I was 19 years old when I got pregnant for this first time, it was my first year at University and I was looking forward to starting a new chapter that would determine the rest of my life.
A man I met and intended to have a relationship with raped me, it was a surreal moment in my life, I did not in my entire life before that day think this could happen to me, nor was I aware of the reality of how common rape was.
I was molested when I was seven-years-old by a relative but erased it completely, I often ignored what I today realise was sexual harassment because we just did not talk about these things at home, at school or in the community.
The rape was horrible and this time around I couldn't erase it, I couldn't hide it from myself and pretend that it didn't happen.
Eleven years later, I still remember his words when he was done and I was sitting there, crying, feeling powerless and confused and he asked me "Why did I have to fight for it Gao?"
A few weeks later after gaining the courage to leave my room, I went back to attending classes, and one day on my way to campus I was on a bus and there was a girl sitting next to me with her lunch on her lap. Her lunch looked healthy but it made me nauseous.
From that day pregnancy, symptoms started popping up everywhere and followed me like a plague. I couldn't catch a break, everything smelled excessive, strong and awful, I was irritable and just bloated.
That week I went to a pharmacy and bought a few pregnancy tests which all came back positive. I was distraught, on top of being raped, now I carried the rapist's child-That was what was on my mind the whole time.
That same depression I thought I was gaining the courage to come out of hitting me double. I was clueless about contraceptives let alone what being pregnant actually meant.
I had always looked forward to experiencing pregnancy and having a child of my own, I often fantasized about what my future children would look like, it was just depressing for me to be in a place where I did not even want to associate the fetus growing inside me with myself.
My mind was running wild with self-judgments, self-accusations, fear, and wondering how I would explain this to my family and especially my father.
Everything about being pregnant irritated me, the symptoms didn't make it any better as I couldn't catch a break, they didn't excite me at all, at every minute or even second I was reminded of the rape and the situation I was in.
I drank a lot of stupid things like coke, medicine to try and see if maybe I can stop this and miscarry, at some point, I started believing that ending the pregnancy would take the pain of what that man did to me away.
I saw the pregnancy as a symbol of his violation of me, and I needed it to go.
I made a decision after talking to a trusted friend to do an abortion without my father or my family ever finding out.
Both the pregnancy and the abortion made me feel like I was the worst person alive, firstly I was pregnant at 19, I believed that was shameful and was embarrassed by it, secondly, I was raped, and thirdly I was planning to abort, at the time, abortion in my world was the worst thing anyone could do but it had to be done.
Doing it was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt, giving birth is more painful but I have come to prefer that over that abortion, because the circumstances of my first time giving birth where different, I wanted to, I looked forward to it and so the pain was just another way to get there.
Finding out later after doing research on abortions that the facility I had gone to do the procedure was not a registered clinic just made it worse.
For about three years I lived in perpetual guilt, I drowned myself in sorrow and would often have panic attacks. I was triggered by seeing children and pregnant women and always felt like I was a murderer.
It was this one day when a tutor of mine invited me to a talk on abortion on campus that my life changed, I walked into that room feeling like everyone knew what had happened to me and that they were judging me, at some point, I actually wanted to walk out, but I stayed.
The conversation about people's rights to choose what to do with their bodies captivated me, I never thought of it in that way, I always believed in the myth that having an abortion was wrong. I for the first time found it it had its own Act and the law provided for what I had done and in principal healthcare workers and the community had to respect that.
This was when the beginning of the journey to be opened about having an abortion and being raped begun, it took long for me to actually break my silence.
Five years after the incident in 2015, I decided to write about my abortion on Facebook, and soon after started writing about the rape. I started to reckon with the reality that my gender in this society meant being involved in social justice work and fighting for the rights and humanity of people like myself.
I don't know if the path would have happened if I had not been raped or had an abortion, what I do know is, that pregnancy changed my life, I started speaking out more, I have become a voice in the social justice space and I always seek to challenge the status quo.
I still believe that pregnancy should have never happened, the rape itself should have never happened either because no person deserves such violence.
Today we continue to fight against all these injustices and more, it's difficult and it's exhausting and I hope we reach young women and men like me, who were able to grow up in a society where the reality that over 40% of Women in South Africa will be raped in their lifetime was never spoken about.
Here are some articles from interviews I have done in the past related to this.
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