Worse.

Part 9

I thought that was as bad as it could get.

But I was wrong.

Because, “I don’t love you anymore”? Quickly became, “I never loved you at all” and was just as quickly followed by, “No one ever loved you. Your own PARENTS don’t even love you”.
Everything that I had ever shared with him because fodder for a verbal assault. Every problem I had ever had. I was fat, I was ugly, and no one would ever love me. If I ever thought that anyone would want to marry me with two babies? I was sorely mistaken. HE hadn’t wanted to marry me and I had no kids when he begrudgingly did so.

No one wants you. No one loves you. No one ever will.

Still, I clung blindly, stupidly to the hope that he was just scared. He was just afraid of having children. Once he saw the babies he would realize what a fool he was being and love me and love them and we’d finally have the family I had always dreamed of.

I was sure of it.

Maybe.



As bad as all that was? It got even worse.

The worst morning? Was the one in which I woke up, went to the restroom and found that I was bleeding.

I went to the doctor for yet another ultrasound. I was crying. I remember crying. I remember thinking, “I can’t lose them too” and "Why am I losing everything?"

The ultrasound tech was kind and reassuring.

“Look,” she said, pointing. “You’re okay! You are OKAY. Here’s baby A and here’s baby B and here’s baby C.”



Excuse me?



Did she just say baby C?




Um. Triplets?




The doctor came in, quickly, and took a look at the third baby.

Which, of course, was not a baby at all.

Instead? It was a tumor.

A week later, the tumor was the size of a softball. And growing.

The doctor encouraged me to have an abortion so that “thing” could come out. Because, well, we didn’t know if it would kill me or not, frankly. My mother had battled cancer. I had my own myriad of “problems”. This could be absolutely nothing, or it could be a big-ass honking cancerous tumor that killed me in six months.

And there was absolutely no way I could find out, without having an abortion.


I refused.


I went home and my parents were there. I can’t remember why they were visiting, but they were there.

I could barely stand. I was so overwhelmed. I was crying so hard.

That night, after my parents went to sleep, my husband, who was forced to sleep in the same room as me because my parents were visiting said to me,

“I don’t love you, I’ve never loved you, and I never will love you. I called a lawyer about divorcing you and I can’t because you are pregnant. As soon as you have these babies, I’m divorcing you.”

I had two babies and a tumor that threatened their lives and mine. And he decided that was the day to tell me he was divorcing me.

I cried and cried. He left the house. My parents slept on.

I so desperately wanted someone to come and comfort me. Someone to hold me and tell me that everything would be okay.


But no one did.