Nope, I wasn't even close to planned. In fact, I was nearly nearly aborted. I was the result of a teenage pregnancy (16, to be exact), so it's kind of weird having a biological mother that isn't even 40 years old at this point. Not that I see her anyway. Fortunately my aunt (who adopted me), convinced my biological mother not to go through with the abortion. Which is kind of terrifying to think about - that I could have ceased to exist prior to leaving the womb. Outside of that though, it doesn't affect me on a daily basis, and the family that I have has never regretted the decision.
| Which is kind of terrifying to think about - that I could have ceased to exist prior to leaving the womb.| Is it really that terrifying to think about? If you had never existed you wouldn't know it was terrifying. In fact, it wouldn't affect you at all. I mean, you could have died in probably several thousand other ways before or since you've been born. Yes, I guess you came close on the abortion one, but there are probably other instances where you don't even know how close you've come to being gravely injured or dying. (Car accidents are a big one that I consider in that regard. Five seconds one way or another in your path and you could have never gotten into an accident...or you could be dead. You don't really know.) I think it's more terrifying because you know about it than for what it actually is. We don't usually know how close we come to death on a regular basis. Of course, I'm not trying to tell you how to feel about it. I just don't know if I would find that a terrifying thought, personally. You would never have even known you were going to exist. (Well, probably, I don't know what term your mother was considering aborting.) Hell - you might not even have been you yet in which case ... in which case you wouldn't have died before leaving the womb at all... (?)
I've already been in a couple of car accidents that I'm surprised weren't worse than they were. One in particular where it was 50mph on a highway. It's terrifying to think that nothing that I've done ever would have happened, that my parents never would have had me and who knows what would have happened with them, and that there would be one less family member for the rest of my family.
That's true but that's a very different context than "I died before I was born, aka my family as I know it doesn't exist." You are experiencing the terror of your family as it exists now losing a part of it. (And I realize, this is a slight flaw with my analogy. My apologies.) But if you had been aborted/died before you were born, especially if it was in the early months, you never would have been a part of your family, and so you as a person a) wouldn't have existed and b) therefore wouldn't have existed for your family to miss and/or mourn. I think it might be terrifying to think about in the same abstract way that dying is terrifying to think about, but then again I'm not convinced you would have been truly 'alive' and imbued with consciousness at the time of the abortion (again, depends on the timeframe) so there would have been no 'you' that existed at all, which means that maybe on very fuzzy theoretical levels your consciousness could have then developed in some other being, so your chance on earth wouldn't have been annihilated at all. This is a very fuzzy, Buddhist/reincarnation/don't-believe-in-souls/pro-choice argument here and I realize it recognizes only my personal viewpoints and may not make sense because frnakly I'm mixing theologies here, but that's why I was thinking maybe being aborted before achieving consciousness isn't that terrifying at all.It's terrifying to think that nothing that I've done ever would have happened, that my parents never would have had me and who knows what would have happened with them, and that there would be one less family member for the rest of my family.
Eh, my parents have never kept much from me. I prefer it that way, it's better having found out younger as opposed to finding out now in my 20's. That would be a bit world shattering now wouldn't it. It's a situation that I was able to learn how to deal with at a younger age, and I appreciate having had that opportunity greatly.