Less Children

For a 15-year-old, Sophia was mature. The night her best friend turned 15, they went to a concert of their favorite band to celebrate. It was that night when Sophia’s responsible ways and maturity lead her to what was a nightmare hard to imagine, by many.
For a 15-year-old, Sophia was a little bit overly pregnant, and impregnated by the kind of man that no woman would want for her child, let alone a girl would dream of.

Every night when she put her head on the pillow, she remembered, distinctly, every sensation of that night. Every spot she had felt pain in, the horrid smell, the way that putrid floor had felt, and how heavy that man was. After that night, her reflection in the mirror stopped being normal, the reflection of a regular girl. She saw someone tainted, dirty, someone that could easily be turned into the play thing of any rapist or psycho that may have walked along.
Every time she walked into the shower, she absent-mindedly felt the need to rub her skin of all the dirt. Of all the violet gestures that man had done, of all the touches she resented so deeply.

Of all feelings, it was guilt the most peculiar, yet the most present. She felt guilty for causing her family’s life to change so much. They had left their old town, and moved, far away from anybody they knew. She had asked for that, thinking that the ghost of that dreadful night would go away if she went away to a place where no one knew her, where the rape wasn’t a known story and where she didn’t feel as if there was a label taped to her forehead saying “I was raped.” It wasn’t a thing she wanted the world to know, yet she was forced to carry around, in her womb, a proof of it, a proof with a heartbeat, fingers, eyelids and everything a person has.
Her child would be the living, breathing reminder of the moments she had gone through, and yet she had grown to love that child from the very first time she heard its heartbeat, at the doctor’s. The heartbeat that emerged from a body that used the DNA of her, and of a monster. Yet that was her child, and she was determined to keep it from the moment she learned of the pregnancy, two months after the rape.
Why keep the baby? She thought of the pregnancy as of a sign, since she still became pregnant even though she had been on birth control pills for medical reasons. She was in the very little percentage of females that become pregnant while on the pill, so she thought that that child deserved the chance to live, after having been conceived in such an unlikely manner, and having such little chances of existing given the situation.
Her parents, at first reluctant at the idea of their 15-year-old child having her own child, finally accepted it, opening their eyes to the gesture of great sacrifice their daughter showed. It was then when they realized what a noble human they had raised, and were proud.

Sometimes, Sophia thought of the being growing inside of her. She knew that it wasn’t only her that would have to live with the thought of having a child with that man, but also the child would have to go through life as the offspring of a less-than-human.

But, through all the mist and the darkness in her life, Sophia kept her mind and heart open, thinking that the sun shall always rise upon her. After all the turmoil, and the pain, she still had things to have a grip on. Perhaps having a child before even turning 16 was difficult. Perhaps people wouldn't understand that she didn't get pregnant by choice, that she didn't have sexual contact by choice either. But, in the end, she knew that the sun will rise upon everybody, even her and her unborn child.