Guys, I’m fucking tired. I’m tired of the world, the pain, the grasping for control instead of focusing on our own lives. I’ve got to start speaking up if I want to see change but speaking up gets hard when you’ve been told your entire life that you need to change.
My Body
I was a child, less than 6, the first time I remember a boy, or boys, making me feel uncomfortable about my body. Less than 6 the first time I got pressured into doing something with my body that I didn’t want to. But hey, we were kids and kids will be kids, right? Only I can’t help but think that the boys involved in that situation got a really early lesson into how there aren’t many repercussions if you force a girl to do something she doesn’t want with her body, as long as you have a good enough excuse or story to go along with it. I can’t help but think that it’s the earliest lesson that I remember that it doesn’t matter what I want for my body, someone else is going to have a say and will keep tearing down what I want until it’s inconsequential.
I’d still call this a child, somewhere between 10 and 13, when I vividly remember it happening again, in my own home, disguised as a game. There are still people that my skin crawls in the presence of, I feel unsafe around, untrusting of. I didn’t find the courage to acknowledge this incident until 26 but when I started talking, it wasn’t a topic well received so I just heard that it’s good that I’m getting help and addressing things. But I was asking for help because I was having trouble addressing things. I can’t keep it all buried anymore.
Definitively 13 when men in their 20s would sexualize me and pressure me to do what they wanted. By 13, I had learned well enough that a woman’s body was for attention, was for other people, was to present, but was never for me to decide what to do with, so I obliged. Sometimes I’d argue, but in the end, I always obliged.
I was freshly 18 when a 26-year-old boy used guilt and manipulation as a weapon to coerce me into a pregnancy that I kept voicing that I wasn’t ready for, afraid to take on. This was before I was actually pregnant, but it worked. I obliged. I had learned how to be obedient, likable. I had learned how to not ruffle feathers. When I was maybe 3 months pregnant with that same boy’s baby, we were arguing over something trivial when he said to me “if we can’t even get along now, maybe we should just get rid of this thing”. When I finally found the courage, well after that pregnancy, to address the comment – I was told it was never said. As if I imagined someone telling me to abort the child that I felt pressured into having but immediately became attached to and wanted the best for.
At 21, suggestion for abortion came from the mouth of a married man that I know I shouldn’t have been fucking but my lack of self-worth was allowing me to fuck anyways. I wasn’t pregnant, and I had already handled the scare, the fear, all by myself but when I went to confess it, explain it, try to get my feelings out there in the open somewhere – he said he skimmed the story, didn’t have time to read it, panicked, but thank god I’m not pregnant because I’d have to have an abortion if I was. I wish I could tell you that was the end of me fucking him, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t even the moment where I realized that his well-being would always come before mine, even when it was my body in question. The thing is, it had been so normalized to me to be told what I can and can’t do with this body that of course, of course, if I’m going to put myself in this fucked up situation I would have to oblige to that one too. I didn’t stop fucking him until years later when I realized that if I got pregnant, I wouldn’t tell him, I’d never speak to him again, and I’d have a baby that would get to know nothing about their father. That’s not what I want for any baby of mine. I don’t want their life to start with secrets. But it took years to realize that I was allowed to care about what I wanted and it only became easier because it wasn’t what I wanted for myself but what I wanted for someone else that probably, in my mind, mattered more to me than my own body.
At 22 I was in a study room on campus trying to finish my school work in between classes because being a single mom, working full time, and going to school full time didn’t leave me a lot of extra time to get things done so I filled every second I had with productivity. That’s what I was doing when a boy that had only ever said hi to me in passing cornered me in the room and started touching me. When I told him, no, to leave me alone, my protest came through choked-back tears and laughter because it took everything in me to even find protest to begin with. I still think that the only reason that I was assaulted in that room and not raped in that room was because in the middle of pushing himself on me, doing things with my body that I didn’t want done, he got a call from the person that was picking him up for the day and he had to go. I blamed myself for the longest time. It took me years to not tense up, or jump, when I was in a room and a door opened behind me.
When I finally found the courage to tell my very married friend that I was still fucking, he begged me to report it. Told me he would beat the shit out of the dude himself but that would leave a lot of explaining that he can’t handle. It took me a week after that conversation to find the courage to report it. I asked my dad to drive me to campus, I was notably upset, I vaguely started explaining that something happened that I had to go report. He never asked what happened, just said it’s good I was dealing with it. It’s part of how I picked up a tendency to be ashamed of what happened to me, feel like it shouldn’t be talked about, but that I should deal with it all silently. It’s part of what made me realize that no one cares what’s happening to my body but everyone still feels like they should get a say in it.
One time after a dude busted a nut inside of me, not bothering to ask if I was on birth control first, he said “I hope you’re on birth control because if you get pregnant, you’re going to have an abortion. I’m not ready to be a dad”. I wish I would have responded by telling him “don’t worry, I wouldn’t let you father any child of mine. I already know you’re not cut out for that”, but I gave a halfhearted laugh before silence swept over me and I realized that he doesn’t care what I want, about my well being. I’m going to call this 24, give or take a year, but I realized that I was done tolerating people that didn’t care about my body but wanted to control it.
When I was dating a girl, I was told that it was expected there wouldn’t be babies from us anytime soon. I tried to brush it off but when I asked for an apology because I couldn’t, because I couldn’t shake the fact that I’ve been taught since I was a child that my body isn’t mine to have a say over but everyone else’s to control – I was told it was a joke, and I misunderstood.
The thing is, I have this lifetime of experience where people were telling me what is and is not allowed, even if it didn’t affect them, even if they didn’t have to feel and live with the repercussions of what they are insisting upon. So maybe, if you, anyone out there, don’t understand the absolute rage coursing through the veins of women right now it’s because you misunderstood just how devastating our experiences are to our quality of life, ability to trust ourselves, need to feel safe, sense of security and self-worth. Maybe if you think it’s a joke, worth joking about, you need to start focusing on your own body.
I was 28 when I found out I was pregnant but my body had other plans. On my paperwork, they called it a spontaneous abortion – as if they didn’t create the term miscarriage to avoid such abrasive terminology. My boyfriend and I haven’t stopped joking about how I’m just too spontaneous sometimes but the truth was, I wasn’t ready for that baby when I found out. Fear took over me and I have a mind that likes to doubt, weigh other peoples needs and beliefs too heavily over my own, so there would have been no question that I was keeping that baby, in my mind.
My body though, my body is still recovering from all of the times someone else’s will for it overpowered my own voice. My body knows that my mind isn’t always willing, capable.
You see, the thing isn’t that I wouldn’t have wanted that baby or ultimately decided to keep it but that I would have been afraid to even consider any alternative. Do you know how hard it is to not even be able to consider what is best for yourself? Even after all of this growth, sometimes, I can’t even consider myself. I’m still learning, or maybe unlearning.
So when you’re saying that a woman shouldn’t have an abortion because someone else needs to live off of her – we’ve let people do that enough. We can’t keep going back. It’s time to unlearn that shit. If you think it’s your job to tell someone what they need to do with their body – I hope you know that you’ve been destroying people left and right, starting from when they’re children.
At 28 years old, I’m finding the courage to say fuck you – this life, this body, is mine.
Fuck you and if you think you get a say, then forget about abortion, it’s your desperate need for control that needs to die.
Much love, until next time.
Madeline May I... 