I’d been dating my boyfriend for about a year. I hadn’t told my parents, because I knew that they wouldn’t like it. I wasn’t deliberately trying to deceive them, but I just didn’t want them bothering me about it. We started sleeping together a couple of months into our relationship. I wasn’t really told much about sex and I couldn’t use the pill because my parents would notice, so that probably made it more risky but I figured it would be fine because we were still using protection. But a couple of times we didn’t use anything, after I had been drinking. I know it was stupid, and I never, never would have done it if I had known this would happen. Sometimes I drink a little bit too much and I just liked the way it feels when you don’t really have to think about anything and it probably made me not think enough about the decision I was making and the consequences.
Just for context, my dad is American, and my mom is from Romania. I live in Texas and my dad’s family is big on church, like a lot of people from Texas and my family from Romania are also really religious. So for my entire family, church is a big part of their lives. I’m my parents’ only child, and I’m the only granddaughter on both sides so my parents have always been very strict on me and a little overbearing. I’ve done reasonably well in school, and I’ll finish high school in about a month or so and I found out a couple of weeks ago that I got into the college I wanted to go to. It was mainly my parents’ choice, because they wanted me to stay at home and they’re paying for it.
I had been feeling weird and had missed a period. I was really worried and my parents were staying overnight in Dallas for a work conference. So I had gone and gotten some pregnancy tests and used them in the morning, and they were all positive. I felt that I had to tell my boyfriend, and he’s really mad at me. I said I don’t know what I’m supposed to do and he said that he doesn’t have anything to do with that and that if I don’t deal with it, he’s going to tell my parents and say that I had been sleeping with people at school after drinking and that I’m blaming it on him. Both my parents are strict, but my mom is worse. She likes to yell at me in Romanian because my dad can’t understand it so it means she can insult me more. My dad prefers to do the ‘we’re really disappointed in you, and so is God’ sort of thing.
My mom is obsessed with my virginity and purity and all that so she will genuinely want to kill me if she finds out. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and I’m really upset by my boyfriend’s reaction. My friends used to joke that he was with me for the sex and I thought it was a joke but now I think it might have been true. I’m really scared and I don’t know how to make sure he doesn’t tell them because I don’t know how to deal with it myself and I don’t know if I’m just supposed to tell my parents and deal with their reaction or not. I know that people will say to travel out of state and get an abortion, but I can’t do that. I’m not very good at driving a car and because I live on the eastern side of Texas it would be a very long journey, and my parents would want to know why I was leaving. They’re also very expensive, and they would notice if I spent that much money suddenly.