I had been talking to this new guy for just a couple of months when I realized that my period was late-- something that never happens. We hung out all the time and had a fairly honest relationship, but it wasn't anything serious. I told him that my period was late, but it was nothing that we had to worry about just yet.

On the inside I was freaking out. I live in an apartment with four other girls and we all are in sync with our periods. When they all started and finished theirs, I started to worry. I decided I would take the test on the weekend, but when talking with a friend on a Wednesday night, we decided taking it then would stop my worries. No matter how nervous I was, I just assumed it would come back negative. We went to the local convenience store and got a really cheap one. Of course while there, we ran into one of our guy friends. We brought the test home, took it, and the results were blurry. Looking back on it, they were more towards positive, but I was in denial. At this point I decided to tell the guy that I was taking the test, told him the results weren't clear, and told him I was going to take another.

I could tell over the phone how stressed out he was-- I myself was on the verge of shutting down. I had never felt so nervous before. We went to the grocery store to get a digital test, came home, and took it. I left it in the bathroom and went to hang out with my friends. My stomach was in such a knot and I felt like I wasn't even breathing. After the time was up, I went into the bathroom, and found out it was positive. My friends were all there for support, and I couldn't be more grateful, but I knew I needed to be with the father of this child. I called him up to tell him the news and gave him an option of coming or not. Although I was hoping he would come over, I would understand if he needed time alone to let this set in.

Everything gets really blurry at this point, I can even remember if we talked or if we just laid in bed and held each other. We barely even knew each other, but at that point nobody made me feel as safe as he did. We skipped all of our classes the next day and talked in the morning about our options. When he left in the afternoon, I went to my friends room and started hysterically crying. This was the first time I cried. What was I going to do?

Morally, I didn't want to get an abortion. It went against everything I ever believed. But for the first time, I was faced with a decision that only I could make and I had to do what was best for me, the dad, and the baby. We talked about it for a couple of days but knew we had to decide by Sunday if we were going to get the abortion or not. We made a health center appointment for Friday just to confirm. That came and went, it was all becoming reality. I decided I had to tell my mom because I wouldn't be able to face her if I didn't. She took it surprisingly well, but was still so upset and knew how hurt I was. In talking to them, the father of the baby, and a lot of internal searching, I decided that the abortion was the best option.

I had never felt so young and so old at the same time. The dad of the baby grew up in a single parent home for a majority of his life, and I couldn't commit to being with him for the rest of my life, at the age of 20, after knowing him for only a short period of time. It wasn't fair to the baby to grow up in a house that potentially would be unstable. It wasn't fair for either of us parents to raise this child alone. And selfishly, we both wanted to finish college and live the life we planned to live.

He stayed with me through all of the appointments and other struggles I encountered throughout the semester. We never made our relationship official because of the summer, or at least that was what I had in my head. He has a best friend from when he was younger that he now is seeing. When first realizing their relationship was more then a friendship, I felt like I was loosing my biggest support system in the abortion. All of the feelings started to pour back. What if we had kept the baby, would he have left me for her? In that, I was grateful. But what if he stayed with me-- would I be keeping him from being from the woman that he really loved? Or would we be happy? And did he only say he wanted to be with me because of what happened?

I wouldn't say that I began to regret the abortion, but I would say I began to regret that I ever let it happen. Before I found out I was pregnant and considered ending it with this guy because I knew our future together wasn't bright. We were able to talk for hours and got along great, but we just had such different plans for after college. Now I struggle with a case of what-if's. If we kept the baby, what would have happened? Where would I be right now? Although this is something that is new and I know will pass, it's still something that I often think about. After becoming really good friends with a guy who almost became the father of my first child, and the guy who became my biggest support during my hardest time, loosing him just has been harder then I expected.

Granted we are still friendly, things will never be the same. But you know what they say: everything happens for a reason. Today I am happy, I am a healthy, and I have great friends and family who support me every day. This experience is something that I will eventually grow from, but getting there has been quite the journey.