Between The World's I Lived

Chapter 3: The Choice That Broke Me

Before I met Omar, I made a devastating mistake.

When school ended and adulthood loomed, I stepped into university life carrying more confusion than ambition. I didn’t know who I wanted to be, so I chose three degrees that mirrored my fractured sense of self: psychology, law, and drama. I was still dancing too, offered a part-time position as an assistant teacher by the woman who had trained me for ten years. From the outside, I looked purposeful. Inside, I was lost.

Ethan and I remained in a long-distance relationship. Every holiday, I travelled twelve gruelling hours by bus to see him. In his city, I was introduced to a fast, reckless nightlife — alcohol, drugs, chaos. What once felt exciting soon became volatile. I competed for his attention with female roommates, with strangers, with substances that always came first. Once again, I found myself begging to be chosen.

One night, emotions on a high, I made a choice that changed everything: I didn’t take my pill, resulting in a pregnancy. I wasn’t ready, and I didn’t want to be a teenage mother, so I chose an abortion.

At that age I had no desire for motherhood. My choices were born out of recklessness disguised as romance — a belief that life would arrange itself like a television drama, that consequences would somehow miss me.

They didn’t.

The process was excruciating. I bled heavily, sought medical assistance, and lied to protect myself. My mother, sharp and intuitive, discovered the truth, screaming in anger and fear as I was driven to the hospital. The shame and trauma stayed with me for years. I began to cheat on Ethan, seeking numbness in others, in fleeting moments of comfort and distraction. One night, a friend I had befriended from the shop I used to frequent as I passed on my way to my tuition lessons, came over. We hooked up, a choice I would regret deeply — and later discover he was Junaid, Omar’s brother. I didn't love him. But at that time I longed for connection as I felt lost and empty.

This was my lowest point, a time of vulnerability and mistakes, the scarlet letter that would haunt the possibility of a love I truly desired. I had traded safety for pain, illusion for reality, and began a cycle of longing and loss that would define the years to come.

And with that single moment, I unknowingly sealed a fate I was not ready to face.