Sometimes I want to cry thinking about how the baby from my abusive, now trans, ex would've been 14 this year

I'm going to preface this very, very long post with a content warning: if you are distressed by reading about abuse, sexual assault, and/or miscarriage, please do not continue reading.

I will also be using he/him pronouns in describing a person who later transitioned because that is who I remembered this person was in the past, so if that is offensive toward anyone, I apologize in advance. I'm a queer person as well as an advocate for trans rights & affirmation, despite the trauma associated with these memories. I will try to use "they" in present tense because despite the past, it's against my values to misgender someone and I'm not in contact with this person today anyway so I really have no idea what they truthfully use.

I just have to let this out, because it's still extremely difficult for me to talk about, and some things in this phase of life I'm in now have been connecting me back to this old wound.

I'm a woman about to turn 31, very happily married to my husband, who I've spent the most beautiful and healing past ten years with. I have been through a lot, but refuse to let anything stop me. I picked myself up, built a new life in a town I love, got a master's degree, and became a therapist. I'm well aware that this is all a result of trauma, and I am receiving EMDR. Regardless, I have quite literally never been happier in my entire life. I don't miss my ex, I hate that they were my first love. They were a terrible human being, and the exact opposite of everything my husband is.

When you're very young, your first love is usually an adorable memory to look back on, and arguably sets the foundation for later relationship patterns and attachment styles (apart from our relationships with our parents). I fell hard for the worst person I've ever known, and remained stuck for years in a cycle of abuse that was extremely hard to end. I wish I could change that fact, but at the same time, I wouldn't have ever met my husband and our best friend if not for my ex.

In the interest of not making this into more of a novel than it already surely will be... for some backstory, I grew up in Plano, Texas with my divorced mother who unfortunately passed away from lung cancer when I was 12. My father was a convicted sex offender, an addict, and very serious alcoholic who also suffered from what I now believe was untreated bipolar disorder. Against my mother's wishes, due to some disputes over her Will because of a case brought by her abusive ex boyfriend who wanted to control the both of us and get access to my mother's estate, a judge awarded custody to my father with the caveat that due to his CSO status, my paternal grandmother had to live in the home as well. They both moved in to my mother's house, and quickly I learned exactly what my mother tried to keep me away from. The house descended into a 5-bedroom animal hoard, with filth everywhere and a horrible roach infestation. Between my father's addictions and my grandmother sending my mom's money home to her family in Louisiana, the utilities would frequently get cut off or I'd go without food & necessities at times. We would both walk on eggshells around my dad, who became violent, verbally abusive toward the both of us and physically abusive toward me. I looked for any escape to avoid the house, often crying before the end of school or trying to find any sort of extracurricular activity I could. That very vulnerable point in my life was where I met my ex.

I don't even remember the exact details of how I met him. I remember going to a church youth group every week to see him because I wasn't really allowed to have friends over, and didn't want to be at home. He was also a few years older than me. I thought he was so handsome, messy brown hair, honey brown eyes, a pretty olive tone to his skin, and a smile and voice that felt like home. At first, it was sweet. I hadn't experienced the physiological reaction I had with him with anyone before (or after, until I met my husband). In the beginning, when I would see him, I would freeze like I was stopped dead in my tracks, my heartbeat would pick up, and my breath would catch my my chest. I felt warmed by his smile and the light in his eyes when he looked at me. I truly fell deeply in love with him, and that scared me. That fear only grew as time went on.

For about years, we had a very deep on and off relationship. As many abusers do, he tried for several years to reach out to me over various social media accounts. He even used to stalk me, showing up in my backyard tapping on my bedroom window a couple of times. If an abuser wants to reach you, they will find a way, the most important thing is to remain consistent in holding your boundaries and moving on.

He was very, very mentally ill. I think to a degree that could be classified as a disability. I to this day feel bad for them for this reason, as I don't think they can really support themselves or have successful relationships in life. He would say he had bipolar disorder one day, or schizoaffective the next, but while I can't diagnose him, I really think he possibly had a personality disorder. Not all people who are sick are abusive, and mental illness is never, ever a justification for harming others, but it was a significant contribution to his cyclic behavior and drug use (which I view more as a symptom of a greater issue, but I digress). It was like one day he was madly in love with me, and the next three he would tear me apart. He would date me until he decided he wanted to be single, over and over. I know he cheated constantly, because he or others would tell me. Looking back, I think I was so devoid of feeling loved or stability that I was willing to put up with whatever in order to bask in that feeling that I had when I was in his presence. You know what they say about people who grow up in chaos...

After some months, he revealed that he wanted me to take his virginity. I'm not proud of this at all, but I had already had sex once with a boy at that time, and believed I was so in love with him that I was happy to do so. But I was reluctant. There was not really a safe place for us to go, so we ended up doing it on the floor of bathroom stall in the church we attended the youth group at. I'm not religious at all, but that felt and was so wrong in so many ways. But like his many addictive behaviors, he repeatedly returned to me for sex. As an adult in the age of explicit consent post-Me Too, I recognize that many of our couplings thereafter came from him essentially coercing me into sex, often when I didn't want to. I recognized much later that not all, but many of those instances could be classified as sexual assault. While I didn't understand that at the time, I came to realize this at some point, and I would repeatedly try to leave him.

Some of the things that he said and did finally cut me so deeply that it became easier to leave for good. When I once told him I loved him, I distinctly remember him telling me, "\[my name\], I love you, but I'm not \*in love\* with you." That's what I think really broke my heart and made it easier to finally leave, but it \*still\* took years. I remember walking with him and one of his friends at school, and him asking me "Why do you wear dresses all the time? Do you think they make you look good or something?" and then he and his friend laughed their asses off while I stopped and stared with tears in my eyes. I couldn't understand why someone who claimed to love me and think of me all the time spoke and acted as though they hated me.

He would use me for my car, tell me I saved his life when he overdosed on DMT & had a seizure in my bed, told me even after years or months without seeing me that he still thought of me, et cetera. He even got a fucking tattoo on his forearm of something he asked me to draw, to my bewilderment. He got kicked out of his dad's house and school so many times. He would just show up at my house, or call me to rescue him, or just appear at mutual friend's places all the time. It felt like no matter what I did, he wouldn't let me go. It didn't help that his best friend became my best friend after he went out of town once and told him to "look after" me. This said, I am still extremely close to that friend to this day, and he introduced me to my husband, so that's the light in this darkness, I suppose. I love that fucker like a brother and I always will.

Everything came to a head in 2012. I was beyond done. I was 17 & had been living alone for about 6 months (I can't even begin to get into that, but basically my dad lost parental rights & my grandmother was just unwell & an enabler, I had another guardian for 2 years, but they just left after an argument so I was alone). Something changed when my father died, watching a second parent pass from cancer was unbearable, even though I hadn't been on speaking terms with him, I accepted his forgiveness before his death. I simply didn't want to hold on to any more pain in my life. I wanted to heal. And that healing included letting go of my ex, despite how much I felt I still loved him. I thought of him every day, even when he was a monster and we were broken up. I tried to tell my friends not to even say his name. Blocked him everywhere. Nothing seemed to keep him away. He called me again to come over one afternoon, and I decided I was going to tell him in person that I was never going to see him again and that we were really done this time. I dressed myself up to feel confident/show him what he'd be missing and headed to this friend's house he was crashing at.

At first, I thought it was great because I thought we were just chilling as friends. I felt safe because his friend was sitting in the room with us. It was a small bedroom with a mattress on the floor and a large TV across from it. We were all sitting on the floor watching a show. At some point, his friend went to his own bedroom. That's when my ex started to move closer to me like he was trying to cuddle me, and started to tell me how much he had been missing me and basically that he wanted to have sex. He kept trying to touch me, but I would move away. I finally turned to him and said that our relationship was not healthy and that I didn't want to have sex with him ever again because we would just end up back together, and that he hurt me too much, I just couldn't continue that cycle with him. I (stupidly) offered to remain friends, but that was it. He begged me just to sleep with him one last time, but I stood my ground. I know he thought that maybe he could just touch me a certain way and that he could coerce me into having sex again like he used to, but I remained firm. I remember moving further and further from him toward the door. The more I refused him, the more angry he got. The angrier he got, the more afraid I became.

Something felt different about his energy, like he was enraged at the rejection or loss of control. I was now scared to the point that I started to tell him I was going to just leave, and as I stood to walk out, he jumped up in front of me, grabbed my arm, and sort of spun me around and threw me onto the mattress. I screamed and fell face first, to which he growled at me to shut the fuck up, and pushed the back of my head into the mattress so hard that I could hardly breathe. He proceeded to shove my skirt up and rip my tights down and sexually assault me. It was extremely painful. I tried to scream for help, I remember screaming "no" and "stop", but every time he would shove my head harder into the mattress and tell me to shut the fuck up. There was no way his friend didn't hear what was going on. I to this day don't know why he didn't stop him. Maybe he was afraid of him, too. I thought about this, and the fact that I needed to focus on my breathing to try to avoid passing out. I felt like he was going to kill me, and I started to black out. I felt I had to stop trying to get away so I could survive. Thankfully but also unfortunately, he was just about done. I felt him begin to finish and withdraw the rest of the way, where he destroyed my favorite skirt. He shoved me and walked out and disappeared. When I heard him walk out of the room, I ran across the hall to the bathroom to see if I was bleeding and try to clean my clothes. My face was red like carpet burn, I was in tears, and I need to completely turn my skirt inside out so I could walk outside and leave without looking like what had just happened happened. I just wanted to run away before he came back.

I was filled with equal parts terror and rage. I remember flinging the door open and storming into his friends room, shaking and crying. I screamed at him why didn't he stop him, he knew what he did, he had to have heard me, what was wrong with him, etc. He sat at his computer looking genuinely shocked, and said he didn't hear anything, what was I talking about, what was he supposed to do. I just ran right out of the house, got in my car, and drove home.

I believe I was in denial that I was assaulted for many years. In the immediate weeks that followed, I isolated myself or tried to distract. I smoked more and more pot to try to numb myself. I've always had irregular periods and had weird things happen while on the pill because I would miss one dose here and there, and I also have endometriosis. That and the fact that my frequent stomach issues made me often nauseous did not make me suspect anything at all. Even when I slept through an entire day, my breasts felt tender, and I felt extremely bloated. When I was about a week late on my second period, I remember becoming a bit concerned, but more about my reproductive issues, not about a pregnancy.

8 weeks or so after the assault, I woke up in horrible pain with very heavy bleeding. I had had cramps so bad before that I've had to pull over to throw up and lay down in a parking lot on my way to work, but this was the worst cramping I had ever felt. The spot I was laying in in my bed had a huge, dark bloodstain. I felt like I was going to use the bathroom or vomit, or both, so I ran to my toilet. I remember holding the trash can over my face and trying to let the pain pass, hoping I had just been sick from food poisoning or that it was like some sort of rebound from missing two periods. What I thought was needing to use the bathroom was just extensive bleeding and passing of blood clots. I had never felt a period like this before, I thought. I remember getting lightheaded and felt like I had to throw up. I put a pad in my underwear and sat beside the toilet, flushing the warzone in the toilet down. I felt another huge cramp and dry heaved, but that time I felt something large come out of me. When I looked on my pad to see, I found something that didn't look like a blood clot to me at all. It was harder, and almost looked like a deflated sack or baloon the length of my palm with a definitive attachment point. I panicked, completely confused. I feel so ignorant looking back now, but I never had women in my life who told me what happened in their miscarriages or what size of blood clot or bleeding warranted needing medical attention. I never thought to call 911, but looking back, I absolutely should have. Our school system failed us, and women's healthcare in this state is some of the worst. Hell, at that time, I didn't even know I had endometriosis. I was completely alone and scared.

I passed out not too long after. When I woke up, I tried to wash the thing that came out of me off to try to figure out what it was. I texted a picture to my older female cousin who'd been my guardian to try to ask her, and she said that was disgusting and to never show her anything like that again. I felt like I was repulsive, and that I shouldn't tell anyone else. I ended up later having a bacterial infection, and only saw my doctor for it when I started to have a low grade fever. Other than not mentioning that day, I don't know why she never suspected that I had had a miscarriage.

I buried the memory of both the assault and the miscarriage until about 4 or 5 years later. I had been in such deep denial mentally, but as they say, the body remembers. I'd had daily panic attacks prior to this, but basically my C-PTSD episode was so bad around this time that I binge drank myself half to death and became suicidal because I just wanted the rolling panic attacks and nightmares to stop.

I was admitted to a behavioral health hospital, where I met a friend named Molly. She was a young mother of two, not much older than me, in for an addiction to prescription benzodiazepines after a car accident. One day in group therapy, something she said when describing a miscarriage made me freeze and start to panic. I realized two things: yes, my ex had in fact sexually assaulted me, and that I had become pregnant and subsequently miscarried. Time felt like it stood still. I began to cry, but I couldn't articulate what was wrong and was not ready to share. The next thing I remember, we were sitting in the cafeteria, and I asked her to please describe to me in detail what her miscarriage was like. When she did and then asked me why, I explained what had happened and asked her if she thought that I had miscarried a baby. She had the saddest look in her eyes as she listened to me. She just said "Oh, honey..." and hugged me while I cried. I told her everything, and she listened to every word.

Later that night, I didnt want to leave my room. I tried to draw to distract myself, but all of a sudden, I felt like I was having a heart attack. Nurses checked my vitals and my heart rate was like at 160, so they tried to call the on call doctor to get me something to slow it down. I'm sure it was just another panic attack, but I was afraid something medical would happen to me. I couldn't get the assault out of my mind. Or the heartbreak out of my chest. How could he have done this to someone he claimed to love? Not only did I hold this pain of what that first love had done to me, but I also had this newfound sort of mourning for a baby, our baby, who never deserved any of what \*could\* have been. I thought about how I very well could've been too far along to abort it by the time I'd find out, or if I would even decide to abort it. I knew my ex, how he never wanted kids, and how I was absolutely certain he wouldn't be involved in our son or daughter's life at all. Like my own mother, would I have tried to shelter and protect them from who their father really was, too? It was too much to think about.

I remember a conversation with medical staff about it, and how it was basically beyond the state's statute of limitations to press charges and besides, I would have had to have a rape kit done in an ER the night of the assault. And I also had zero intention of reporting the assault because it meant I would have to see him again, or he would try to contact me again, and I was frankly afraid of him. I was afraid to fall back into the trap of the cycle of the relationship with him. Afraid of him denying that he'd assaulted me and that I'd been pregnant because of it.

The following year, I was living with my now husband and working in social media at a telecommunications company when I got a message from my ex. Like I said, he would periodically stalk me, so I felt like I was always blocking some new account. As always, when I saw his photo, a wave of fear hit me, my stomach dropped and I felt the blood drain out of my face. The gist of the message essentially was sort of an apology without an apology, kind of an atonement for his actions, and like an 'I miss you'. I was fucking instantly seething. I clocked out and walked off the floor to get some air. Thought about all of the ways I wanted to kill him.

I knew better, but I replied, anyway. I told him how much of an abusive piece of shit he was, called him a rapist, and I believe I told him about the pregnancy. This of course led to an argument and him denying everything, to which I was not surprised. Of course he could never truly take accountability for his actions. For fuck's sake, he let our friend's boyfriend overdose and die on heroin while they were shooting up together and never called 911, how the fuck could I ever expect him to take accountability for the sexual assault, much less acknowledge that we lost a kid?

Thankfully, they haven't reached out since I blocked them again. About 3 years ago around Christmas, my husband & I were visiting my hometown & had friends over to our hotel room to visit. A few drinks in, a guy who used to be on sort of the peripheral of our friends group, who I know still had contact with my ex, just casually brought them up, and started saying they were transitioning. My close friends and I do not bring my ex up ever, because I did tell them what had happened, and it's been years since that whole group basically cut them out anyway, so... it's just not something we ever talk about because of how upset I get.

This friend, essentially started to argue with me that night because I got enraged at the mention of my ex, and well, I'm not proud of this at all and it's very much unlike me and I actually do regret it, but I basically said that I would honor any other trans person's pronouns and journey except my ex, that they'd always be 'him' to me, that no amount of re-inventing themselves would change that, fuck them, if I ever see them again it's on sight, and how dare that friend even bring them up, and so on and so forth... It was clearly a trauma response worsened by alcohol, but still, that was very much not in line with who I am. Our friends just sort of stared at me in shock, that one friend walked out, and my husband put his arms around me and told me to breathe. Everyone but us had a smoke break, and the night moved on.

At this point, I thought I've done all the work, but some things bring it up to the surface. Realizing I could've had a 14-year-old this year had things gone differently was sobering. I continue to have a significant amount of anxiety about pregnancy and birth. I love my husband deeply, and knew I wanted a child with him the moment I laid eyes on him, but that fear and pain from when I was 17 resurfaces when we talk about trying. I hate that this colors my view of starting a family, that I want to just let it happen and give my husband the 'dream job' of being a dad like he so wants. I consciously know my husband will be literally the best, most caring, sweetest, most attentive worry wart of a father, but I find it so hard to let go of the panic I have when he asks if we can try for a baby. It's not that I don't want it or don't think I'd be a good mom, it's that I think about lying on the floor of that bathroom alone and terrified all those years ago.

Sometimes, on days like today, I have nightmares about it. Intrusive thoughts that maybe I'll go somewhere and my ex will be there. It's a conscious effort to push it out of my mind and try to look into the future with happiness. My marriage has been the most happy and healing years so far, but I wish it were easier to let go of the fact that I almost had my abuser's baby and had no idea. And also, some small part of me feels guilt for not my comments about my ex's current identity, but also, fuck them for what they did. I simply cannot fathom what raising that child would've been like, and I would, in my bones, hate for them to have to gown up like I did wondering why their dad didn't love them or want to see them. Trust me, I can count on the kind of parent they would've been.

I don't believe in God, but I could almost thank them for not letting that become a reality, despite what I went through.

I hope no one ever has to live through the kind of pain I did, and I know one day my ex will pay for what they did, as I'm sure they do in their own mind on a regular basis. I hope one day I can let go of their memories and that pain completely. My future kid deserves a mom who isn't so afraid of the past that she can't give them a family life they deserve, and I know damn well that can't happen if I sit around dwelling on old scars.

If you made it this far, thank you for giving me the space to get this off my chest and out of my thoughts today. if you've ever experienced anything like this, know that you're not alone and that there are people you can talk to about it. Take care of yourselves ♡ In the end, we are all worth it and it's never too late. This is a throwaway, but I'd be happy to talk to others about their experiences (as a human, not a therapist). Be well.