I was a preteen hanging out with two of my older sisters. We were just sitting around the table talking, laughing, munching on chips and drinking soda. Absolutely nothing atypical for a Saturday afternoon. We could occasionally hear our Mom talking on the phone in her room, or watching TV or whatever else a single parent might be doing in their own room on a bright weekend day.

To be honest, I don’t know what my sisters and I were talking about. Probably just the kind of interactions people who have know each other forever talk about. Funny stories, one liners, jokes, music. Sister stuff.

Our mother wasn’t ever particularly demonstrative. It just wasn’t her way. Her care was shown in the wonderful food she would make, in the clean clothes we had, in the rules she expected would be respected. What mattered to her most was honesty. She didn’t know how to be anything but what she was was. Share only what she truly felt. She was always real.

On this particular Saturday, real was all I would get from her. Real in a way I hadn’t foreseen. There would be no cushion, no soft coating of the reality. I cannot know why she chose that particular day to be more real than she had ever been before. She had her own life timetable to work with.

She emerged from her bedroom that day, fully dressed, but not ready to go anywhere. She didn’t seem to be in a bad mood, most certainly not in a hurtful mood. The balancing act between her deep level of honesty and kindness was never too difficult to navigate. Honest ALWAYS won.

“You know,” she started, “I never wanted you,” she finished as she looked at me. My head had turned slightly as she began to speak. Look at someone when they speak to you, I had been taught. My head slowly found its way back into the forward position. I had no verbal response. In fact, the only response I had was to definitively turn my head to look her fully in the face. I didn’t know how else to tell her there was no shock in what she had admitted to. I had known. But her words were to become my talisman to freedom from the weight of believing but not knowing. Knowledge is power.

The years that led up to that moment were the darkest I had even known. Every bad thing I experienced as a child, be it a scraped knee, being bullied, night terrors, throwing up, going hungry, fear, I experienced alone. I had sisters, but they learned what my place in the family was by watching our mother dictate those terms by her behavior.

I never had a support system. Teachers would ask to speak to my parent and I knew that would be a wasted effort. Even if they did get that time with her, whatever issue needed resolution would be left hanging in the air of that conversation.

My feelings of isolation ran into infinity. Literally lost in space. What I got in the place of love and care was coldness and distance. Instead of hugs, I was pushed aside. Instead of help, I was left empty handed. My questions went unanswered. My conversations were monologues. I never learned that people are lovable. Never knew what it was to be loved. I probably still don’t.

I don’t know that my mother would have chosen to end her pregnancy. I do know that my birth and life gave my mother a lifetime of regret and anguish. It forced her to be who she wasn’t. She had to choose between being herself or living a lie.

Do I wish I was never born? Not anymore, but I have, quite often. I have considered ending my own life. The torment of the isolation was just too much of a heavy lift at times. Do I think my mother’s life would have been better without me? Most definitely.

I am one of the fortunate unwanted. I grew up in an area that gave me cover. A large population that allowed me to get lost in a crowd. A lot of distractions from the pain that was my life. The world is not a better place for having me in it, but neither is it worse.

To be pro-choice isn’t in choosing one life over another. It is to understand that a woman must have autonomy over her life. Forcing a woman to carry a child to term isn’t about the birth, it’s about the life that comes with it. To be pro-life is to not understand the basic principle of motherhood. That a woman is tied to a child by more than just DNA.

Women are expected to make every decision for their adult lives. Where they work, where they live, who they see, what they eat, what time to go to bed, what time to get up. How can anyone tell us we are not free to make the single biggest decision we can even make.