All this week I wanted to buy a tree. Today would have been my day but instead I’m sitting in bed with little Teacup by my side. She keeps puddy pawing the pink fluffy blanket that half covers us both, her little striped paws kneading away, making me feel cosy and safe just watching her.
Pancake was around but really it’s too early in the day for him to fight for a place by my side.
They’re not jealous of my attention but they are jealous of my love. I have to hand it out in equal measure. I never thought I could have two cats; I never believed I could love so much, but my love for them is unconditional as it would be for a child.
People ask me if I ever wanted a baby. My answer is no, not really, only when I was pregnant or someone was fucking my brains out and I really loved him.
Sometimes you want love to go on for ever and sometimes you really don’t.
I believe in souls, I believe in an afterlife, I believe in a forever, so having an abortion was very hard for me. In fact so hard it nearly killed me.
I was 26 and had just left the Royal College of Art. It had been an incredibly tough two years, where I was exposed to the shock of wealth and the British class system.
Somehow on my degree it wasn’t so obvious but here in the highest echelons of art education it reeked. Debutantes would shudder when I opened my mouth too loud.
I was very lucky though. I was given an amazing bursary, a travel scholarship and the hardship fund. I always joked about putting the “hardship fund” down on my CV.
At the end of my first year, I smashed all my old paintings up with a sledgehammer. I was in the courtyard going insane, screaming, wood flying, blood pouring down my wrist as blisters burst on my hands. I had nowhere to store my work. There was no place in the world for my art.
It hurt but not as much as having an abortion: that nearly killed me. It nearly killed me a million times
It hurt, it really hurt but not as much as having an abortion: that nearly killed me. It nearly killed me a million times.
The reason why it nearly killed me again and again was because I was made to feel so guilty.
It wasn’t just the guilt; it was the fact that the abortion didn’t work. I was pregnant with twins. One of the foetuses was left to die inside me. No screams or tears from me.
Just a deadly silence as I lay there going yellow and yellow and yellow, till my body just started to float away.
I never wanted to have an abortion. It was a case of survival, self-preservation.
When I told my boyfriend I was pregnant, it was in Regent’s Park — lots of squirrels running around, daffodils in bloom.
I will never forget: he patted me on the tummy and said, “Hello, we’re going to kill you.”
I think it was at that point I knew that if I didn’t have an abortion, I was probably going to kill myself.
The rejection at that level hurt like nothing life had ever prepared me for.
My doctor at the time refused to sign the termination papers.
It was only when I said that I’d do it myself or go to a backstreet abortionist that he got another doctor to sign.
To lay down in pain with something dead inside me, something I could have loved more than anything in the entire world.
To lay there and know from its internal grave, deep inside my womb it could have killed me. I survived that.
My guilt is gone. I live my life and I rejoice in souls. I know my capacity to love and I will keep loving.
I made my choice.
Let the tree grow stronger.
Tracey Emin is an artist
