be up to something. But no, he was just a good person, consistently respectful and meeting my needs. So I decided that I would have sex with him.
And that was why my first pregnancy scare happened when I was 26 years old.
One Sunday night, after going to bed early, I had woken up to use the bathroom, and I noticed my toilet seat was blue. I tried to clean it off with chlorox wipes, but it wasn’t changing. So I pull up google on my phone to see how I could fix it, because I was going to be mad if I was going to have to ask my apartment complex to replace the toilet seat in my apartment. Was that even a repair that maintenance would do? I wasn’t sure.
But Google came back with an absolute gut punch. The top two reasons toilet seats turned blue was because a) you had been wearing blue jeans and the dye had come off on your legs, which I immediately ruled out because I literally never wear blue jeans, or b) you had very serious hormonal changes, which were reflected in your butt sweat when you sat on the toilet. Oh and by serious hormonal changes, that means you’re pregnant.
It’s important to note that my period wasn’t quite regular, but since I was living that abstinence-only lifestyle for so long, I didn’t quite keep track of it. I was always prepared in case my period started, and I could usually tell within a few days whether it was starting, but I couldn’t count the days on the calendar from my last recorded period and be like, “I can expect my period on August 18th” with any kind of certainty. So tell me why I went to the calendar and saw that the last time I had my period was five weeks earlier, and decided I had missed my period. Which, combined with the blue toilet, obviously means I’m pregnant.
I immediately felt sick to my stomach. Morning sickness, I presumed. Because that happens at 11:43pm. I immediately started googling how to get an abortion in this super fucking red state. I was already struggling to make ends meet working my full time job during the day and doing food delivery at night--there was no way I could afford a baby. Thankfully, the Tucson Abortion Support Collective provided a lot of useful information. I was able to set up a consultation at a clinic for that Friday.
I also felt ashamed of myself. Connor and I had only been using condoms--I had never been on birth control because I had never had any major health issues that required hormonal regulation. But I was angry at myself for being so reckless--I knew that I shouldn’t have sex without at least 2 forms of birth control. I should have pushed off having sex until my birth control was in order. And since that was my fault, I couldn’t tell him I was pregnant or ask him for help with it. Even though he absolutely would have helped me.
I also knew I couldn’t tell my sister, who was also my roommate. She has a tendency to panic over little things, and I couldn’t take that energy with this situation. I was trying not to panic, myself. Plus, at that time, I was the “more responsible” sister of the two of us, and I was embarrassed that I could have made such a stupid mistake by not getting birth control first.
All week, I would go to work, feeling sick and stressed, thinking about this unwanted burden. Thursday night, me and my best friend were supposed to go to the All Time Low concert at the Rialto. I met her there, and she knew something was off but I was trying to insist everything was fine. But I finally broke down and admitted that I was pregnant. She asked when I had taken the test. I told her that I would take one at the clinic tomorrow and I didn’t trust the store bought tests. (I was clearly very rational.) Besides, I didn’t need to take a test: my toilet seat had turned blue and I had missed a period and my parents both had come from big families, so I come from a long line of fertile women. I was definitely pregnant. This was my fault for not getting birth control before starting to have sex. Maybe God was punishing me for premarital sex after all. She assured me that I wasn’t being punished, and asked if I wanted to leave the concert. I told her no, because this could be the last fun I have before I become a single mom. (Irrational and dramatic. I’m really a winner.) She asked if I wanted her to come to the clinic with me--I told her no, and I already set an appointment with a clinic for the following day. So we went to the concert, and while I was still certain I was experiencing morning sickness during the concert, because that happens at 8:22pm, I still had a great time.
The next day, Friday, the doomsday, I leave work at lunch and head to the clinic. The receptionist was very nice to me as I filled out my paperwork, and handed me a cup to pee in for testing, and a paper gown to wear on the table. A nice gentleman doctor comes to see me and explains the process--depending on how far along I was, I could take a pill and the fetus would eject and I would recover in a couple days. It was actually at that appointment that I learned that pregnancy is calculated by the first day of my last period. Which means I was already five weeks pregnant, and if wanted the pill abortion, I had to have that happen in the next month. He leaves the room with the nurse to go get my test results while I panic about how I was going to get an entire extra $1500 for this abortion, when I could barely pay my rent.
The nurse comes back with a slightly confused look. Apparently, my pregnancy test came back negative. They even ran two tests, to make sure, and they came back the same. I told her that couldn’t be right. My toilet seat had turned blue. She offered to do an ultrasound to physically look inside and see what was there. I all but demanded it.
The ultrasound also came back with a fully empty uterus.
The staff were very kind about my obvious stupidity while I changed back into my normal clothes. I guess they were just as equipped to deal with religious-trauma-based-hypochondriasis as they were equipped to deal with people who had the entire trajectory of their lives hanging in the balance. Because to be afraid that you’re pregnant, and blaming yourself for it, and trying to get an abortion and not really having the financial resources, and generally feeling like you can’t talk about it to the people who love you the most, is a harrowing experience.
The whole appointment cost a mere $60. I got my period the following month.