I picked up my sister and drove her to GMVS. As I was walking her to a seat in the gym so she could see Les Mis, I was hugged, squeezed tightly and told, "Welcome home!" Naturally, I was offended beyond belief. It's natural to call where you live home and, in high school, I usually misspoke, saying I was going home when I really meant I would be returning to GMVS. Such a slip of the tongue would never occur now, nor would I really call Saint Mike's my home--simply my place of residence. I don't know if my home is in Vermont (where I get my mail). It certainly isn't my childhood home, which has been demolished and created in a new vision. My room--aka the storage room--does not house me or who I am. I feel small pieces of myself everywhere. We must ask ourselves how far we extend, what items, places, moments, clothes, and memorabilia are us; does their existence signify you or just you in that place? Arguably, none, some, and all are signifiers. I am signified... by what exactly, I don't know I am a sign with unfathomable signifiers; I do not know me, so how can you?
Almost a year ago, in February of 2014, I created a new blog, this blog, allowing me to start fresh. A lot happens in a year, and it's combined arbitrariness and social acceptance lends the year to new starts; constantstateofwonder.blogspot.com becomes blank, shaking free its old, embarrassing posts from the me of last year. My writing changes, if it does not improve, and I'm glad I thought to do a yearly cleanse; Junior year Sammi can dwell in the depths of Internet hell while the me with yet no perspective of her own embarrassment can write freely and without anxiety that a reader (or, more likely I) will be tempted to read and learn about me from before. Because me from before does not encapsulate me; she remains formative in development, but not central in current personhood. Slightly Insane Musings of An Idiosyncratic Nerd Girl (my original blog), need not be taken into account when trying to understand me as I am now. Believe me, I'll tell you what I'm about without you needing to root around in my old shitty writing. You can learn more from my current shitty writing. My signifiers cannot be traced to a place or a time, but what else would you expect in the age of the image? I look at pictures of myself sometimes and wonder who I'm seeing. What was I thinking and who was I being? Who is this girl? She is me and she cannot signify herself in a photo; I look for some explanation of who I am in photos of me, but, despite my attempts to declare my personhood to others through countenance and dress, I remain elusive, even to me. But despite my slippery definitions, I feel attached to And That's When I Said...
It may be because years seem much faster; having finished high school, four years in one place (college) feels much shorter; the year, though I've always recognized its arbitrariness, loses its power. But beyond that, And That's When I Said... still feels powerful. It implies seriality--beginning with And, ending with ellipses--and voice with the word Said itself, as well with the temporal words That's and When; the words are spoken in response, and what follows is simultaneously a punchline, sarcastic comment, scathing remark, and outraged explosion; what follows is a post which has attempted to create a signified for myself, the most accurate one possible. Here, I am here; this is me; this is me right now, right this second; you cannot know me more than I know myself; I've granted you all I can collect from within myself, gathered and shaped it to show you this instantaneous, fleeting glimpse of me. And that's why And That's When I Said... feels right. Because it is temporal; because I am transient, at least the me of now. Tomorrow, I will be someone almost exactly the same as I am today; you won't even notice... and then you will. But I will still be saying; I will still be responding in a myriad of (mostly likely embarrassing) ways. And That's When I Said... I will use my voice and what I say will be signifier of myself.
***
"People who have been raped or sexually assaulted" takes up a lot of space, and it should, but when we're attempting to refer to this group, we search for a word that fits the needs of the group and quickly conveys their status. "Victim," it is argued, gives no agency to the person who has been sexually assaulted or raped ("Victims are passive. If it was really that bad, why didn't they do something to stop it? Why did they let it happen?"), which is why some prefer the term "survivor." The person who has been sexually assaulted or raped endures, survives, and recreates their life despite the harm done to them; they do this of their own volition; they are a powerful agent, a force with control and capability. "Victim," it is argued, removes the power and agency of the person who's been sexually assaulted or raped. They are, according to the synonyms of victim, a casualty, a fatality. Personally, I disagree with both words. Victim undercuts the value and depth of a person who has been sexually assaulted or raped, but survivor, for the reasons it is claimed to be valuable, can be harmful.
Survivor declares either a certain amount of luck or power. Concerning luck, they were lucky to make it out alive and unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luck and sexual assault/rape are two unrelated instances we need to not intersect. For luck to meet sexual assault/rape takes the blame from the assaulter/rapist; bad luck is blamed rather than the perpetrator. Luck also declares that it could've been worse; instead of just being raped (a horrid act and experience), you could've been raped and just realized you ate the last chocolate! You're a survivor, kiddo! We simply cannot associate sexual assault/rape with bad luck, let alone good luck. Concerning power, if this person who has been sexually assaulted/raped is declared a person of agency, their agency may be turned against them: "If their so capable and in control, why didn't they stop their attacker" or "Why weren't they prepared?" or "So... they wanted it to happen?" While people who have been sexually assaulted/raped should not be reduced to powerless, passive victims, granting them too much agency leaves them open to backlash in the ways I've discussed and, I'm sure, in a myriad of other ways I haven't thought of or am not aware of.
I've never been sexually assaulted or raped, so the decision does not belong to me, but both proposed words seem, in varying ways, fraught. I don't know if a word exists in the middle ground that simultaneously places blame on the perpetrator and empowers the person who has been sexually assaulted/raped after the fact. Each word signifies a different meaning and grants skeptics different avenues of critique. The transition from victim to survivor to thriver is also proposed, but this transition is not a single working word applicable to all and usable in conversation, discussion, court, and political discourse. I offer little solution to this issue other than the words "endurer" and "perseverer," the definitions of which are, according to Merriam Webster, one who endures and one who perseveres, respectively. A horrible act has been done/is happening, but the endurer endures, the perseverer persists. These words are certainly not panaceas, nor are they easy to say, but they seem to better fit the (perceived) requirements, definitions, and needs of those who have been sexually assaulted/raped.
***
I see my particles arranged in this way: Crystalline and fractured As I stare into the void I watch the other particles float
Whenever I read, I don’t pay attention to the writer’s architecture. To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance, takes place at my great aunt’s house.
Every Sunday, we brought doughnuts. Her fridge always held a liter of Moxie, and I guzzled its bittersweet for hours; sugar high and free, nothing could stop me.
I haven’t entered the house in a decade, I think, and I can’t remember if, three feet from the end of the kitchen table, an opening leads to a sitting room. I imagine Atticus, Aunt Alexandra, and Scout entering and exiting this room through a door-shaped hole in the wall and I wonder if my own aunt ever did the same. I believe I remember the doorway, but I do not remember beyond it.
I was a seventh grader when my great aunt died in a fire. My mother, always one to supply unneeded information in relation to my age, hinted that the fire had been started by my great aunt. I sat and wondered if the combination of her brother’s death and the dearth of doughnuts to pair with Moxie urged her to light Atticus’s house on fire. Did matches find their way into Auntie Mary’s hands because we chose other things over Moxie and doughnuts and her?
***
The mural springs out from the corner, where the two walls meet. White and gray, the pseudo-people depicted, are cartoonish and beautiful. Their depictions, flat and simple, their actions, daring and three-dimensional.
One jumps, his hands shaped like pointed mittens and attached to the ends of thin arms that reach high over his head. His head hold horns like a crown. In my mind, I make his white tutu and ballet shoes pink as he leaps, knees leading the way for pointed toes and a wide smile.
Beneath him, a man, traditionally dressed, stretches his arms. His face reveals a negative emotion, somewhere between upset and worried.
I peer through the darkness and wonder if the man’s arms reach to stop the ballet dancer from falling, or from leaping.
***
Focusing on the waves of reflected light jumping from the disco ball and landing lightly on the wall gives me a headache.
It’s easier to focus instead on swell of the crowd—how it moves. Intricately swaying and knottily shuffling, the crowd says, “I am here.”
If this were literature, the women putting her palm over the top of her drink might have received a phone call from her mother, reminding her to be careful.
Literature gives way to life and the woman doesn’t want her drunk— drink—to spill.
Even this focus, this interpretation of the crowd’s darkened, defining undulation, is too much.
The music, at once pulsing and static, lifts my fingers up, weightless, and away from my body, like the first person to pair I love you with I’ll leave you.
***
This I wrote last year for my freshmen seminar, but I'd like to commend my 4-year-old self for attempting to describe the cycle of abuse.
I sit on the bottom of the wooden staircase of my house. I pick at the Velcro on my light-up Power Ranger Sneakers and cry uncontrollably because of some insignificant injustice. Little kids’ tears are always messy and this was no exception; my nose makes disgusting noises as I suck back in the flowing boogers. My mother kneels in front of me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Why are you crying, Sammi-wham?”
Tripping over words and trying to explain emotions my vocabulary was too limited to convey, I say, “It’s just that Daddy. He is so mean. He’s so mean and I’m going to run away.”
“What do you mean he’s mean? We have this house, you have your clothes, your own room, and all of these things that you wouldn’t have without Dad. Dad loves you and me very much.”
“I know. I mean, I just… Sometimes he’s really, really nice. But it’s because he wants me to stay.”
“Wait, I thought he was mean?” At this point, my mother is laughing at me, which only makes me more insistent.
“No. He’s mean and he’s nice and he’s mean so he can torture me and he’s nice because he wants me to stay—”
“So he’s nice and mean?” My four-year-old fists ball and I cry harder; I know I'm being made fun of.
“Mom, listen. He’s nice because he wants me to stay so that he can torture me more and then he’s mean so that I hate him, but then he’s nice again so I won’t run away.”
My mother laughs a little more before the front door slammed. The subject of our conversation walks through the door and my disproportionate, four-year-old legs carry me quickly to my room. I slam the door and continue a paused conversation with my stuffed animals.
I could be, should be, watching T.V. right now. I don't really know why or what I'm writing. All the writable things have to be censored; they must be written, but they cannot be read.
***
The letter I wrote to myself during the spring of my senior year is sitting in the top drawer of my desk, surrounded by miscellany. I want to tell myself, to assure myself, that quote everything will be okay unquote. But really I will live with the guilt of existing for my entire existence. This summer, I crashed and totaled my car. With the insurance money, I bought the same make, model, and year vehicle, the effect of which has only granted me grief whenever I drive. Existing is like buying the same car every time you crash it and feeling the same debilitating waves of shame and humiliation whenever you find yourself with your foot on the clutch and your hand on the key.
***
I read, analyze, memorize, and regurgitate. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily completing the same amount of each task. We're reading Feed by M.T. Anderson in my media class and my copy from high school contains all the annotations I wrote two years ago. Senior year me and the me of the present have similar ideas. Senior year me used to cry in the shower though, and that was kind of lame, so I'm glad that's done. She also had a lot more things to say, but I'm not glad that's done. I'm surrounded by like-minded people with no one to rail against. I used to write upwards of three posts a month. Now, if I'm committed, I write one a month. The world and everything I see is just nice. It's just pretty. It's just okay. There is no high; there is no low, only silence.
Shhh. There is nothing to hear.
***
I tried to write a poem, but it was shitty, so it's gone now.
***
Everything's already been written, so what's the point of writing? Everything's been said, so why speak? People have already lived and died, so why do we keep existing? There's nothing left undone. We are the things we do and somehow, I'm always nothing.
***
Yesterday, I left my water bottle in a store in Burlington, which was stupid. But a friend retrieved it for me today. Then on the bus, I lost my water bottle again. My life is most likely a string of mistakes. I can recall a me with a more solidified identity. A me who was certain: yes, please, that's exactly what I want and here's why. But mistake after mistake and a shift in reality has created a me who could not tell you who she is. At 17, I was a writer and a student and a ski racer and a softball player and the best friend I could be. Now, a multitude of mistakes later, I am no longer an athlete, which was one of the only things that wasn't a mistake. Decisions have never been easy for me, and now it seems I've made too many to make myself a person again. Each error grows larger in my mind, taking over my consciousness.
Question: which one of my mistakes will make me I hate myself forever?
Answer: all of them.
Question: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? Why aren't I going anywhere?
Answer:
***
REDO REDO REDO
UNDO UNDO UNDO
DELETE ME
***
I'm so tired and I don't care about the rest of my life.
In the middle of speaking. Wait. Speaking. The decision to speak. Why? Why did I make that decision? Wait. In the middle of speaking. The idea becomes a thing. An out of context quote. No. Wait. The idea. The thing. Say it. Say the fucking thing. Did I say it? Fuck. No. Fuck. She gives me a quick, confused look. She says yeah. Why don't I just fucking listen?
***
I'd like to say something about racism.
It's real.
Thank you for your time.
***
This Is Just To Say
I have died.
Please grieve silently.
***
This is the difference. The difference is this. We are different. This is we and we are different.
In the out-of-context context of existence, you and I and me and you and all of us, are different.
And, I would like to tell you, in the clearest way possible, that I don't fucking like it.
***
At the risk of sounding extremely ableist, I'd like to recognize the sincere struggle of very sad deaf people. I need noise. In silence. I crumble. Which is why my music is currently trying to permanently destroy my ear drums. But I'd like to issue an apology to both sad, deaf people and the me in an alternate universe who cannot hear. I'm listening twice as loud for you.
***
Your out of context existence means nothing. As well, I'd like to point out that while your in context existence means more, it still means nothing. Meaning. Tell me about meaning. So infinite. Too infinite. Lacking. Impertinent. Meaning doesn't matter. What does it do? How much work? It doesn't work without meaning. Work is tied in meaning and I am without meaning so I do nothing.
***
Jean-Louise Finch. (Who we all know as Scout.) Wears overalls and nothing else. Spoiler Alert. In Go Set a Watchmen, Jean-Louise Finch does not wear overalls. She wears dresses. Her rebellion is in her lack of makeup or some other pseudo-progressive bullshit.
I was at Nate's house the summer before my senior year of high school. Some uncle who perpetuated sexism with benevolent misogyny had the mother fucking audacity to tell me "I would learn to" like dresses, makeup, and all the other bullshit that comes with being a lady. (What's even better is that he said, "She'll learn" to Nate and not to me.) The effect, I would say, is opposite. All this bullshit about it being adorable for young girls to be tomboys but not for young ladies and women to show their masculinity is exactly that: bullshit.
Jean-Louise, who left behind the chance to be my absolute idol, to wear dresses grew up before second-wave feminism. I would respect her choices if they seemed like choices. But they don't. It seems like someone learned Jean-Louise real good.
I will tear down society and build it again. Based on one fucking principle: listen. Listen because Scout's voice was clearer and stronger than Jean-Louise's. Because I've always hated Aunt Alexandra the way I've hated the subtle cultural messages that I was wrong. Internalized misogyny and strict ideas of what a woman needs to be perpetuated by societal norms is gonna fucking stop.
In Athens, baby girls were referred to as "deformed boys" and when a mother gave birth to a baby girl, it was common to discard the child in the garbage. "Best case scenario," the child was taken out of the garbage raised to become a prostitute. If not, the children screamed and cried until they died in a dumpster. This happened so often that Athenians were unperturbed by the cries. No one listened and we need to start.
The first thing that happened is I got invited to a party. (Just to repeat with the correct emphasis: I got invited to a party.) Now, granted, it was a party for work. And if they hadn't invited me, it would've been cruel. Either way, I got invited. After this invitation, I had two more days of work, and then, on a fateful Tuesday night, I attended a party with all my "coworkers." (That's such a grown up word, but I don't have an alternative.) The party, like, happened, or did whatever it is parties do. And then I went to bed. On a couch. In a sleeping bag. (I learned a valuable lesson about the difference between an invitation to a party and the party itself. I like invitations; I do not like parties.) Anyway, I woke up on Wednesday morning, picked up my bag from the Rosens, and made my way to New York. I had worked, played softball, and completed the homework for a class I no longer wanted to take for too long and when I finally got on the road, on the ferry, off the ferry, and on my way to Haylee's, I thought I was going to cry. (?). Like, I was happy and I was going to cry.
The only thing I could think was, "I'm on vacation. I'm on vacation? I'm on vacation!" and I cried. My best friend lives three hours from me, and I was getting closer every second. I was going to lie next to the pool, in the sun, and have no responsibility to yell at children. That's what I did. And it was awesome. I drove, my privilege hitting me like a ton of bricks every mile marker. Then I got lost and had to call Haylee, who met me at the end of her road. I pulled over after I turned onto her sidestreet, and, after some vehicular finagling, so did she. We both got out, hugged, broke apart, hugged again, broke apart, screamed, hugged one more time, and then got back into our cars.
After two days spent poolside and shopping, we made our way to Canada for a music festival. (The thought of which still seems ridiculous in hindsight.) Anyway, Haylee and I lost our hearing during the twenty one pilots concert, jumped and danced for Weezer, and (I) screamed for Father John Misty. I spent much of our time dragging my directionally challenged friend from one place to the next, pointing us toward photo booths and kiosks. (Haylee seemed only able to locate a fruitless claw machine.) Either way, we ate poutine and ordered in on Sunday night. We went to another, different party, rode in a taxi, and walked around Montreal like it was our job.
Honored, I felt, to spend this long, long weekend with Haylee, to see such amazing artists, to pay way too much for food, and to be here, to be present.
***
Haylee and I were navigating the subway system, an apparatus I'd never encountered, in order to move from our hotel to the music festival and back. On Friday night, we were walking along a long hallway, which led to the exit and, five blocks later, our hotel. At the end of the hall two men were situated, one sitting, the other standing. The standing one moved between the legs of the sitting one in order to make sexual gestures. Haylee and I, if we hadn't already, visibly stiffened. Haylee, who lacks a sense of direction, and I, panicked and still unsure in a city almost 4000 times the size of Burlington, did not know what to do, where to go, when two french-speaking men were walking toward us with was obviously an agenda. Incidentally, we took a wrong turn and ended up explaining to a woman who only spoke French, that we needed her to just walk with us for a certain amount of distance we could not describe. She finally understood, at least to some extent, and Haylee and I walked the five blocks back to our hotel looking over our shoulders.
In other news, a black twelve-year old girl's jaw was fractured by a white police officer and GOP candidate Ben Carson believes we need to move beyond race.
In other news, queer history is constantly erased and the other day my father told me that "all the queers like Freddie Mercury went around giving themselves AIDS."
In other news, our elected officials, and the society they represent, are so against pre-marital sex that the idea of closing many people's only access to (sexual) healthcare is a more logical option allowing abortions.
In other news, 48.4% of girls in Yemen will be married before age 18. (Source)
In other news, I get really upset sometimes because I convince myself that my rhetoric isn't good enough to make a difference and even if it does, my voice isn't loud enough to have a widespread effect. No one's listening and even if they were it wouldn't matter.
***
My parents were arguing, about what who knows, who remembers. But it was not a small fight. My sister wasn't older than three, which would've made me about eight. I'm not sure if you, reader, know many eight-year-olds, but their decision making skills are not particularly honed. My sister's decision, on the other hand, was much easier. She was a baby, clinging tightly to the back of my legs until my mother moved to the door, said she was leaving, swore she wouldn't come back. (She didn't pack anything; she never does). But to the door she went. They were both screaming, deafeningly so. My sister was crying. I stood stock still. (Screaming adults are like that myth about t-rexes: if you don't move, they can't see you. You no longer exist. They no longer exist. Reality becomes quiet and empty.) My mother did move, scooped up my loudly crying sister and walked to the door. Everyone shouted their sarcastic, biting good-byes, and I followed my mother to the final door.
At my house, the porch door closes at the edge of a large drop off. I spent afternoons jumping from the ground onto the edge, and seeing how long I could balance on the small piece of metal extending from the house. Every time I stepped up it, I leaned forward a bit and brought my knee close to my chest. Now I stood, toes hanging over the edge of the same metal strip, unsure what to do or where to go. My mother was walking toward her car; my sister was, thumb in her mouth, sitting, bouncing with each step, on my mother's hip. My mom turned back when she didn't her the crunch of my sneakers on the stones behind her. Her face and voice incredulous, "Are you coming?"
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I looked down at my sneakers. It was just one big step. I could lean forward, put my foot out and break into a small jog, just like I did every time I found myself at this precipice. The edge seemed too big, the drop too far, and the height too great, yet the metal piece, I knew was not my home. I didn't know what to do. Nowhere seemed to be where I should go. My mom took my answer hastily. "Fine," she shouted. "Stay with him." And so I did. Until my mom and sister came back.
I had watched them reverse out of the driveway. I had stood and watched the trees across the street until my feet and legs ached. Eventually, I had returned to my room to do whatever it is eight-year-olds do when their mothers and fathers divide them up like property.
I think about this moment a lot. The moment on the precipice. The time I didn't move. Plenty of fights occurred later. In these I made different decisions, following my mother easily out the door and into her car. (We went to my grandma's.) But this one sticks out to me. My mother's tone. My indecision. The way that not choosing a side made it seem like I had chosen a side.
Now I think of my present self in the same situation. One parent screaming on the left and the other on the right. I think of my sister, clinging to the back of my legs. I see myself, car keys in hand, putting my own car in reverse and driving to get ice cream with my sister. I see us driving to my grandmother's for the night. The three of us sleeping in her king bed together. Getting up early and deciding against cereal, because what is it with old people and almond milk? I don't know where we would go or what we would do from there, but I refuse to stand on a precipice any more. My decision is no longer either/or. My decision isn't mom or dad, it's me. I choose me.
Two weeks from the end of finals, we sat in Alliot, which is the Saint Michael's dining hall, or, more accurately, the cafeteria. Before our 8:30 class, we gathered in Alliot to shovel cereal into our mouths in a sleep-like state before joining the mass exodus from the cafeteria and toward the academic buildings. Haylee sprinkled salt and pepper on her hardboiled eggs. Nichole provided the table with commentary on the difficulty of peeling the shell from her own hardboiled egg. Amy and Shae hadn't sat down yet and Haylee rose to get a drink. I pushed my captain crunch from one end of the yellow bowl to the other. I looked up at Nichole who was only slightly grumpy with how her egg had come apart.
"Nichole?"
"Hmm," she didn't look up from her eggs as she picked away shell from pieces of edible egg.
"Do you think--I mean, like, do you think that we create messes?" My words fell out of my mouth awkwardly and Nichole finally looked up at me. "I mean, like, do we create the messes or are we just the messes and everywhere we go spread the mess. Like the infinitely increasing entropy of ourselves?"
Pepper shaker in hand, Nichole looked down at her eggs, torn from their shell, separated from the yolk, and ripped from other pieces of egg white. When she looked back up at me, she said, "Where do you come up with these things?"
***
S: I'm sorry the past couple weeks have been stressful. But all will be well soon. Just keep doing your best. U r da bomb.
H: Thanks Sam. You are fucking awesome.
***
In my dream, my face is close to your chest; the fabric scratches my nose. The phrase is tête-à -tête... sort of. My arm drapes over your middle, barely touching whatever is underneath us. You speak, slowly and sleepily, and tell me about the sharks. I realize my fingertips touch sand, warm in the summer sun. You describe the sharks, snarling and snapping, as if sharks could make such noises. But I believe you. (Trusting, gullible, your choice.) You say the sharks are coming and what was once an image of a calm, lapping, welcoming ocean beneath a sun whose heat hugs me snugly, becomes dark and cold and frightening. The ocean beckons us, not with open arms, but with a cruel, gnarled finger. I squirm closer to your chest, to protection. Your arms tighten in response. Coming for us how? Who knows, but they are coming. The water-bound sharks do indeed snarl and snap as they propel themselves across the sand with their fins. We are flightless.
***
While driving and sad, the easiest way to measure your stability is to listen to the radio. If you are the saddest of sads, one of two things will happen. You will become stressed by the lack of relatable and acceptable content provided by the radio conglomerates, causing you to smack a random selection of buttons at once and cry out pathetically before slowing down and pulling over to the side of the road to sob loudly in the semi-privacy of your car. People passing might think about stopping to make sure you're okay, but your obvious wailing will make their eyes widen and allow them to continue on their path without guilt. When you finally compose yourself, you will simply turn on your directional, fruitlessly wipe your eyes, and continue crying (quietly) as you approach (slowly) your destination; you are alone.
This is the first option. The second comes when every radio station and every corporately-owned popstar seems to understand your current emotion; they've created these songs especially for you, sad, lonely, down-trodden, crest-fallen, heart-broken, listener. Someone, on the other end of your car speakers seems to understand. You are not alone; the everyone you are with melds into one being. You know this amalgamation of persons that has become one exists somewhere and they knows the depth of your sadness; their words are a reflection of your soul. So, like the (sad) kindred spirits you are, you scream, together.
***
I am crying in an uncontrollable manner. My sobs make it almost impossible to speak and my nose has become too stuffed to provide air. Haylee sits across from me on my bed, telling me I'm okay and that I just need to calm down. "Buddy, buddy, it's okay," she says as I helplessly throw my head into her lap. I blubber, trying to explain more eloquently why I'm upset. I cry and cry and cry. Haylee says I should watch something engrossing. What she means is mind-numbing, but that's okay; I wouldn't mind being numb. Both her hands rest on my back, taking the vibrations of my tears. I cover my face in embarrassment. Eventually, I stop crying and sit up. "I'm okay," I lie. "I'm sorry," I say, telling the truth.
"What? No! Sammi! Stop. Don't be ridiculous. You're totally fine," Haylee tries to assure me, smiling at me. I return the smile weakly and look at my hands in my lap. I think hateful things about my hands and the other parts of my body that interact with the world. I think of all the harm they do and the wake of stupidity and annoyingness and bad they leave. As I disintegrate, my particles of unworthy and terrible disperse into the atmosphere. The mess I spread simply by existing disgusts me and I think of ways to exist less, exist smaller. I draw my knees to my chest. I need a way to shrink; no one can know I'm here.
I am not here, I am not here, I am not here.
I glance up once more before collapsing inward entirely. Haylee is still looking at me. Her eyes are big and sad and reaching. She seems to be cleaning my mess as I create it and I want her to stop before everything I am, everything bad, hurts her. She rebuilds my shambles and negates my entropic force with her calm. She absorbs my particles, overpowers them, turns them good, and gently puts me back together. I am here.
***
"Don't fucking move
'Cause everything you thought you had will go to shit.
That's how Jim starts. As a junior, I heard these words and scoffed internally. I was much too cool. (News flash, Sammi. You're a fucking loser.) So I watched and waited, turning my head left and right. Are these kids actually closing their eyes? Really? Oh my god. How could they be caught doing such a weird thing? It felt like church. Kneel, clasp your hands, pray. But Jim spoke despite my haughtiness. I closed my eyes in an act of conformity. But when I did, there was the poem in front of me. Not particularly long, but red, definitely red. Sweet and arching, stretching across the horizon of my mind. This, I decided, would be my church.
***
You might be able to tell, but if not, I'm telling you I spent the weekend at the Champlain College Young Writers' Conference (CCYWC). I hadn't written poetry in like maybe two or three forevers so I was pretty much quitting writing indefinitely. That's a lie, but momentum is important in writing. Difficult to maintain, easy to lose. Anyway, I went to the writer's conference and I wrote. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I actually appreciated my notebook. I stared at, willing the words to appear on the page, which turned out to be an entirely ineffective method. I learned that in order for words to exist, they must be created--combined and coerced into collaboration. (Us millennials have no idea how such "arcane" technology works.) Beyond this discovery, I found the words, ideas, pieces, poems, babblings to be of a slightly greater than terrible quality. They were almost, like, good, or something? I liked my writing? The words I wrote didn't make me cringe when I read them ten minutes later.
In one craft session called Translating from English to English, we were given a copy of "Child" by Sylvia Plath (included at the bottom) and told to rearrange it, tear it apart, contradict its every assertion and create something new.
I.
my cloudy blindness is one of many ugly lackings
I reject gray geese,
the extinction of the old
the negated existence you ignore
December rainflake, colonist's cigarette
gargantuan
wrinkled stub
empty bath, blank
never meant to be illustrious
This troublous
clapping of eyelids, bright
sky filled with stars
II.
beautiful eyes
fill, wringing
meditate--want, should be
names:
Your
You
I--wrinkle
hands stalk dark images
So I did that and then I wrote a lot of prose. We read this poem called "Pluto Shits on the Universe" by Fatimah Asghar (included at the bottom), which was awesome, and then wrote a response.
Literature, we assume, is unchanging. There is Wordsworth and Emerson and Shakespeare. They are white and male and, therefore, their words are defining. The writers who follow, we assume, because we are told, are white and straight and male, and therefore defining. But Pluto "realigned the cosmos," creating beautiful change. The western literary canon "tried to order [Pluto]... tried to make [her] follow rules," said if she didn't how could she be a planet? But to Pluto, your day is "an asswipe. a sniffle. Your day is barely the start of [her] sunset." She is more than you. Pluto--not white, not male--redefined and "realigned the cosmos." She "shook the sky" and when she "broke your" straight, white, male "solar system," she opened a new sky, and "the sky is blue-gold: the freedom of possibility." Robert Frost said, "Writing poetry without rhyme or meter is like playing tennis without a net." Bu I know what Pluto would say: "Fuck your net."
Then I came home and some asshole took out my wisdom teeth, so now I'm dumb. But I wrote another thing, which is part of a longer piece of prose I've been working on. So here's that.
“C’mon, Eddy,” she said. “Calm down. This is what happens when you drink.” Amy rolled her eyes, trying to quell his fears, but she knew this wasn’t what happened when he drank. He was drunk, she knew, but this was just Eddy.
“Listen to me, Amy,” he pleaded. “Look at them. They’re there and we’re here and one day we’ll be there but that’s the only thing that’s not moving. Think about everything else, it’s like, something you need to like, figure out. Like everything is a question and on the other side of the that fence is the answer.” His head turned to face Amy, but he didn’t look at her, but, rather, through her.
“Eddy,” Amy’s voice was soft and quiet; she hoped her tone felt like a warm hand on his shoulder, on top of his head.
“Yeah, Aims?” The air stagnated around the hearts of the still and silent living. Amy knew if they sat there too long, became another unmoving thing, looking at and through each other with their pool of unreachable light guiding their short ride, there would be no chance for decision or question. They would be determined. She knew they would be dead with no babies or spouses or jobs. Societal conformity or not—no matter how much they moved, or didn’t move—eventually they would stop. Just hollow existences—simultaneously hot and cold—who only needed one answer.
“C’mon Eddy. Let’s go home. Mom will start to wonder where we are.” But her eyes didn’t budge; they peered, through Eddy, through the window, through the metal fence, through the eerie fog and into the future.
“Yeah, okay.”
***
Anyway, that was CCYWC. I tried to type all of this with a bag of ice on my face. Have a good week.
"My heart is my armor
she's the tear in my heart
she's a carver
she's a butcher with a smile
cut me farther
than I've ever been"
"Child" Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill it with color and ducks, The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate - April snowdrop, Indian pipe Little
Stalk without wrinkle, Pool in which images Should be grand and classical
Not this troublous Wringing of hands, this dark Ceiling without a star.
"Pluto Shits on the Universe"
On February 7, 1979, Pluto crossed over Neptune’s orbit and became the eighth planet from the sun for twenty years. A study in 1988 determined that Pluto’s path of orbit could never be accurately predicted. Labeled as “chaotic,” Pluto was later discredited from planet status in 2006.
Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad. Your graph said I was supposed to make a nice little loop around the sun.
Naw.
I chaos like a motherfucker. Ain’t no one can chart me. All the other planets, they think I’m annoying. They think I’m an escaped moon, running free.
Fuck your moon. Fuck your solar system. Fuck your time. Your year? Your year ain’t shit but a day to me. I could spend your whole year turning the winds in my bed. Thinking about rings and how Jupiter should just pussy on up and marry me by now. Your day?
That’s an asswipe. A sniffle. Your whole day is barely the start of my sunset.
My name means hell, bitch. I am hell, bitch. All the cold you have yet to feel. Chaos like a motherfucker. And you tried to order me. Called me ninth. Somewhere in the mess of graphs and math and compass you tried to make me follow rules. Rules? Fuck your rules. Neptune, that bitch slow. And I deserve all the sun I can get, and all the blue-gold sky I want around me.
It is February 7th, 1979 and my skin is more copper than any sky will ever be. More metal. Neptune is bitch-sobbing in my rearview, and I got my running shoes on and all this sky that’s all mine.
Fuck your order. Fuck your time. I realigned the cosmos. I chaosed all the hell you have yet to feel. Now all your kids in the classrooms, they confused. All their clocks: wrong. They don’t even know what the fuck to do. They gotta memorize new songs and shit. And the other planets, I fucked their orbits. I shook the sky. Chaos like a motherfucker.
It is February 7th, 1979. The sky is blue-gold: the freedom of possibility.
Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad.
Abby strikes a pose
Duncan does a dramatic reading of Green Eggs and Ham
**Disclaimer: it's almost 2am and I have no idea what I just wrote**
I promise I'm trying to sleep. I promise I brushed my teeth and changed into pajamas and climbed into bed. I also promise that behind my eyelids was a seemingly infinite reel images. Recent ones flash through first, like quick snap shots to recap the week.
My head aches vaguely but my friends are going to the gas station. I compromise and buy a small slushie instead of a large one. I grab Haylee's hand in the dim light, squeezing her thumb and forefinger together and jump up and down in excitement because my favorite band is within spitting distance and they're playing my favorite song, which simultaneously lasts seven forevers and an instant.
Then older images filter through.
Climbing into bed with my sister during winter break. The room is silent except her breathing and completely dark except the small light leaking through the window. Flipping over my Strokes record to hear "Barely Legal" again. Sitting on the floor while Mike plays a rendition of "Striped Sweater" on his guitar. The night before the GS at Sunapee my junior year, we all sat on the carpet and watched "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." I crossed my ankles and hugged my knees to my chest. Sitting behind everyone, tottering between isolation and togetherness.
I promise I'm trying to sleep.
Watching and waiting. Counting to three. Making sure the little boy who just went under water comes back up. Just as a I stand to make sure he's okay, a small blonde head pops up, smiling and spitting water at his friend. Stephanie and I watch movies on the couch in my living room. I fall asleep before my parents come home and wake up in my bed. The lack of will to do anything which allowed me to sleep until twelve thirty in the middle of July.
A vague indifference clouds my entire existence. Do I care? Not really.
Stopping at Harwood before our class trip to Maine. Becca's excitement to see me and the cupcakes in my hand. The final moments of winning. A hug from Fred. Small, thin, bony. "God-willing," he said. I nodded, but God always makes me squint. Raven crying on my swing set. My uncertainty.
I want my mom. I'd like to tell my mom. But my mother is all about simple solutions. She seems somehow color blind to the rainbow of the spectrum of human emotion. Maybe it's willful ignorance. Maybe she's just ignoring it.
Sitting in a black, rolling chair with my feet on my desk. Liezl reads Grapes of Wrath out loud to me while I do German homework and read for another class. There wasn't really time to complete all of it when I got back from softball the night before. I'd say I wonder why I didn't write a very good essay about Grapes of Wrath, but I really don't. Haylee looking up words on her phone in the middle of class. Receiving early-morning praise from our favorite professor and turning to smile smugly at me. Nikki finds me crying in basement of the library the week before finals.
The large questions remaining are Who? What? and Why?
They include, but are not limited to:
Who am I? Who do I want to be? Who are my friends? Who do they want me to be? Who do they need me to be?
What the fuck am I doing? What do I actually want to be doing? What do my friends think of me?
Why can't I sleep? Why am I doing this? Why don't I care? Why do I care so much?
Then the future spills out of some unbroken section of the unknowable. I say words I've said before, different time, different place. Hopefully a different sentiment. "I'm not going to graduation." My mother returns with a "Sammi, please." "Mail me my fucking diploma," I declare, unmoved, or simply ignoring my movement.
Existence is a tiny insufficient peephole. No matter how hard you press your eye to the glass, there is no image to behold. Simply the presence of light and dark is observable. Pressing my eye so close to the glass, no light comes through. There is nothing to behold, forget a fucking picture.
My friends do things out of the realm of my immediate existence, becoming background noise to my crying, which occurs for seemingly no good fucking reason.
Shutting down is very simple and easy. Disassociate. Quiet, small smiles. Only provide noise or countenance when asked. "Are you okay, Sammi?" Nod. Small smile, no teeth. Cozy and comfortable, the world responds and recedes at the same rate I do. Untouchable, I feel untouchable.
I do not feel better. I promise I'm trying to sleep. But sleep doesn't want me. And if sleep wants to be a total fucking asshole then fuck it. I don't need you, sleep. Get out of my life.
I have no answers and I don't want today or tomorrow or yesterday or the next week or the week after that. I want nothing. A blissful ignorance. There's just enough information, just a large enough peephole to ruin me.
Who am I? Who are my friends? Who do they want me to be? Who do they need me to be?
What the fuck am I doing? What do I actually want to be doing? What the fuck? What the fuck?
Why can't I sleep? Why don't I care? Why do I care so much?
Send help.
Send help.
Send help.
I want my mom.
I promise I'm trying to sleep.
Lexi and I ride up the lift as Sunapee. She's already finished and I'm just going up for my run now. I hate GS. I hate everything. No. That's not true. I like Lexi. But fuck this sunny day and fuck this slow chair lift and fuck the GS course and fuck ski racing and fuck all the homework I have after this and fuck the embarrassment of doing so poorly the first run. Fuck everything.
Everybody's a "writer," Sammi and you're not good enough.
Everyone's "hard-working" student, Sammi but you're just not that smart.
Everyone's family says they're pretty. But that's all they're doing, saying it. No regard for validity.
Not everyone is cut out to be a good friend, Sammi. Sorry to say you're just a shitty person.
Sorry, kid. Should've quit while you were ahead.
My father pitches to me in the batting cage. Every hit that would have been a fly-out earns me a ball thrown at my head. I lay on my sister's bed. Rereading poems by E.E. Cummings. Reading out loud to my sister who literally could not care any less.
I try to tell my mom, "I don't know how to be a person." Receive a "Sammi, you're fine," a "Sammi, you're being ridiculous." "We're all here for you," Haylee writes over texts. I am a void, a blackhole. To be here is to be nowhere. To be here is to be scattered. To be ripped, atom from atom, into nothing.
Send help.
Send help.
Send help.
I want my mom.
I promise I'm trying to sleep.
There is a degree of separation. The door of ignorance. Thin, thin door. A small peephole. No image. Only light. Only dark.
Neither.
Only gray. Indiscernible. Unattainable. Unreachable. Unavailable. No image available. No image available. No image available.
Star-crossed. Not meant to be had. Not by you. Not now. Not ever.
Send help.
Send help.
Send help.
I want my mom.
I promise I'm trying to sleep.
A degree of separation.
I looked up a picture of no image available because aesthetic.
We went to a concert.
Don't you get bored of them giving you nothing?
I only press pause when you press play in my stomach
Flowerball, flowerball
How can you waltz through my bloodstream and then never call?
**I don't know if you want some context for this story, but I included the essay about Stephanie and Noelle at the bottom of this post.
* * *
My mother turned and shifted slightly in the booth, used her napkin for its intended purpose and asked again, "So what's new with you, Dad, nothing?" My grandfather, who we call Pop-pop, replied with something mundane and grandfather-like. The restaurant was packed, crowded, loud, and causing me stress; no one was sitting where they were supposed to sit, my mother had walked in twenty minutes late, and my sister and I are not conversation-holders, so before my mother's arrival my Pop-pop, sister, and I sat in silence broken infrequently and by bits of speech that didn't take much space in the landscape of conversation. I guess the tables around us with people expanding and buzzing with excitement and chatter equalized with the shrinking feeling within me.
The arrival of food and my mother presented me with an out, something to focus on other than the obliterating circle of silence forming between us. My mother immediately started reeling in a conversation, but the fish didn't want to be caught. Looking at her looking at me, I knew that she knew I was irked in this cramped, hot, and loud restaurant overfilling with crowds yelling to be heard; a buzzing filled my brain and my shrinking increased exponentially. "What's wrong?" she mouthed. I said nothing but looked left and right and then back at her, widening my eyes. (We had a similar experience a few months ago while packing my car. My mother kept saying things like, "Just throw it on top" and "I'm sure there will be room," which skyrocketed my stress levels, and I begged her to let us repack the car because everything was everywhere and I couldn't breathe. My mother kept asking what was wrong and telling me I didn't need to freak out, as if I had purposely decided to be anxious.)
After finishing most of my sandwich, I turned entirely and placed my feet on the rung of my sister's chair. Everyone else was still eating, but people were beginning to leave the restaurant and the line for ordering food was shrinking. The buzzing in my brain began to subside, but stopped entirely when I saw her. Over the booths across from our table, Stephanie became visible; the restaurant then seemed very quiet to me. Looking by chance in our direction, Stephanie didn't pause on my face, looked right through me; Am I here? Has my face changed so much? I thought; tall, blonde, and smiling, I wondered if she still smelled the way she did when I was a kid. "Mom, it's Stephanie."
"Who?"
"Stephanie Dancy." The noise of the the restaurant had returned full-force and my mother's hearing is selective at best.
"Who-Oh. Stephanie. Stephanie Dancy?"
"No, Mom, the other Stephanie," I said, rolling my eyes and after a few moments of leaning back and forth and saying "Where?" several dozens times, my mother finally found Stephanie. I don't know if Stephanie gave another thoughtless glance in our direction or if my mother began smiling and waving, but Stephanie found my mother's face and recognition inundated her countenance. We sat, finished with our meals, and my mother said, "Her little baby died," which answered a question I didn't want the answer to, a question I purposefully hadn't asked.
After ordering, Stephanie and Noelle, her daughter, came to our table. An arm around Noelle's farther shoulder, Stephanie told us how she was working as a nurse at BayState again to spend more time with Noelle, whose blue eyes were just as stark and bright as I remembered them. My mother then addressed Noelle directly, "Do you remember Kay, Noelle?" Noelle shook her head, but, pointing at me, said in a small voice, "I remember Sam." An image of Noelle, pointing at her shirt, which read in big, pink letters "BIG SISTER" and saying, "I have this because I am a big sister and my sister is the little sister." After that, the human traffic became disrupted by Stephanie and Noelle so they decided to wait for their food somewhere else.
We said good-bye to Pop-pop and my sister and I went to deposit our trash, silverware, and trays in the correct places. My mother walked over and stood next to Stephanie, asking her all the adult-y questions adults pretend to like answering. I leaned against a wall and faced Noelle, asking her how old she was (7), and her favorite subjects in school (gym, art, and recess). "I think I might be an artist," she said, looking at her shoes, which seemed to fit her better than the last time I saw her, her ankles seeming less tiny and her existence less bird-like and translucent.
"I think that's a great idea," I returned.
"I drew a horse--well, half of a horse--the other day and it, um, it really looked like a horse."
"Really? Did your mom put it on the fridge?"
"Noooo, my mom--"
"Your mom," I interrupted; Stephanie and my mom looked at us. My mother laughed; Stephanie's look had chagrin.
Noelle continued, "Well, there's so many things on the fridge--too many things, so like, but I think my mom accidentally threw it out." Just then, my Pop-pop called to us, "Andrea, Andrea." He said he had special Easter bread for us in the car, so we started toward the door. We said good-bye, good to see you, will call soon, tell your parents we said hi, and all the other unfulfilled bullshit. But there was a horrible stone in my stomach; moving was more difficult than usual.
Stephanie's daughters--the lithe, little bird-child who became so tall and the one she buried--seemed to both hang in the hair; the slowly forming Noelle, who is incrementally growing into her shoes, into a person, filled the air with a happy aura of kindness and the childish selfishness I knew she had and Stephanie's "other daughter" remained undeveloped; who was she? Who would she have been? Beautiful and blonde and tall and thin like her mother and sister; determined, artistic, brilliant, revolutionary. The loss of a tiny life, fragile and holding an unfathomable gravity, debased me and I tried not to shake as I hugged my little sister and told her I loved her.
**Here's the essay I wrote last year in Creative Non-fiction:
“Can you push me
higher, Sam?” she asks, turning her little blonde head back to me as the
momentum of the swing takes her away from and back toward me. I sort of laugh
and say that yes, of course I can push her higher. She’s so small; her little
bird arms connect to her little bird fingers gripping tightly to the chains of
the swing. Noelle describes her upcoming sixth birthday party to me, blathering
on about her cousin and her mom and her new shirt. The constant stream of words
from her mouth, and her need to be looking at the person she’s talking to, make
her turn her head towards me as much as is possible as she swings. Her azure
irises reach into the furthest corner of her eye to meet mine. Her feet in
their sneakers look too large for her spindly ankles as she kicks them back and
forth with the momentum of the swing. Her tiny teeth are a stark white, a small
contrast to her fair skin, revealed when she smiles and giggles. Midsentence,
she looks down at the top of her arc and says urgently, “Not too high Sam!”
***
Stephanie Dancy,
now Stephanie Paull, has been my neighbor for as long as I can remember. She
used to babysit my sister and me when we were kids. She is tall and thin with
straight features, bright eyes, and blonde hair. When she was twenty-years-old she
became pregnant with her daughter Noelle. “I was in the middle
of nursing school, had a great social life, and pretty much ‘had it all’ in the
world’s view” (Paull). She had Noelle, who is now six, when she was twenty-one.
“[Noelle’s] father and I had been dating each other since we were 15… When he
and I first found out we were pregnant, he wasn't panicked like I was. I came from
a religious home where premarital sex was not just discouraged; it was
forbidden. I felt like a disappointment and a failure… [Noelle’s] father just
said, ‘It's ok we can do this,’ but in all honesty I was desperate for it all
to go away” (Paull). Stephanie found herself in a disadvantageous position and
considered the logical options to get herself out. “I was always against
abortion and I never thought I would have ever even considered it. However, I
did. I thought: what if I just make it all go away and pretend it never happened?
No one would ever have to know. I could go on and become the super nurse I
always wanted to be and live my life
the way I wanted to” (Paull.)
***
“Will you play
with me, Sam?” I kneel down on the concrete of the Dancy’s driveway and a
five-year-old Noelle pulls out a plastic tub of Legos and Lincoln Logs and
train sets that are to be sold in the tag sale the Dancy’s hold annually. We
divide up the Playmobil people and cows and I zoom my dumptruck over Noelle’s leg.
Her plastic horse neighs and jumps over the fence containing it. My father
stands near the garage with Noelle’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Dancy. When he
finishes speaking with them, Noelle and I are just putting the finishing
touches on a Lincoln Log house, complete with a door, a few windows, and a
corral to enclose our cattle. My father had returned home and when I make a
move to follow him, Noelle clings to me and asks me to stay for just a few more
minutes, explaining desperately that the cows are going to break free and how
that would be bad because then cars could hit them. Mr. and Mrs. Dancy tell a
slightly grumpy Noelle that I have to go home, but, if she behaves, I will come
back over to swim later.
***
Stephanie feared being shamed by other people, most of all her
parents. “I was afraid of what young girls from church who looked up to me
would think, I was afraid everyone was going to see me as some ‘easy’ girl, and
I was terrified my parents would disown me… I called Planned Parenthood to ask
exactly what the abortion would be like… I do not judge girls or women who do
have abortions because I truly understand the panic and feeling that there is
no other option. However, even though I do not judge them for it, I will never
say it is right” (Paull). Though she doesn’t think it is the correct course of
action, Stephanie seems to sympathize with the three out of ten women who have
abortions before they are forty-five (“Abortion”).
Michael Gazzaniga
explains in his book, The Ethical Brain,
that at twenty-three weeks, a fetus can be placed on life support outside of
the womb and survive (Gazzaniga 7). But
before that time, it is not sentient and does not deserve the same rights as a
conscious human. “The brain at Carnegie Stage 23… is hardly a brain that could
sustain any serious mental life. If a grown adult had suffered brain damage,
reducing the brain to this level of development, the patient would be considered
brain dead” (Gazzaniga 8). Although a fetus has the potential to become a fully-functioning
human being, in the case of an accidental or ill-timed pregnancy, the woman is already a fully-functioning human being.
Generally, the pro-life argument is that the fetus could have grown into an
outstanding member of society, but the same thing could be said of the mother,
especially a young mother. The pregnancy may have been an accident and if a
mother must take care of a child, a huge responsibility, at a young age or at a
disadvantaged point in her life, she may never have the chance to mature
intellectually and live her life to its fullest. If that fetus were allowed to
grow into a child, it could make a huge change to life or medicine or science,
but if a young girl is burdened with a child she does not want and cannot take
care of, she may never have the opportunity to have a large impact on
technology or health or the way that we live.
The importance of
the autonomy of a woman’s body is paramount. If she wants to have the child,
she should be able to do so free of judgment. If she decides that, in her life,
a child is not what she needs or wants, she should be able to obtain an abortion
easily and, again, free of judgment. By granting a fetus, which only has the
potential to live, legal rights as a human, the woman, who is already living,
is denied rights. The right to decide should always be granted to the mother,
because she is the only one with control over her own body. Although an
eight-week-old fetus has the appearance of a small human, its brain
functionality is not close to that of a human (Gazzaniga 8).
“When I saw a little kidney bean shape on the screen,” Stephanie
explains. “With a heart beating at
only seven weeks pregnant, I knew there was a life that God had allowed to be
created. I knew that even if I had an abortion and no one else would know, for
the rest of my life, I would know and God would know” (Paull). Stephanie is an
extremely strong, intelligent person and she made a sacrifice. She was in the
middle of a rigorous nursing program and she worked hard between classes,
homework, and taking care of a newborn. On top of this, her longtime boyfriend
and Noelle’s father became a big partyer and seems to have abandoned Stephanie
when Noelle was about two months old. “I do not want to sugar coat this.
Choosing life was not easy… I slept about an hour a night with no help at all.
My parents wanted me to realize how hard being a parent was. I'm glad they did
that because it helped me learn from the choices I had made and change the way
I was living before. I was exhausted, broke, sad, and lonely. When you have a
child, your life is no longer about you. It is about self-sacrifice” (Paull).
Despite these circumstances, Stephanie graduated college with
high honors: phi theta kappa. “Being a young single mom is not something I recommend
to anyone, but despite how difficult it was, it was more than worth it. I named
her Noelle because its biblical meaning is ‘precious gift,’ and that is exactly
what she is to me. Noelle is my ray of sunshine. Watching her grow and change
is a privilege. She is a delight in my life and I love being her mother”
(Paull).
“I sacrificed the normal, free young-adult life, but I do not
have one regret about that. I know if I chose abortion I would carry the regret
of that my entire life… There were people who told us we couldn't be good
parents at such a young age, that our lives would never amount to anything,
that we couldn't possibly give her what she deserved. [Noelle’s father]
listened to that and then tried to convince me to have the abortion, but I
didn't care if he walked away or stood by me. I made my mind up that I was
going to have the baby” (Paull). Stephanie’s decision to keep her daughter is
an admirable one, but some women may not want her life. Some women may not
think that adding a baby to their list of things to take care of will be
advantageous to their career, and that can be true. “I now have other people,
and my own parents, tell me how incredible of a mother I am. I have a job at
the top hospital in this area, I have a wonderful husband who has taken Noelle
as his own, I have two beautiful daughters; we own our own home. I would have
to say, those people were very wrong” (Paull). None of Stephanie’s experience was
easy; she worked hard and struggled a lot to become who she is. Some women may
not have this kind of strength, this sort
of wherewithal, and they may choose to have an abortion or give up their child
for adoption. These choices are not weaker than Stephanie’s; they do not
require less strength. They are simply different. Having an abortion does not
make a woman feeble; she is strong enough to give up the idea of having a
child.
***
Noelle must have
been about three at the time; I was fourteen. She splashed loudly in the pool,
struggling against her floaties; the tips of her almost-white hair were a bit
green from spending so much time in the chlorine. Stephanie sat on the steps of
the pool grinning and watching her daughter swim and bare her teeth in a way
that resembled a smile. She turned to me, her smiling waning slightly. “Don’t
ever have sex in high school,” she said flatly. My eyes widened, mostly in fear
because people don’t say “s-e-x” in front of fourteen-year-olds. I simply
nodded. Stephanie’s smile returned full-force as Noelle shouted, “Mommy! Mommy!
Watch me! Watch me do this!”
Works
Cited
“Abortion.” Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Incorporated, 2014. Web. 20 March 2014.
Gazzaniga, Michael S. The Ethical Brain: The Science of our Moral
Dilemmas. New York:
Harper,
2005. Print.
Paull, Stephanie. Letter to the
author. 18 March 2014. TS.
