Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
The Day After
It’s been 53 years, but that feeling of being cornered is bubbling around in my chest. Never before or since have I had such an overwhelming terror of the present and the future. I’m proud to have survived it and gone on to lead a good life. Many people have endured far worse. And I make no claim to having suffered enormous psychological damage. I’m just saying that the news tonight – especially a report by an Alabama doctor of having to tell a whole waiting room of women that he could no longer perform abortions, that he could not help them – is like the bile that creeps up at me at night, trickles up my esophagus, and sometimes pools in my mouth. My fear and shame, we can’t leave out shame because the shame was intense, well, they’ve taken on tiny dormant lives in my cells, but yesterday and today, they’re pushing and blooming and saying, remember me, girl, remember me?
It isn’t political for me. It is in my gut. I feel it in my gut.
I want to go to Alabama and sit in that waiting room and tell the women there that they will survive what is happening, but I can’t do that, and they wouldn’t believe me anyway. They are feeling trapped and abandoned. And they are. They are just twisting in the wind. And while they twist, if they are aware of what has happened in the country, they will recognize that they are insignificant, that no one cares what will happen to them or their lives or their families. No one will help them. Jesus. It is a hideous feeling. I remember it.
The women in the Alabama waiting room will cope. Women cope. They will bury their dreams in the yard and work the night shift. That is what they will do.
10 Comments on “The Day After”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
I’m not sure who said it or even the proper wording but I remember reading it while still at school – I may not agree with you but I will die defending your right to choose. So much sadness. XXX
Yes, those bad old days were terrible, horrible, tragic. Women and girls died! Septic abortion wards in every hospital…septic infections from self induced abortion attempts using bleach or other poisons to try to expel the fetus. Or maybe it was the “neighborhood catheter lady” with unsterile items. Or if one was rich, a doctor could do a D & C, saying miscarriage or fibroids. Look for ways to help girls and women in the states where the men in power have made decisions disregarding women’s and girls’ lives…to finish their education, to care for children or elderly family, to work to eat. No matter the reason, we must determine our futures, not those 5 on the Supreme Court. See the HBO film “The Janes.”
Garry said last night that I should not feel that everything we did or tried to do was nothing. He says we did our best and it wasn’t nothing. Right now, it feels like nothing. It feels like the world I thought I knew collapsed and I’m lying under its rubble. It’s an awful feeling.
It does feel like nothing since this goes so much to the core of women’s rights. The other ‘advancements’ seem insignificant compared to the assault this represents. Still, I appreciate Garry’s perspective.
I can’t deal with this. I’m sick and scared and ready to tell the next person who praises God for saving the babies to go screw themselves.
so incredibly awful it’s hard for me to process
I hope all of these women vote. Such distressing times.
It took me a whole day and dozens of emails to become balanced enough to string these words together.
You did it beautifully. Thank you, Jan.
It’s soul crushing…and to what end.
There will be way too many buried dreams because of this…