For the Birds: This one's about getting an abortion

Part two of a two-part issue

Read part one here.

I remember, like I was on some Hollywood movie set, driving past a group of protestors holding graphic signs, clearly stationed as close to the building as they were allowed to be.

Their exact headcount was unreadable: there were five of them, or there were 20 of them, or it didn’t matter how many of them there were because they were real people and they were there and it was personal. I was not in a music video, I was not in a film. I was driving to a place where I needed to go in my real, unscripted life, where one of the innermost choices I’d ever made was being assessed by a group of people who I would never meet or speak to; people who I might run into at the grocery store, saying, excuse me, yes have a nice day, you too, commenting on the price of produce the way you sometimes do when someone enters your periphery. They might have seemed, in a certain context, like very nice people.

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I remember taking things personally. I remember being told not to take things personally. I remember trying to take things less personally as a result of being told this.

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I remember being asked if I was having some kind of breakdown. I remember just like it was yesterday: the implication that a woman makes a certain choice only at the intersection of inadequacy and panic.

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I remember, like a light switch, beginning to cry the second I felt the door close behind me afterwards and made my way back out into the sun. No, not beginning to. I was not crying. And then, all of a sudden, I was.

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I remember hearing stories about girls dropping out of high school; about girls who were accused of making choices; about girls who were accused of not making choices. About the things we are and are not.

And which of these things, which of these choices, are born on the inside of us. Which of these choices, by the time they show up on the outside, were in fact a long time coming.

Which of these choices, by the time their results are being apprehended and assessed by the world, are the exact opposite of surprising.

And which of these assessments intersect with the things we actually are. And which of them don’t. Couldn’t. Would never.

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I remember talking to a writer about a poem she had written. The poem was about having an abortion. It was well crafted, and it was nuanced, and it was empathetic, and it was truthful, in that deeply complex way that truth so often is. I remember that by expressing any amount of sadness or concern or complication, she was worried her poem might be read as a critique of being pro-choice. She did not want her poem to be read in this way.

I remember the reassurance, born of honest reflection and close reading, that I gave her.

And I remember, as a result, the ways our political discourse encourages us to dismiss the complexity of our tender experiences, forces us to worry about the full expression of our feelings, dreading the co-option of any glimmer of sadness: those difficult truths that accompany even our best, most unregrettable choices.

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I remember changing something about myself. Then, I was new. Yet I was still the same—a little less, but mostly more. The world was still whole, as it had been.

What we come to be known as. Known for. The summaries that communicate. And the summaries that restrict.

When summary becomes a kind of amputation—usually when the summary isn’t written by you.

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I remember saying, "It's not a big deal," letting my advocacy shine. Trying to normalize with words what felt to me, after all, like a very normal thing.

What kind of deal was it? A small one? A sneaky one? A permanent one?

Was it a quiet deal? Private—or secretive (could it be, though…)? Did it bite its fingernails when it grew nervous? Did it know how to rest without feeling guilty?

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I remember eating sushi with O in that little Japanese restaurant in Orono, Maine. Every single thing on the table reminded me of my own body. The little tray of soy sauce, always too full. The fumbled chopsticks. The pink pickled ginger. The small piles of fish eggs.

Between the time of knowing and the time of the appointment, I’d wake up each day with a baseline of dread. Suddenly all the activities I participated in had clauses attached to them. I went to class, while pregnant. I drove to the store and bought a few quick things for dinner, while pregnant. We threw a release party for the journal I was editing at the time (while pregnant), and people came into my house so that we could read out loud and be read to (while pregnant), so that we could share homemade food and recognize our literary community (pregnant), and marvel at the beauty of words printed in physical books (pregnant), and celebrate the ways that poetry provides a safe repository for examining our most incomprehensible and turbulent feelings as we move onward through this surprising world while pregnant.

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I remember the older woman with short blonde hair that framed her face like a snug halo. She held my hand from start to finish like it was her calling, and her pleasure, and precisely what they paid her to do: this and nothing more. There’s nothing special or significant about what you’re doing, was what her skin pressed against my skin communicated to me, and the kindness of her message, how unremarkable an abortion could really be, rang through my chest like a church bell.

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I remember making the careful choice about titling this newsletter; feeling the crystal clear depth of how ordinary a topic it was, sensing the murkiness and disconnect that might follow. “I just wanna be myself, and I want you to love me for who I am.”

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I remember learning that there are, when it comes to my own life, some details I will not get to control, some contexts I am not allowed to define, and some expressions I should not permit with the full abundance of natural expression.

Actually, I don’t remember this at all: I don’t remember learning any single part of it, not once.

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I remember the various ways I have tried to cut pieces off of me throughout my life. & tried to keep close what tended to slip away a little too easily. & tried to make space for the parts that needed more breathing room.

Tried to get my "no's" and my "yes's" a little more lined up.

So that the visible surface of me could say, finally, no. So that the internal world of me could say, finally, no.

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Suggested homework

• Please tell the women in your life, every single one of them, that you love them.

• Things are not okay. Please donate to NNAF, right now.

• Please tell / sing / write your story, whichever one is pressing up against the inside of your chest and needing to be told, sung, written.

Share your story!

• On the site: Hit the “comment” button to share publicly. Help me keep the space a safe one, which takes all of us.

• By email: Hit “reply” to keep the conversation one-on-one. I’m listening heart-first.