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How could everything change in three minutes? How could every dream I’d ever had shatter at my feet in such an insignificant amount of time? Every good feeling fled my body as utter panic set in.
Three minutes is all it took to change my world. To thrust choices on me I didn’t want to make. To face wounds I’d thought long hidden.
My hands shook as I picked up the test from the tile. The two pink lines screamed at me in that small window. The plastic dug into my palm as I wrapped my arms around my legs, drawing my knees to my chest.
Sam thought I was the responsible sister. That I could handle anything. But here I was, trembling, destroyed by something so normal. Something others wished and begged for.
But they weren’t my wishes. They weren’t my dreams. I’d already spent my whole life caring for Samantha. That was all I saw in my future. More responsibility. More people leaning on me. Nothing left for myself.
I would be a terrible mother; I knew it. Deep in my bones, I knew I’d fail this child. That I wouldn’t be able to give them the love and stability they needed.
I felt numb. Unable to move. How could I make this mistake? This decision? Because it wasn’t only mine.
I turned, fumbling to reach my ringing phone. I hadn’t even realized the alarm was still going off. My fingers trembled as they slid across the screen. I clicked on the name. Looking for any kind of comfort. Support, when it felt like my world was shifting around me.
“Hey, what’s up?” I sighed when my sister’s familiar voice answered. Maybe I wasn’t alone after all.
“Sam. Hi.” I choked as the emotion clawed at my chest. “Umm… how are you?”
I heard shuffling through the line and a distant laugh as if she was holding the phone to her chest. My ears perked up, trying to make out what she was saying. Where she was. I was always worried she was on another downward spiral, even through my own panic.
“What?” She sounded distracted. “Oh, I’m good. Were you calling to check on me? Because I don’t need money right now.”
“No. That’s not why I was calling, but it’s nice to hear.” I wasn’t sure how to tell her what was happening in my life. How to ask for help. I’d never done it before. I never wanted to add to her burdens. “Did you get a job?”
“Something like that.” She laughed again over the faint music playing in the background.
“Okay, but I was actually calling because—.” My gut clenched as I heard her whispering to someone like she wasn’t even paying attention to our conversation.
“Sorry, what did you say?” Tears burned my eyes as her tone became more distant.
“Are you there? I really need you.” I pleaded.
I needed someone to talk to about this. Someone to help me reason through what I had to do. I needed family.
“I can’t hear you.” She shouted. “Ems, I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you later.”
“Wait. I need help. I’m—.” But she’d already hung up. All I heard was dead air.
I stared at the phone in disbelief. All the times I was there for her, and she didn’t have two seconds to talk to me. Didn’t even bother to figure out why I’d called.
Desperate for help. For connection, my fingers moved across the screen again. Clicking on the contact I’d tried a dozen times before I gave up. My heart twisted as a picture of Matt and I filled the screen.
It was one I’d taken when we were in bed. Tears pooled in my eyes as I stared at our smiling faces. I ignored them as I clicked on his number.
Like it had every time in the last several months, a dial tone filled my ears. A robotic voice telling me the number was disconnected. It had been long before his visit two weeks ago. A mistake that changed my life.
Rage exploded inside me as I threw the phone. How could I be so stupid? So reckless? How could I have let myself get into this situation? Pregnant by a man who’d disappeared. He hadn’t even bothered to break up with me with some bullshit excuse. He just up and vanished like he’d never existed in the first place.
The only signs that he was real were the pictures on my phone. The scar on my heart. And the tiny fetus growing inside me.
Maybe I could’ve found him on social media or Google, but what was the point? He’d made it very clear where he stood with me. How much I’d actually mattered to him.
My life was now divided into two easily defined segments. Before I met him and after. Before I took the test and after. Before I had to make a life-changing decision, and after.
Because I knew whatever I decided, I would never be the same again. I’d have to live with it forever.
Live in the after.
