Picking up with the story... Separated and lonely

Disclaimer: This is a bit of a somber post, so if you are looking for something lighthearted or funny, you may want to check back another day... :-)  That being said...

Being pregnant and knowing you are going to relinquish your child turns your due date into something akin to knowing the exact day that someone you love is going to die.  Well, that is what it was like for me, at least. 

It is a strange and sickening feeling.  You are moving forward, heels dug in, fingers clawing grasping for things to hold on to, toward a day that you know is going to forever change the rest of your life, and you can't do anything to stop it.  You can hope that it is a bad dream and that you are going to wake up, but you know that it's not... and you won't... and your baby IS going to be gone. Period. All you can do is try to get by one day, sometimes one hour, at a time, and try to accept what looms ahead.  A cloud of nausea just hangs over you at all times. Everything else in life just starts to not really matter very much.  All the other ridiculous things that people complain or fuss over seem so trivial. (Who the heck cares who is going to the beach for senior week?!)  It is like you are watching everyone else live their life in realtime, but your own life is in slow motion. You begin to grieve and waste away before the loss is actually experienced.

I journaled a lot to sort through my emotions while I waited for Ellen to arrive.  Those journals are dark and deep. When I read the journal entries, letters and poems I wrote, I wish I could travel back and visit the 17-year-old girl who wrote them and encourage her with what I now know having lived a few more years. Of course, we all have those moments of looking back and wishing we could advise our younger selves. :) The biggest thing that stands out to me is how incredibly LONELY I was. I had no friends or family around me. No one to lounge on the couch with and talk into the night about what was happening... the present or the future. No one to cry with, to be silly or relax with, to watch a movie and escape reality for a couple hours... No, it was the shepherding home and me.  My SW and me.  I saw my parents, brother and sister, three times,I think during my entire pregnancy. I had a good friend from high school drive the hundred miles with my dad once to spend the afternoon with me.  I remember she and I drove to a field at a nearby park and just sat on the hood of the car and talked and talked and talked. She was not the sort that I would take advice from, but I remember her sitting there tearing up leaves as we chatted, offering a listening ear and understanding that I was at the mercy of all the adults in my life.  She was just there to BE THERE with me in the moment... To sit on the hood of the car and tear up leaves... It is amazing how vividly I remember that and how much that simple act meant to me.

I don't think shepherding homes are necessarily a bad thing all around.  I know there are tons of women who find themselves without a place to live once they divulge to their family that they are pregnant.  It is sad but true. Shepherding homes can be a lifesaver in that regard.  And I think that there are a lot of wonderful families opening their homes in this capacity.  But for me, I went there to "be away from influences". I've talked about that before, and I don't want to stir up too much because I know my family is reading.  But the point is that as I look back on what was happening, I can see that there really never was any hope for me to explore any other "options".  I was 17 and a senior in high school. I had never lived apart from my parents. I was doing what high schoolers do and working at a shoe store as a sales clerk the summer I got pregnant.  I had no idea how to live in the world apart from my family.  Oh, I thought I was fierce before I got pregnant. LOL :-)  Summer was just around the corner, and I was making my measley little shoe store paycheck and spending it on clothes at The Limited or fries and cheese sticks at The Clock after school. I was laying out in the sun all day on Saturdays and pushing my curfew with girlfriends at night.  I was like most of the other girls my age who just wanted that one great guy to think I was special... I wasn't looking for trouble, but I was "looking for love (a.k.a affirmation)  in all the wrong places".  Sigh.  Enter my late-twenty-something boss at said measley little shoe store, who also doubled as youth pastor at a local church.  I had no idea just HOW BAD that combination would be. (Apparently some other young girls didn't either, but I digress...)

Looking back, I know that my parents were in total shock and in a desperate crisis situation.  I know my mother has said to me on several occasions that one of the most difficult things for her was knowing that I was going through so much but not being with me... not being able to go through it beside me.  I know she is telling me the truth.  It makes me sad for her when I identify with those maternal feelings.  But what really breaks my heart is that whoever's idea the shepherding home was... Well, I mean REALLY??  Why was that necessary?  What was the real purpose of taking me away from everything and everyone I knew?  I wasn't homeless.  I wasn't kicked out of my house.  I had a stable, Christian home environment with parents who loved me.  They were scared and uncertain of how to handle the situation. They didn't want friends influencing me.  But being taken away was just the beginning of the end.  It squashed communication and interaction with my family and friends.  It really cut the lifeline.  Remember, back then, cell phones were fairly new and were not commonplace.  (Remember the gigantic phone with the cord, mounted on the contraption next to the gear shift? LOL) There was no email.  No instant messenger.  If I wanted to talk to anybody, I had to get on the old fashioned horn (ok, not that old, wink) and call LONG DISTANCE to talk to my parents or friends.  Guess how often that happened at the shepherding home? :-(

No, the shepherding home was just that... a place to "shepherd" me toward the decision that was deemed best FOR me, not BY me.  Yes, the agency social worker was nice.  Yes, the shepherding home was beyond kind in opening up their home to me.  Undoubtedly.  But do you see?  Everyone was "ministering" to me in a way that shuffled me down the path of doing what they wanted.  It is really difficult to make any friends in a college town when you are 17 and pregnant.  Basically, you just keep to yourself as much as possible and wish you didn't have to go anywhere.  At least back home, there were people there who knew me before I was pregnant... friends who still loved me... Parents and siblings... MY FAMILY.  It was the loneliest, darkest time of my life.

I am not going to skip over my time in the hospital and the day I relinquished my daughter.  I'll write about that later.  But the separation that was established while I was gone during my pregnancy just continued right on after I came home.  Friendships had been deserted for months and months.  Nobody had seen me.  But they knew I went away to have a baby.  I was either avoided completely, or the topic was avoided completely.  I came out on the other side with a God-sized hole blown through my soul and two friends (Angeline and Anna) twins whom I had known since we were in preschool.  I was so empty and dead inside.  That was the beginning of buying into the win-win-win that was handed to me...  I was desperate to latch onto something that would bring some relief.  Without it I was losing my mind.  I had given my baby away to someone I didn't know.  It was too much to accept.  I had to pretty it up somehow or give up completely.

The main point is that pulling someone away from their support system is so detrimental.  I realize that many women don't have a support system, and a shepherding home may provide something for them.  But many women DO. They have family and friends who love them and who will love their child.  The shock of an unplanned pregnancy takes some time to adjust to.  It is so dangerous to start making decisions toward relinquishment early on before even giving anything else a chance.  I found out I was pregnant in July and was at the shepherding home a few weeks later.  I stayed away until March of the following year. :(  I really believe we would have had a much better shot as a family if we had stayed under one roof to talk it out and work it out piece by piece.  The break in communication was the first nail in my coffin.  Think about it.  When someone is depressed or in trouble, don't we tell them it is important for them not to withdraw, but rather, to stay connected to the people who love them and can offer support?  So why is it different for a young girl who is unmarried and pregnant?  Why was my family not an important resource for me? 

There are a lot of things I realize now.  I don't write any of this out of bitterness or anger.  In all honesty, I am just trying to get to the bottom of WHY these things still happen so often.  Why did it happen to me in the first place?  Why would we remove support and label it ministry?  I'm thinking through all of this.  But now I get to do it with a thirty-something heart instead of a 17-year-old heart.  I'm not too intimidated to ask the questions anymore.