• 255,744,000 seconds 
• 4,262,400 minutes 
• 71,040 hours 
• 2960 days 

That is how much time I have stolen from my daughter. I have stolen 8 years, 1 month, and 7 days of the time that is rightfully hers.

I am very, very good at living in my head, which means living in denial. So to see the black and white of the calculations took my breath away. That is how long it has been since I raised my daughter. She was 9 years, 3 months, and 28 days old when I gave her up.

In the 2960 days between then and now, I have seen her, literally breathed the same air as her, three days. And that is an overstatement. I did not spend days with her. I spent minutes to an hour or so with her. And in that time there was no mothering, no explaining, no planning for her. There was only distracted talk and banter, the suppression of emotion, and the checking off of a task of finally ‘seeing my daughter.’ A task that billions of women check off, effortlessly or with great effort but consistently over time.

I have stolen from her and this isn’t the first time. I aborted my first child. I believe (when I’m entertaining my delusions) that the baby was a girl. I aborted her somewhere around February of 1996. I had just turned 20. I was sick and not ‘ready’ for a baby or even considering a baby. I was in an unstable relationship that was the product of revenge fantasies stemming from another unstable relationship. If you can call it that. But this baby that was growing inside of me, my baby, was a problem and I had a quick and ready solution.

I bargained, as all people facing death do. I promised that I would finish college, go to graduate school and earn my doctorate, I would get married to the father and when all those ducks were in a row I would have that baby. The same baby, mind you. That spirit that I put on hold would come back once I was ready. That is what I told myself and that is what I lived.

I reluctantly did all the things I promised that I would do. I marched through a deep depression and graduated from college with honors. I got accepted to one of the top PhD programs in the country, I bought my own ring, got engaged, and moved several states away with said fiance in tow. A couple years later I got married though I didn’t want to and a few years after that I got my doctorate though I hated school. You would have never known that I was reluctant or felt negatively about anything I was doing, save another deep bout of depression that first year of grad school. I passed my dissertation defense in 2003 but I didn’t attend graduation until the following year. It’s literally just occurring to me that I got pregnant that same summer. I kept the deal. But I didn’t want to.

I owed. I owed that spirit, who never quite became mine, I owed her the time stolen. I stole 8 years, 5 months and 1 day from her, 3074 days from her, 73,776 hours from her.

Her heart, a girls heart, beats about 90 times per minute. She missed 398,390,040 million heartbeats. Ironic that there’s a heartbeat law. That is the thing you cannot steal. I had no right. There is nothing that I did that started her heartbeat. God breathed life into me and started an electrical impulse as a the first detectable sign of new life. And I went to the clinic and confirmed that her heart was beating. And I committed to stopping it. As if any promise I made could make her heart beat again.

I had a baby. She wasn’t that baby. I hadn’t accepted that I couldn’t right that wrong. I couldn’t bring her back. I could only vow to not do it again. Vow to use this degree that was built on her bones to keep others from making the same mistake I did. But I was a coward. So I had a baby and instead of pouring my whole into her I resented her for stopping me from living the life I wanted to live, for tying me to her father, for forcing me to be a mother when I clearly did not want to be. I lamented that the spirit must be angry at me because my daughter screamed and scratched her face. I saw my guilt manifested, a reflection of the demons inside of me. But mainly, I balked on the real deal. I thought I wrote the contract, made up the terms and was good to go. I did the things and deserved to be happy.

I avoid math because there’s truth there. I owed time. And having a baby did not clear that debt. At best, it started the clock. But all of that is devilish talk. Because as is stated in the Quran:

“And do not kill your children for fear of poverty. We provide for them and for you. Indeed, their killing is ever a great sin.” 17:31

There is deep darkness here. Deep darkness when you sin. And I have tried to run away from that, not accept responsibility for that, and most of all, not repent. I cry out, “I was right” when I know I was wrong. I never told anyone about my first child. Because I was wrong. And I don’t talk about my second child. Because I am still wrong.

I used to obsess over her when she was young. But it wasn’t about her. It was about spirit and contract. Guilt was tied to her perception. Was she angry? Could she tell I didn’t love. Her. I did but simultaneously didn’t. And her father. He escaped it all. No responsibility. Ever. Running away or really just using me to cover his own demons. My contract depended on him. Me, him and her.

He got me pregnant. He rejected me. He abandoned me with the child that WE had to have. He ripped apart the solution to my problems. He revealed me to be raw and ugly. He made the truth plain. I was just some girl who was wild in high school, just as wild in college, and ended up pregnant and having an abortion as a way of hiding who she really was. He didn’t care about her. No matter what bow she put on it. No matter what fake marriage and forced family connections she made. She wasn’t connected and cared for because she hadn’t fostered that connection. I hadn’t fostered that.

So this child of mine. Who has been through hell at my hands. Whose spirit is literally borne out of mine, I gave her away because of the deep darkness in me. Because of who I am and what I did. Because to keep her meant to face my demons, to destroy the rest of my life, to recast the things in my life that I called normal or at least resolved, and to be who I feared to be. And I used other people to do it.

There is no easy resolution in this. And there’s a part two coming. But first. I am wrong. I am dark. I have evil within me.

I want it no more.

I have lost everything because of it. And I sit here holding onto some idea in my mind. Some fictional concept that literally does not exist. It’s useless now. I have nothing save the love of three boys. They are undeserved kindness. A sign that God is merciful and forgiving if I would only submit. I don’t understand God. A God that is so gracious and forgiving. I have done so much against God. But I am nothing. So small and significant that I have only done these things against myself.

To my daughter – you fought your way into this world to meet me, an unloving, selfish mother. I could tell you about my wounds, same as my mother could tell me, but how does that heal you? How does that give you what I stole from you? I can only tell you the truth. And tell you what life has told me. Be the cautionary example for you. So you can choose different. Do better. Be better than I am and was.