Human beings tend to think the world began when their lives did, and that the best years in their respective countries were when they were young, along with the best music, movies, etc. As I've gotten older, I've studiously avoided using sentences that begin with, "When I was young . . . " because in my early years, anyone who used those words was immediately marked as an old pain in the ass. However, it dawned on me recently that America and I, in fact, have grown up together. (Bear with me.)
JFK was assassinated in 1963, the year I was born (I'm 44, so you can stop calculating now and pay attention) and many mark the loss of innocence in America with that event. The spiritual progression of America since the 50's mirrors many human lives. The innocence of the 50's (childhood) to the rebellion and exploration of the 60's (teenage years) to the carefree fun of the 70's (young adulthood) to the mindless egoism and ambition of the 80's (adulthood - i.e., fresh out of college and ready to conquer the world), to the cynical 90's and 2000's (the lack of belief in the self that often accompanies the loss of youth and beauty, and the delicious irresponsibility that defines it.)
Most of us, except the truly blessed, have things in our past we wish we would have handled differently, as America does. (For the purpose of this column, I will use the term "America" as the collective consciousness of all Americans.) Many believe that the problems America is suffering now, such as the loss of American lives in Iraq, our dismal murder statistics, etc., etc., are some kind of divine punishment for the innocent blood that was spilled here during America's infancy in the name of Manifest Destiny. Of course, I'm referring mainly to the mass murder of Native Americans, slavery, civil rights abuses, etc.
Similarly, I sometimes wonder if the bad things that have happened in my life, or just my refusal to allow myself to be as happy as I should be (considering all I have compared to others) is the result of karma, or God's punishment, whichever you prefer, for times when I acted foolishly.
This may be one of the reasons race relations in America never seem to be entirely healthy. The atrocities were too great to be forgotten by ancestors apologizing to ancestors. There is no atonement. There is only the gradual ebbing of the psychic legacy of pain in the hearts and minds of the victim's descendants.
Though sometimes I'll rail at God for my problems, I tend to think they are my own punishment upon myself for my past mistakes. I have never raped or killed anyone. Nothing I've done has knocked any planets out of alignment. Most of my mistakes have been small in the "great scheme of things." But there is one mistake that has been cataclysmic to my heart and mind for the past 27 years.
When I was 17, my high school sweetheart and I opted to abort a pregnancy. I have never stopped regretting that decision. No matter how it's rationalized, it is taking a life. A human being would have been here, but isn't. Like America, I have committed an atrocity, which has scarred me, and no balm can soothe it or remove its ugliness.
I don't seek God's forgiveness for this mistake. He probably would have let me up for air by now, but I never have. Not completely. I haven't been miserable, either. It's just a nagging guilt way in the back that's always there, a sorrow that can be triggered randomly by something as simple as the sight of a child running on the beach. And every once in a while, I'll think about how old he or she would have been, how different my life would have been if I hadn't been so scared back then.
I still remember the cold, sterile clinic. It was called "Planned Parenthood", a misnomer if ever there was one. Another couple from our high school were sitting across the room, but we pretended we didn't see each other. I remember the fear in her eyes when she looked back at me as the nurse led her into the operating room, and I remember how weak she looked when she came out.
In any catastrophe, there's always a moment when it can be stopped with some decisive word or action. There was such a moment on that day when I thought of rushing in and stopping it, of scooping her up and taking her far away from all the cold, clawing surgical instruments. I wanted to be a hero for her. But I wasn't a hero. I was just a frightened, confused kid. I held onto her as we rode the bus home, both of us numb and empty.
People close to me who I have shared this with usually say I need to forgive myself. I've tried, and as I said, I'm not perpetually miserable. In fact, I'm perceived as a happy person by most. But the one who needs to forgive me is not God. How would I even know if He did? Forgiveness can't come from myself, either. It must come from the child I aborted, which is also impossible. This is my dilemma. He or she was the one who was hurt, the original victim, and the only one who can absolve me of that sin. If heaven is perfect, he or she will be there, and I will get down on my knees, lower my eyes, and beg for the forgiveness I could not grant myself in life.
Some may think I'm being overdramatic, but if I had killed a full-grown adult, there would be nothing dramatic about it whatsoever. Why do we make this distinction between a life that is here and a life that is not, yet? 1.6 million abortions are performed in America every year. It's a microscopic holocaust that we've all convinced ourselves is normal because the victims are silent and defenseless. And every would-be parent who aborts a child cuts away part of their heart forever, if they have one.
I know.
Intellectually, I know that it is ridiculous to judge ourselves too harshly for mistakes we made in youth because our awareness expands as we grow older. We become a different, hopefully wiser person who would make different, wiser decisions now. We were doing our best then just as we do our best now. It's just that our best is better now. Still, the mind persists in thinking of our former, less aware selves and thinking, "How could I have been so stupid?" I suppose the answer to guilt and remorse lies in forgiving the blindness we suffered from then due to a simple lack of awareness, education and experience.
I comfort myself with the knowledge that the child I eventually do have will represent the child who never had a chance, and so will be loved twice as much.
In a list
A contest entry
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Comments
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As an OB nurse who has helped and delivered babies, wanted and unwanted and has helped to deliver stillborn babies including my own, my heart goes out to you. It is a hurt that never leaves your heart. However, as I have evolved over my many years(57) and have worked with pre-Roe nurses and have seen myself the effects of backalley and self induced abortions, the lose of 2 lives in such a horrific way is truly devastating. As a nurse, I have had to watch, helplessly, a young life bled to death before my very eyes or go into irreversible cardiac arrest from taking drugs that she had bought on the street with promises of inducing an abortion. Morality cannot be legalized and I know how you may hurt but can you imagine how you would feel if you had lost both your friend and baby. So, until a hard dick develops a conscious there aren't any better ways to ensure that only one body is lost.
The path to enlightenment begins with pain and the journey to find appeasement. I say this because I have fibromyalgia and chonic fatigue syndrome so I have searched for many years appeasement of pain. Medical science has few if any answers and unless one finds a physcian as good as I have,you are left with little to no care. Since fibro has no one set treatment, it is up to the brave and the few to test and try many paths to find a quality of life worth living. Alternative therapies and learning the answers to the mysteries of life have been my miracle of dealing with the pain and all the encompassing symptoms.
The most spiritual awakening began with learning that we are all connected and that when Jesus talked about sin, he meant missed the mark. The word in Aramaic which is the language that Jesus spoke is an archery term for missed the mark and we are given many other chances to get things right so we can hit the bullseye.
Also, Michael Newton Ph.D has done an extensive study on Life between Lives. He wrote Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls where he hypnotized many in regressive therapy and found that all related the same story of what happens when you die and the journey the soul takes.
We all live many, many times as we return to learn the true meaning of life and to reverse the karma we accumulated in previous lives. (The secrect is forgiveness of self and all others). In his study he found that the soul often does not enter the body growing in the womb until 5 or 6 months and sometimes not until the actual birth. The soul then often moves in and out of the body until the age 5 or 6.
He also learned that we each agree to the life we will have upon returning to earth and we pick out our parents according to lifelessons that we need to learn or to help our parents learn a life lesson and the greatest and final lesson that leads to total atonement is forgiveness.
Another good book is "The Disappearance of the Universe" and "Your Immortal Realiaty, breaking the cycle of life and death" by Gary Renaurd.
Perhaps your experience was the beginning of spiritual awakening and learning the true meaning of each life time we live; learning to forgive oneself and to know that the baby sent back to heaven may have returned in the body of a child you have today or has a very significant place in your life that fills your soul with love.
As one who because of early childhood pain learned disasociation as a coping technique, leaving the body to play with the angels is a truly wonderful experience but one has to learn how to stay grounded to learn the lessons in life and this and forgiveness are my lessons.
You are a spirit of innocence and love;
All is forgiven and all is released. This is the mantra to moving to higher astral planes in heaven and finding peace and happiness.
May you be blessed and surrounded by the Light of Love and self forgiveness, happiness, peace and harmony skye
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Skye,
Thank you so much for sharing your experience with me, and for the information on the books and your spiritual beliefs. I'm going to re-read your comment as well as those books because I really would love to have beliefs like yours. Part of the pain I feel is undoubtedly due to the fact that I have no real spiritual beliefs. I'm agnostic because every religious theory seems like a fairy tale to me, and because I struggle to see proof of the supernatural, an afterlife, etc., and have never seen anything definitive, or at least that I could definitely separate from an imagination constantly fed by despair. My wife is Christian and I know it bothers her that I don't believe as she does.
Thanks again for your message. I really appreciate you taking so much time to share all that with me. I'm very touched by your compassion. Thank you for finding me here. I hope we can become great friends.
Mark
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this was really good. It was a long thing to read... but anyhow. I'm sorry about what happened... I know it was your choice... but I'm still sorry. I know I would regret getting an abortion... I already love my baby too much. I couldn't do it. Best of luck.
CrimsonViper -
America is but a reflection of its environment and history. We contain the elements of change and the pieces of a past and current population puzzle. America is her people the most important part of any country. Despots forget this and use that asset as expendable. Here we make decisions just like they do everywhere. Sometimes correctly and morally and sometimes financially and or politically or religously. The comparison of America and its "mishaps" to having your abortion are not in my humble opinion valid. Let me phrase this a bit differently as I want to do so unemotionally.
Think of your life as a learning experience. Each action and reaction brings a response in your development as a person. As we grow, we make or commit mistakes. Each results in growth as a person. There are many things which compound the problems we face, things like economy, politics, peer pressure, race relations, religion, etc.
How can we expect a young adult to comprehend their actions unless we provide them with all the answers first? Did Planned Parenthood train you and confound you with meetings and books and the personal experiences both pro and con before they cut? I think not. So, you made a decision based on socieities recommendation. "It was ok to do this." So says Planned Parenthood. "Its a option, we recommend" and so on.
To cast blame upon yourself for making a state, perhaps a parent or peer sponsored decision is a bit egotistic, certainly self centered and overly moralistic. Because you see.... that decision was "infulenced" by your society, situation, etc; and your partners also.
It does however, speak well of you. You've grown from this mistake and have learned to value the loss of life, and the loss of a loved one. But, life is not easy for anyone. At the age of 18, I was already responsible for killing men. Performing the final act in the theater of war. Society was my prompt and my costume. Some of our fellow Americans were caught in the violence of a criminal association and are serving life behind bars. Others had their life light snuffed out by the chance meeting of two vehicles in a violent confrontation.
The little gentleman to the left is not your child, but a reflection of your mindset. No amount of self forgiveness will bring him or her to awareness. Now you need to learn another lesson in adulthood. You need to learn to accept your mistakes, you don't need to forgive yourself, but to accept them as a part of the pre-adult learning experience and to use them as a balance when making adult decisions.
Very nicely written my friend. Speaks well of you.
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Thanks, Chuck. You've given me a lot to think about. You're absolutely right about "Planned Parenthood". No attempt was made to change our minds. Maybe they figure the decision should already be made by the kids and their parents and they just do what their told and collect their fee. I think $150 was the cost of a human life in those days. It may have gone up a little since then. (Their fee, not the value of the life.)
I took responsibility for this because that's the way I look at life now, but you're right again about that not being the case so much when I was a teenager. All the adults around us suggested abortion because they thought we were both too young to be parents and a child would ruin our lives. I have fallen into the trap a bit of lamenting over a decision made in the distant past by a much less aware and experienced version of myself. I was doing what I thought was right then, even though it isn't what I would do now.
I also wrote this as a warning to young people that an abortion is something that can't be undone, and for most, a source of sorrow and regret they carry with them forever, no matter how good the reasons were at the time, or how much society conditioned them to make that decision. I've come to believe that the abortion rate in America is a national disgrace. It shouldn't be as easy an almost as common as pulling a tooth. So I chimed in with my story.
You make a lot of good points. As always, your counsel is appreciated, and your opinion will be weighed heavily against my own. Thanks.
Mark
P.S. Re. my being "egotistic" and "self-centered", well, those are my two defining characteristics and I can't do anything about that. lol
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Because we forgive ourselves doesn't mean we have to forget. You may not have taken that trip to Greece and or college would have taken you a lot longer to finish as you would have been working to support the child. What ever our decisions, to abort, adopt or keep are never forgotten. Mark, look at it this way. When the time comes that you do have a child, that you will appreciate more than most what you have. The love you give that child will double. It's not an easy thing to do, to share a deeply personal experience so candidly. But you did it with eloquence and grace.
~Michelle~
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Thanks, Michelle, but I'd trade that trip to Greece and everything else to reverse that mistake, or to have prevented it from happening in the first place with a little common sense. Thanks again for your thoughts on this.
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Challenging
"But by the grace of God, there go I"
At 17 I could just have easily been in this position, but only by luck or some divine protection was I not. My opinions on abortion are quite intense and I won't go into them now, but sometimes I wish I could grab hold of every teen and say "There is no such thing as simply aborting an unwanted pregnancy, there is nothing simple about it"
I don't know what I would have done had I been in same position as you, I'm just glad I wasn't. I have no suggestions on how you can move on.
Perhaps the better person we become because of the mistakes we make goes some way to atone. I don't know, I have no answers and I'll never pretend that I do.
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Thanks, Bex. Don't worry about me too much. As I said, it's always there to some degree but I'm generally very happy. It may be true that the good we do in the world might atone for the bad or foolish things we have done. I hope so.
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october 26, 1988
a day I will always regret. I am blessed with a lovely teenage daughter now and don't think about my chosen loss often anymore, but always on that day, I remember and pray AGAIN for forgiveness.
You were brave to be so open and honest. I think perhaps if more of us shared of the grief that stays with us, we could prevent more abortions. Bless you for writing this.
Michelle
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Michelle,
I'm sorry if I reminded you of a bad memory by writing this. The main reasons I wrote it was to hopefully let go a little more by telling the story, but it's also a warning to the young people on this site. Maybe there will be some cosmic redemption if I can make a few people prevent an unwanted pregnancy, or choose not to abort.
I've always felt that we were kindred spirits in many good ways. It appears we are in this sad way, too. I wish it weren't so, but I'm sure you're a wonderful mom today, and probably even more soulful and loving because of that experience.
Thank you, my friend.
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Thank you Mark for your kind words. I believe I am a good mother. I hope by writing this, it helped you let go, and even if you prevent one person from abortion by this, you have saved a life. I hope many read this, the fact you put this out there, shared your painful experience, you will be blessed, I am sure of it.
thank you, my friend
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