Snap Shot of My LIfe: A Testing Day

I hung up the phone from Sam* with my mind a blank. She offered to pick it up on her way home and for me to meet her at her place. I had been putting this off for well over a week, hoping the denial would work magic. With an hour left before I could leave work I set about keeping busy. There were invoices and picking slips to be done. The intermittent phone calls, customers placing orders or complaining some stock hadn’t been with their delivery. The usual goings on of the office, just like any other day. Concentrating on work my mind could rest for a little while. This wasn’t going to end like any other day.

**********

I sat down on the floor in the overcrowded lounge room, eyes fixed on the little white stick in front of me. For two minutes my mind was completely blank. Sam was beside me talking animatedly with her mother, Angie, but I didn’t hear a word. I was in their lounge room, where I had been many times before. The TV was on as the news of the day flickered across the screen. Sam and her mother were sat on the well-worn lounge as I sat on the other side of the coffee table. The rest of the kids were in their rooms and Lee, Angie’s husband, was on his way home from work. For two long weeks I’d had constant thoughts racing through my mind. These two minutes not only felt longer than those weeks but it was also the only time I can remember not having a single thought. My eyes widened as the beginning of a blue line appeared on the little white stick. I reached for the box to read the instructions for what must have been the fifteenth time, one line for negative, two for positive!

“Oh my god” I heard the words before I realized they had come from my own lips. All at once the room came back to life. “One man is in hospital and another has died in an accident just south of Sydney today” came from the newsreader on the TV. I heard the sound of a bus pulling up just down the street to let off its passengers on their way home from another normal day of work. This was certainly not a normal day. A dog barked, it sounded like the little terrier from three doors down. Sam and Angie had both stopped talking and were looking at me expectantly. “Well?” Angie spoke first. I could feel tears welling behind my eyes and hundreds of thoughts all fought within my head for my immediate attention. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came. Sam leaned across the coffee table to see for herself. “Oh shit, it’s positive!” She spoke the words that I had not been able to.

There I was, only a handful of months past my eighteenth birthday and I was pregnant. Mark already knew that I was “late”, but how would he take this confirmation? I’d met him only about three months earlier. Sam’s sister had introduced us when a group of us had gone out to celebrate her eighteenth birthday and she’d told me to “stay away” from him. That night I had danced with a dozen guys, but it was Mark I had ended up leaving with. We’d been together since then but neither of us thought it was forever, until now. What if Mark wanted me to have an abortion? What if he didn’t want me to have an abortion? What if he just didn’t want a part of the decision at all? We’d spoken about the obvious possibility of me being pregnant several times in the last two weeks, but neither of us really wanted to believe it would be true.

“Are you ok?” Angie was now sitting on the armchair closest to me when she said this. I looked up at her and then across to Sam. The floodgates opened at that moment, the tears, that until now I had only cried when I was alone, were streaming down my face. The denial I had been trying to live in was now shattered beyond repair. Was I ok, my world had just changed forever when those two lines appeared; I didn’t know if I was “ok”. No matter what, I would never be the same! What would my family say? Would it be a girl or a boy? What would Mark’s family say? Will I have a difficult pregnancy? What would my boss say? Will I be able to cope with the birth? Would I still have a job? Am I even capable of being a mother? Yes, I am capable. It was the only question I had the answer to.

I looked back up at Sam and Angie; they were looking at each other with the beginnings of a smile on both of their faces. My tears gradually slowed and a smile crossed my lips as well. I was terrified, but I was going to be a mum!


* All names have been changed for the obvious privacy reasons.
© 2005