Order of operations. Things land in a particular sequence. Then they process. Then they integrate. And then maybe they even process some more. The first sort of circling stage is around my own particular nihilism about what the point of another personal telling could possibly be. But because I have staked so much of my meaning making in the dirt and muck of belief that the personal is what makes the universal, I know that to undervalue the purpose of my story too much is to undervalue it all.
So there have been waves. Clear waves, murky waves, roiling waves, and so much endless churning as the SCOTUS override of Roe V Wade lands more deeply inside my body and my mind. And honestly, I don’t want to write about any of it. I have spilled so many words about abortion and miscarriage and bodies and blood and I am so tired. And the nihilist in me, which seems to be growing bigger and more keen every day, wonders what the point of any of that writing, spilling, rehashing, sharing, imploring, would serve anyway.
Here is the wave sequence. I will do my best to keep it all as personal as possible. Why wouldn’t I? First, shock and numbness, obviously. And then the near simultaneous recognition by both my husband and my daughter that I too would be a dead mother had I not been able to receive emergency medical care in the form of the abortion procedure referred to as D&C, Dilation and Curettage, when I hemorrhaged from an incomplete miscarriage. That was the first real pain thought. Of which there have been many more and within which that particular one remains a constant. I would have died.
And then I reflected on the D&C that I received the summer before my miscarriage and how if I hadn’t been able to get that care and had instead had a child, now a seven year old, I would most likely be more or less fine; I would in all likelihood be alive. However, my family as it exists today very well may not have made it. My marriage might well have buckled were we left with no choice to have another kid back then, my children would have lived different childhoods because of it, and on and on. A different world would certainly exist for us and I cannot really say if it would be better or worse than the one that we live in now with one another. But I would be alive.
Without the second D&C, I would not. And that is when my mind sprints in the direction of all of the bodies of people who will lose their lives, one way or another, without essential medical care.
I consider (constantly) my homosexual daughter and her life. I consider all of my queer family and friends and their lives and families. And then all queer people. And then all people who have in any way had to fight for their rights one day or today and still. And basically then I remember that I do not want to write any of this or think any of this because the central unifying truth is that there is not one human being living in America who will not be adversely affected by this new dystopia. Beginning with the poorest of brown and black people and then spreading out and up from there like a contagion. And we know contagion now, don’t we?
This is a moment in time where the constant is this small and infinite truth: we will all lose. And well before our time.
Yesterday morning as Maple and Wilfred and I rode the Mailboat from Islesford to Northeast for one last attempt to load my kid up with as many groceries as possible before leaving her on her own for a few weeks, we found ourselves on a boat surrounded by women. All different ages and from varying backgrounds and geographies. Within only a few minutes of being gathered up in this haphazard, random, and ever awkward way; talk turned to the shock, the pain, the grief, of a right now stripped that many of these women remembered securing in the first place. They were aghast. Stunned angry. Full of sorrow for all of the bodies set to lose this new Post Roe America.
They all said the same thing: what can we do? Vote. Yes vote. Help other people vote. Yes that too. Please. And yet in a country where the clear majority is pro-choice, pro-womens health, pro-marriage equality, and all of the rest of what sanity, empathy, positive regard, concern and compassion, should make us pro for, it is clear that that is not the whole picture. It is the few that have the power, not the majority, and we need to wake up to it with a ferocity we haven’t quite yet fully embodied. Now is the time for the rage that drives the action. Our dissent must go all the way down to the very origin of us and not let up until we have secured the rights and freedoms that we have all, always, been worthy of.
So yes, vote. Yes, donate. Yes, call your reps. Yes, be as verbal within your spheres of influence as is right and appropriate to your wellbeing for you to be. It is all of this and something more.
One last thing for now: I never want to in any way diminish the complexity of an issue such as Choice. I know that even with clarity and conviction, much often remains almost too difficult to bear at times. Choosing to have an abortion sucked for me. Needing to have one also sucked. A lot. But being able to get them and receive love and care and compassion within a structure of support, that is something I want for every single one of us. Now and always.