In early April of 2017, while searching for post-grad opportunities, I stumbled across an international teaching assistant program in France. Though I didn’t have a passion for teaching, I did have a passion for living in Europe, and that was enough to convince me to send in an application. Five months after that, I was moving into the attic of a pre-war building in Normandy. And two weeks after that, I was pregnant.

I had been placed in a suburban high school, where I took to teaching like a cat to water. While the other assistants busied themselves preparing 30-slide-long presentations on engaging topics like the Battle of the Alamo, I was teaching my students the importance of the Socratic method through endless rounds of 21 Questions. My grammar lessons, similarly, took a philosophical approach. “Why do we use the subjunctive instead of the conditional?” they asked. “Because,” I responded wisely.

Most days involved 2 hours of work, 3 hours of napping, and varying hours of drinking beer in the town center with my new friends. At the time, I understood the concept of self-actualization much more in theory than in practice.

Two weeks of living this lifestyle brings us to the night in question. In short: boy meets girl, girl invites boy to spend the night, boy texts girl the next day to say he has a girlfriend but would love to see her again. Really, the only thing remarkable about the night was that it was my birthday.

Foreshadowing!

I wouldn’t have thought more of it if not for the growing pain in my back, stomach and breasts. On a trip to Belgium, I confessed my fears to my friend Molly. “That’s ridiculous,” she responded as we pondered a Gothic cathedral. “You can’t get pregnant. You used a condom.” I nodded. The logic wasn’t exactly sound, but it was the best I was going to get.

So I continued clinging to the hope that it was just my cycle or the Molotov cocktail of dairy and gluten I was ingesting on a daily basis. Still, I couldn’t stop Googling my symptoms, scrolling through pages of results until they showed a diagnosis other than pregnancy. Ah, I’d sigh in relief, coming across a particularly helpful Women’s Health article. Cancer!

But when my period date had long come and gone, I resigned myself to buying a test. It was a wholly different experience from the last time I had done so, when I was 18 and the purchase had felt deliciously adult. Now, I felt nothing but dread. I dragged my feet all the way to the pharmacy, the heavy steps of a woman on her way to the gallows.

When the test came out positive, it felt karmic. Growing up, I longed for something real to happen to me. My definition of “real” was relatively abstract but encapsulated anything that would snap me out of my pleasant but mundane existence. Fame. Fortune. A non-life-threatening yet adequately interesting accident of some kind. Walking home from school, I’d eye every van that drove past me. Kidnap me, I’d think, and watch what happens. Let me prove myself.

By my definition, here, finally, was something real. And I was catatonic. I stood motionless in the bathroom, my life flashing before my eyes. Not the life I had, but the one I wanted to have. This was the  year where everything was going to fall into place. The year I’d spend traveling, working and relishing in pure and utter freedom, before magically stumbling upon my future career and becoming a happy, fulfilled woman. I was supposed to experience life, not create it.

I sat on the edge of the toilet and took stock of the situation. I was a freshly-minted 23-year old, living in a foreign country. I didn't know a single person who had had an abortion in Canada, let alone in France. I knew what I wanted to do, but I had no idea how to do it. With no better option, I called a teacher at my school.

When she picked up, my voice quivered between a sob and a laugh. Luckily for me, Aline was in her early 30s and had a few friends who had had abortions. She jumped into action, calling clinics and hospitals all over the city. Over the course of two weeks, Aline chauffeured me to a series of blood tests, ultrasounds and psychological and medical check-ups.

I was presented with two options: a surgical abortion, where I would go under general anesthesia and spend the night at the hospital, or a medical abortion, where I would ingest a few pills and go home. I chose the latter, figuring it couldn’t be too much worse than Plan B. A Plan B+, if you will.

If I had known what I know now, I would’ve accepted the surgical option even if the anesthesia had been a baseball bat. On the drive home the day of, Aline asked me if I was nervous. ‘Why would I be nervous?’ I laughed, popping the first pill with confidence. But it soon became clear why I should be nervous. Terrified, even. Because as the second pill lay dissolving under my tongue, I felt a knot twist in my stomach that unraveled into the worst stomach pain I had ever felt.

I clenched, afraid to open my mouth lest the gas change directions. By the time Aline dropped me off to find parking, I could barely wheeze out a ‘see you later.’ I approached my building with shaky legs. By the first floor, I was limping. By the third, I was crawling on my hands and knees. The pain had snowballed, doubling and tripling in size with every passing minute. I made it into my apartment and collapsed onto the couch, spending the next three hours alternating between screaming into a pillow and waddling to the bathroom.

After sitting with me through the worst of it, Aline left once the contractions passed. But while the pain had subsided, the bleeding had not, and I became increasingly certain I was hemorrhaging. When my roommate got home from work, I blurted out what happened and begged her to drive me to the hospital. Once in the clinic, I had a panic attack lying on the examination table as three interns worked on dislodging the clot caught in my cervix. The fourth held my hand.

I bled for weeks after, forced to wear large, diaper-like pads. The irony wasn’t lost on me. An aside: if you’re reading this filled with rage at my perceived flippancy, don’t fret. The chemical reaction my brain had after my abortion caused me far more pain than any insult you might be planning on emailing me later.

My life, which had seemed so vibrant before, turned monochrome. I couldn’t feel anything. It didn’t help that all the movies I’d seen about abortions seemed to end right after the procedure. In their world, the protagonist would leave the clinic and run into her best friend’s arms before departing on a girl-power-fueled road trip. My story, on the other hand, was turning into more of an experimental arthouse film. I spent my days taking sad, lonely runs (occasionally) and sad, lonely naps (often).

I was so sure of wanting the abortion that I couldn’t understand why I was depressed. At work, I’d stare out the window and contemplate all the other reasons I could be feeling this way, never realizing the hormonal imbalance I’d been plunged into was reason enough.

I’ve never been the strong and silent type, but it somehow seemed dramatic to ask for help. I struggled to talk about it with friends, and even when I did, I made sure our conversations stayed lighthearted. A month or so after the fact, when I visited my best friend in Paris, she asked me if I finally got my period. ‘Oh, no.’ I laughed, avoiding eye contact. ‘I got an abortion.’

I was put on this earth to entertain! And much like a court jester, I’ve always felt an immense pressure to not let my audience down. But the more I avoided mentioning my feelings, the more I risked blurting them out at an inopportune moment. I decided I needed to find a way to talk about my abortion in a way that wouldn’t elicit the wide, sympathetic eyes I found so unbearable.

So, instead of focusing on the pain, I told the story of the midwife at the hospital, who, after asking how long I’d been in France, laughed when I joked, ‘long enough to get pregnant.’ I mentioned the doctor who discretely turned the screen away from me as I silently sobbed through my ultrasound. I talked about how I was always treated with sympathy and never pity. About Aline and how much she helped me, though she barely knew me. And of course, I emphasized how lucky I was to be in France, a country where abortion is free and legal.

This is how I started sharing my experience: including all the little moments that made a difficult period more bearable. And the more I shared, the more I opened myself up to the love and support that was available to me all along. I accepted that just because the abortion was an easy decision didn’t mean it was an easy experience.

I no longer shy away from talking about it the way I did before. But I don’t need to. I emit a sort of energy that has, without provocation, inspired countless women to tell me about their own abortions. Hearing their stories has pushed me to acknowledge some of my own painful memories I may have previously laughed off.

It’s these conversations that have also helped me perfect a semi-script, semi-mantra that I’ve recited to every friend who’s called me after finding herself in the same situation I found myself in six years ago. It goes like this:

• Your reasons are valid regardless of your situation,
• 1 in 4 women end up terminating a pregnancy,
• If you feel bad afterwards, it’s not because you made a mistake.

The more I say it, the more I believe it.

For now, there is no alternative universe where I have a child. But there is a current one where I have people, both loved ones and strangers, who go out of their way to support me—and a version of myself who lets them. And while the life I pictured years ago in that bathroom hasn’t exactly turned out the way I expected, I think it’s okay. Because through all the moments of success, failure, joy and despair, there hasn’t been a single one where I’ve been alone.