Chapter 5
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Marissa: So Alex told me he'd be there for me, no matter what I decided. I was grateful. A lot of men would tell this to their pregnant girlfriend, but most are leaning one way or the other. Alex wanted me to have this baby, he already loved her. I did a fair amount of research on the subject of ALS. They said I probably wouldn't have to worry about this for at least 30 years. But what I researched, scared the hell out of me. Not being able to control my movements, trouble swallowing, breathing, that I might just die in my sleep one night, painfully. The more I thought about it, the more I decided to die before that happened. But that still left the question about what to do with this pregnancy. I didn't want my child to suffer like that. But I thought about whether it was right to take her choice away from her. Even if she was lucky enough to not inherit this from me, was it fair to her to make her take care of me when it started to affect me? There were enough arguments for having her, or not having her. In the end, I decided to put myself first, and not take care of a special needs child. I told mom, Alex, Megean. They all seemed to be understanding, they never told me I was doing a bad thing, never told me they were dissapointed in me. But I could tell they were, or maybe it was my own guilt. One thing I found myself unable to do, was to pretend that my child wasn't really a person. I kept seeing a little girl, she tried speaking to me, calling me "Mommy." There's no way that every teenage girl, faced with an unplanned pregnancy, could go through this. How could we keep it a secret? So why did I see visions of the child I was about to abort? I haven't the slightest idea. Like I said, maybe it was just my own guilt. I tried to ignore her, and obviously I told noone. They would have thought I was crazy. But she was there, said that she loved me. The night before the abortion, I finally said that I was sorry. She said that she still loved me. Even with this, I was still determined to end my pregnancy. I told myself I was sparing her the pain of ALS, but I was mostly thinking of myself. Mom and Alex took me to the clinic. There were a few protestors out there. Some were trying to hand out their literature, claiming they could help my baby get adopted should I give birth. Unfortunately a few of them were also holding signs in support of Donald Trump, and claiming that dr Fauci was a fraud. This kind of attitude turned off me, and probably a lot of others, from listening to anything they had to say. For a very brief moment, I was almost proud of my decision. But I also saw my daughter, even though I was still pretending that she wasn't really there. I went in there, and the little girl followed me. She was scared, so was I. She held my hand while they did the procedure. Maybe we both needed someone to hold our hand at this moment, even if we were stuck with only each other. Then it was over, and she was gone. My daughter was dead, and I was the one who had to live with what I'd done.