I wasn’t supposed to be here. I mean, I am here – paying taxes, trying to drink enough water, crying at dog videos – but according to the first draft of my existence? Yeah, I was almost edited out.
My mom got pregnant with me in Germany. They weren’t residents, just passing through on the European version of “what now?” with one kid. My brother – my one and only sibling – is eight years older than me. Translation: I was not exactly in the five-year plan. Or the twenty-year one.
She went to get an abortion. That’s what we do when we’re not sure. Or scared. Or tired. Or all of the above.
But apparently, I was “too developed.” The doctor took one look at fetus-me and decided I was past the return window. So here I am – too cooked to cancel, just developed enough to become everyone’s long-term emotional project.
I found this out in the most casual, almost sitcom-esque way. I was sixteen or seventeen, cracking beers with my dad – who drinks five times a year, max – when he got a little glowy from his once-a-decade Jack Daniels moment and dropped this gem:
“You’re funny like me. I’m so glad your mom didn’t abort you!”
Record scratch.
I laughed, paused, then realized that wasn’t a punchline.
He told me the story. And I didn’t know what to do with it, so I folded it up, put it in the back of my mental closet and let it collect dust for about a decade.
I used to tell this story with a grin, like a “Ha! I’m still here though!” punchline. Something about it felt like a cosmic joke – like I’d snuck in. And I never really thought about it deeper, not until the other day.
My mom was talking to her friend about my sobriety – how I’m doing well, finding my footing, that whole “becoming a person again” journey. Her friend apparently said, “She’s a miracle.”
And for the first time, my mom replied, “She’s been a miracle since before she was born. I didn’t want her at first.”
That was new.
Usually she’d say stuff like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe your dad told you that!” or “It’s not that we didn’t want you!”
But this was the first time she actually said it plainly: “I didn’t want her at first.”
And weirdly? It didn’t hurt. Not in the way it probably would’ve when I was 16. Now, it just… sat there. Honest. Heavy. Not cruel. Just real.
And it made me think: maybe that story shaped more than I realized.
Maybe knowing – on some deep, weird, cellular level – that I was almost not here is why I tried so hard to justify being here. Why I bent over backward in every friendship, every relationship, every dynamic that made me feel like love had to be earned. Why I spent years overcompensating with effort, jokes, attention, care, gifts, silence, whatever currency was accepted, just to feel safe in someone else’s presence.
I think that need to be needed started young. Maybe it’s in-utero energy. I remember being six, playing “mom” with my stuffed animals, pretending they were crying – because they were sad, not hungry. I needed them to need me. I was trying to fix something I couldn’t even name yet.
Turns out, that story might’ve been doing more behind the scenes than I gave it credit for. It’s been shaping things quietly. The way I show up in any relationship. The way I give too much. The way I panic at the thought of not being useful, or worse – replaceable. Needed. That word has lived in my bones since before I could spell it. I confuse being needed with being loved. I confuse being wanted with being safe.
Because the truth is, I wasn’t saved because I’d one day be useful. I wasn’t kept so I could prove I deserved it. I was born. I wasn’t born to justify my existence. I was just… born. And that is enough. Period. That’s it. That’s enough.
Still funny. Still here. Still learning how to believe what I already know.
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