This happened about a few months back. I was pregnant with my first child, going to be one of two dads. My husband was worried for me. My parents kept trying to follow their twisted Christian beliefs.
I bet you’re wondering how a man can be pregnant. The answer is simple: I am a transgender man. My parents, however, are a different story.
One day, when I was only one month pregnant with the child that we very much wanted, I had a serious case of sleep paralysis. I couldn’t move, let alone talk to the strange atrocity that appeared before my eyes.
The atrocity looked bloody, and seemed to emit an evil aura. It seemed to be saying something to me. Here’s what I could make out:
“Some people just weren’t meant to have children. Some people just weren’t meant to be alive.”
And it was chanting some sort of poem in a language I do not speak. It appeared to suck something out of somewhere and left. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t.
When I woke up in a cold sweat, something in me felt… dead.
It took me a while to realize that I had felt the fetus in my uterus die. It occurred to me that I had to do what Christianity hates the most: abortion.
And to save my life at that.
I told my husband about it, and he signed me up for the nearest abortion clinic he could find in our part of Colorado, USA. We did everything we could to get me a short wait time and everything. We had also done what we could to keep my parents from finding out.
Every night, I kept seeing the same atrocity. And every night, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t even get up and run from this thing.
I started telling my husband about it.
“Hey, Chris? Can I talk to you about something?” I asked.
“Sure, Lucas. What is it?” he said.
“Hey. I keep having sleep paralysis every night. Every time, I see this… atrocious creation that appears to watch me every night. I don’t know what to do about it, knowing that I can’t run for my life whenever it’s there!”
“Huh. That explains why you have been waking up scared lately. I’m here for you, Lucas. I’m here.”
And he comforted me that morning.
We kept waiting and waiting for the day of my abortion to come. I kept having sleep paralysis and having the nightmare come to me.
On the planned day for my lifesaving abortion, my parents found out about it all. They were yelling and they knocked on the door so hard I swore they were going to knock it down and possibly break it.
“Open this door, Samantha!”
And they just had to deadname me like this.
“Open this door! Now!”
I’m an adult. I can’t follow their choices anymore! I’m not a girl, you guys!
“Samantha, you be a good girl and open this door now!”
I didn’t answer or open, because they were using the name I no longer respond to and they were misgendering me left and right.
Eventually, I heard something break. I ran to my husband and asked for help.
“Lucas, what is going on?” he asked, startled.
“Chris, we need to get out now! My parents found out!”
“Alright, calm down. We can get through this. I’ll get us out. I’ll save your life.”
We escaped through the window in the back and left in our car. I was in so much pain that I let my husband do the driving.
When I saw that my parents were behind us in their car, they brought out a pretty big rifle. They began to shoot at us.
“Chris, drive faster!”
“The speed limit is 60 here, Lucas!”
“I don’t care! Drive faster! We need to get to the clinic, stat!!”
“I can’t let the police pull us over and do worse to us than your parents are doing!”
I know what I did next was unsafe, but we were running for our lives, my parents are narcissist and Christian, and we were heading to an abortion clinic to save my life. I was dying, for crying out loud! I dragged him to the passenger seat and took over the wheel. We swerved quite a bit, but we were going straight again.
I drove our car to over 85 miles per hour. I kept honking the horn to warn the other drivers on the road about us. And my parents must have been driving faster as well, because they appeared to keep staying behind us.
And my dad kept shooting at us. Still missing, but we weren’t shot down.
This made me glad we were on a road that wasn’t travelled much.
We drove onto a bridge and my parents were finally out of bullets by then. They tried using the method of speeding swerving in front to forcefully stop us and basically kidnap me. But that didn’t work, and instead, they hit the guard rail on the bridge and weren’t going to drive forward.
We managed to make it to the abortion clinic that night. We were driving at night, true, but that’s because of the distance from home to the clinic. We parked our car where no one else would see and started running toward the clinic. Glad that the clinic was open at night, we got inside and, wouldn’t you know it, there was a line that was a bit long.
Tired, scared, and running out of patience, I told the lady at the counter why I need to get in sooner.
“Sir, you’re going to have to wait your turn.” she replied, deadpan.
“Wait my turn?! My parents are gaining on us and I need to get it now! If they get here, I could get dragged back to their home and possibly locked in that room!”
“Sir, if you’re going to be unruly, I’m going to have to call off your appointment.”
“Call off a life-or-death procedure on a man whose narcissistic parents are going to–”
“Sir, please be patient.”
Eventually, because lights were on inside and my parents could likely see my face if they make it, I had run out of suitable places to hide and I just had to be waiting for a while. I kept looking outside, hoping that my parents wouldn’t get here. The distance from the bridge to the clinic is long, but it never hurt to keep watching out for them.
After a few minutes, I found myself unable to move while I was looking out the window. The atrocity from my sleep paralysis nightmares appeared before my eyes. Because I couldn’t move, I was scared, more out of fear that my evil parents would make it here and kidnap me back into their home than out of fear that the atrocious monster would eat me. But it appeared to be smiling. Like it was happy for me.
Eventually, my name–my real, not-my-deadname, chosen name, Lucas Diamond–was called. I sighed in relief. I went through the door, signed waivers, and a few days later, I woke up somewhere in a real hospital.
I asked the doctors what was going on, and they said that while I was asleep, apparently I had to have my uterus removed with the fetus, because the dead fetus wasn’t coming out, nor was it going to come out through a normal abortion procedure. I had to have a hysterectomy to save my life.
My husband was phoned about it and he came to visit me every day. We had to have the immediate family rule broken because I told the doctors about what my family was like and that I did not want them in my life ever again. I only wanted Chris Rogers, my husband, because he was my real family, my loving family, for me.
Now, three months later, Chris and I have an adopted young daughter. She liked the idea of being raised with two dads. Chris got me on HRT and I feel so much better with testosterone being injected in my body. We’re going to raise her with feminism and support her all the way, regardless of her interests. The sleep paralysis demon has been smiling at me, feeling happy, every time. I still get an unsettling feeling whenever he shows up, however.