Paradise Lost:Unwanted Toys

It was exceptionally cold and dark on that day. As if it was telling me that I was about to witness a harrowing story.

My phone was buzzing and I read a message from a friend. We were very close until she tied the knot. She was the woman I wanted to be when I grew up until I learned the truth — That human being and their experience are extremely complex.

The women in my life are usually older and I have a tendency to befriend them. In my mind, they are fascinating. They have seen things and lived as a woman. In a society where equality was still blurred and women were left alone with many disadvantages of social pressure, these women are beating against all odds. Some are accomplished, some are unique, some are just too broken according to their society.

“ Don’t tell it to your mom” she began the message.

“ Sure” I texted back without hesitation. “ I just can’t promise, if your story won’t be part of the fiction I wrote” . I added.

“ Okay”

“ I am pregnant.”

“ again” she kept typing.

“ I am confused. I don’t want this baby. I already have two and I can barely find a nanny. Who is going to take care of this baby now?” she added.

I paused a second after glancing at the texts. Trying to sympathize, I tried crafting the best response while in reality I was no good at beating around the bush and sugar coating what I said.

“ So, what do you want to do” after so many scenarios inside my head. It was the simplest, my most neutral view on that.

“ I bought abortion pills but they were fake. Then I bought another one, that time it was a real one and I eventually bled”

I wished I knew how her expression looked like on the other screen as she typed her story.

“ The baby survived,” she added. I was at that point wondering if she was unhappy because she didn’t manage to kill the baby or if she was genuinely happy that the baby still survived.

She went on saying that the doctor didn’t want to abort her baby and that her husband, though was quite supportive, they have no choice but to keep the baby. Abortion unless for medical reasons and rape violence aren’t authorized.

So, there I was. I was tongue-tied, frozen, and a wave of melancholy seeps into me.

My mind wandered. It wandered to one thing that I jokingly said but turned any regular conversation into a sour, awkward situation. “ I wish I hadn’t been born”.

We all didn’t get a choice on that. We are a product of two people, fornicating, and eventually to a being. As soon are we’re born, we’re claimed by some sort of name. We are shaped and formed by our surroundings. We almost have no choice, at least early on about our parents, about what our religion would be, that’s how it works in the society I live. Then somehow, we never question almost anything about our life and stick with the most comfortable path.

While myself....

“ You were distributed like cakes” a relative said to me once. She referred to how we were sent to adoption. Maybe my siblings and I were cake. Maybe we were not as meaningful as we thought we would be. Maybe we should have never been born.

As I learned the truth about who I was. I thought about the worst possible of things while also the best of the things that came out of it. And as years go by, it was never easy to let go of the fact that I was an unwanted toy from the very beginning.

I simply hope the kid would never discover that it was the toy which was unwanted. It was persistent with wanting to be a being.

Maybe after all, we always have that survival instinct kicked in ever since we’re inside the womb. Maybe I was that too and so are my sibling.We both survived but paid a good price for being born.

And it saddens me that I witness one more unwanted child. Except, it was not my first time. There are way too many unwanted children that survived.

Ironically, I would have understood if it were from an abusive family or someone with financial problems. But it was not the case. They are middle-upper class who are more than able to afford five children in the house with supportive family around them. It didn’t make that much sense to me nor it did with my own. From all I heard, we were very comfortable yet because of one person's selfishness and perhaps not ready for having more, we were the repercussions. A quite expensive one.

As a grown woman, the idea of child bearing and rearing are pretty sacred.

I always see it as a huge responsibility that I think everyone should think through before committing to one. I certainly have no answer to dealing with unwanted toys. But with a strong conviction, casting them aside, ill-treating them, and pretending it doesn’t exist, are only going to create another dysfunctional being.

Do we need more of them on this 7 billion planet? Do we need a more tortured soul to exist? Maybe some that didn’t make it out here, were for good. At least they are not experiencing a living hell. And those that made it out alive, we were curious beings — but we paid the price too.