Finding Me by Viola Davis

Author:Viola Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

The Wake-Up

“Girl, get up! Girl, get your fight back! Girl, get your power back! Girl, start acting like you are a King’s daughter and there has always been a crown attached to your head. Even when I was sick, I was still His! Even when I was dead, I was still His. Do you know who I am?”

—SARAH JAKES ROBERTS

Everybody has secrets. Everybody. I guess the difference is that we either die with them and let them eat us up, or we put them out there, wrestle with them (or they wrestle with us) until we . . . reconcile. Secrets are what swallow us.

There’s always one secret that drives the nail in the coffin for me. . . . It’s as fresh in my memory as if it happened yesterday and yet . . . distant.

Two weeks before graduation, I woke up sick to my stomach and just knew. I got pregnant by my boyfriend of seven years. I remember taking my headshots that week and going to see Beauty and the Beast at the movie theater and all I kept thinking was I’m pregnant. I didn’t know what the fuck to do with that. It was an emotion far beyond scared. It was as if all the irresponsible decisions I had made had culminated into this. Ever since I started having sex, which was late in life, I didn’t know what I was doing. Yeah, you can learn about birth control but . . . how to love? How to be consistent and responsible, in control, create boundaries? Hell, even making sure you had the money to access condoms or birth control pills? The only commitment I had down, I felt, was my career, and that took EVERYTHING I had. All the other facets in my life overwhelmed me. Now . . . I was pregnant.

I remember I went to a clinic near Juilliard. I went early in the morning and had to cancel the first appointment because I had eaten. I came back the next day. I remember going into a lot of rooms. One room to check in and pay. One room to take another pregnancy test. Another room to put on a surgical gown. Each room was something out of a Stanley Kubrick film where you were getting closer to your demise. There were some very nice doctors who put me on a surgical table and I was put under.

I woke up terrified. I woke up as if being attacked. The pain was excruciating! More than any pain I’d ever experienced. They had told me there may be some pain, but man. . . . There is “what is said,” “what you heard,” and how it actually is, and this pain was NOT what I thought it would be. The recovery room was a bunch of folding chairs arranged in a circle. They placed huge pads on each chair to hold the bleeding from surgery. There was a woman in each one, and there were at least a dozen of them.

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