Reply #15: I was the product of rape. [View All]

[China_cat]

My mother had me, and 'kept' me and I never realized until I became a mother just how bad it had been for both of us. Once she finally married, her husband agreed to adopt me and make me 'legitimate' but only if I was sent to live with my grandparents.

My grandmother let me know for the rest of her life that I ruined theirs and that she was 'required' to take me in or she wouldn't have done it. (The only answer to my question of why I wasn't just sent to an orphanage...the common threat...was 'what would the neighbors think')

Nobody ever called me a bastard or anything like that but I was let know in other ways that I wasn't 'fit' company for other children (including my cousins) and that my mother was the town slut. Not true, of course, but this is what I grew up with.

Abortion wasn't legal when my mother was pregnant but I often wonder why she put herself through what she did. There was a doctor in town that would have taken care of it for her. I wouldn't be here, of course, but maybe my mother, who died at the age of 40, would be.