Assorted Terminations

For the past 3 weeks, I’ve been stuck in bed with crippling nausea and depression. Depression that sinks deep into the core of your personality whereby it rots any semblance of enjoyment, or acknowledgement of the day outside. Nausea that stops you from eating your feelings or tasting anything as a momentary solace from the deep grief of whatever.

I called my doctor on Wednesday to tell him I decided to terminate my pregnancy. I’d made up my mind after spending a weekend with my friend’s newborn. It brought back memories of the 3–4 months of never having my hands free, the loneliness of being with this thing that I created, not being able to decipher its form of communication. When I had my son, despite being married, I had almost no practical help, no support. The only security was that my bills were being paid and that I had a roof over my head. I don’t have that this time around and with my depression being at the point it is, it would only take hardship like this to break a barrier of ideation into action. Suicidal ideation disregards any realistic empathy for loved ones, the practical hurdles of planning a funeral and of identifying a body. Healthy people don’t understand that when someone plans a suicide, it’s done with the intention of relieving affected parties of further grief and suffering, not to cause it. Every human has a innate motivation to live and the brain finds its ways of bypassing this.

The social worker called me to talk over my options. I very much wanted to avoid the discussions of how it would work physiologically. How I was going to go into labour for half an hour to expel it all. Then the surgeon called. It was more of the same, except more graphic. She was ridiculously blasé and while I wanted to categorise the pregnancy into something purely scientific, palatable and emotionless, I couldn’t. This is something I badly want, that I can’t have, that I can’t afford, that I can’t support in my right mind. For it to be explained in such a way so gruesome and emotionless, cut me deeply. The nurse called half an hour later. I asked to be put under general for obvious reasons. She explained that the surgeon was incredibly gentle, one of the best and that she’d soothe my anxieties. It’s not anxiety. It’s grief. It’s grief for the 9 weeks of cells that I carried. It’s the lessening of pain for a life I am willingly discontinuing. Ultimately, it’s the right choice, but it won’t stop me from sobbing all the way home, being traumatised by the procedure and the dehumanisation of putting my feet in stirrups.

“You have counselling options,” explained the nurse. Counselling. The thing where they sit you down in an office and listen, use linguistic decoding to respond then give you an action plan and a list of protocol.

I am vehemently pro-choice and I’m lucky that this was a service that was so easily given to me. I’m not callous, I’m ill-equipped. I already feel tied down. I want some semblance of freedom, I want to feel like I’m getting ahead. Maybe I don’t want to settle down ever again, maybe I will.

Through that week, my part time employee stopped replying to my texts which, while frustrating and confusing, solidified that perhaps business was not going well. Takings from each day sat at no more than $50. In the post-COVID central business district of the busiest city in the country, many of my customers indicated that they were now permanently working from home or had been made redundant. So I made the decision to pull the plug. I’ve been getting condolences and sympathies over the closure of my business and it really does not warrant that much emotion. Running a business started as a passion project and very quickly became less about emotion and more about balancing figures, which sucks the life out of a creative like me. No matter how much I try to enthuse myself to put my heart into anything coffee or food related, the autopilot takes over. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does filter through your personality making you a very hard, cold and unwavering person to negotiate with in real life, thus people get the impression that you need all the graphic details because you give off a very “Business Only” vibe. Innovation is often stifled. New ingredients are automatically calculated at cost per serving in your head, making you shy away from using various ingredients because you’re terrified of wastage and obviously not being able to pay overheads.

For the most part, I’ll continue to be my own boss in some capacity. It was hard work opening my shop, but I did it myself. Every single bit. Next time, as with pregnancy and business, I won’t be so foolish.