A Note About Texas
Sometimes when I write for this blog, I feel like I'm just another noise in an already massive echo chamber. I get discouraged, I feel invisible. I think to myself, 'maybe it's okay to be invisible, maybe you shouldn't have a voice in this.'
I've been writing since I was ten, and as a junior I started a magazine at my high school called The Voice. But I've always been shy about my writing; my poems are all small, crammed into tiny spaces as if someone was going to come and take up the rest of the page. My first chapbook was called Shy Knees. I rarely share my writing with other people, I rarely reach out to publications to ask them if I can write for them. I rarely even post on this blog. Some of it stems from fear. I don't want people to think I'm a bad writer. I don't want to read the mean and cruel comments that can sometimes follow the bottom of a post. I don't want to talk about myself. As a white-presenting middle-class woman living in San Francisco, I'm sometimes the last person in the world who needs to have an opinion on something. It's better for me to step aside and let other people have the floor.
I think, too, it's hard to tell when writing has impact. I've always loved to-do lists and I still have a bucket list I wrote over ten years ago that includes the missive "change someone's life." I wonder if I've ever done that with my writing. I wonder if anyone has ever read something I've put to paper and walked away feeling different, or feeling anything at all. Internally, I wonder if my writing has any impact on me. I've journaled nearly every day for the past three years, all of it introspective and self-analyzing, and I still feel like I miss the forest for the tiny trees; that I've made the biggest mistakes of my life in just the past week, and that while I wrote about being stressed at work or fights with my partner, my journal rarely touches on my sexual assault or my brother's incarceration, two of the most traumatic things that happened to me last year. I wrote about petty fights with my boyfriend, using words to store my bitterness in instead of using them as tools to break apart my outer hardness to find my vulnerability and gentleness inside.
I feel angry with myself. I feel like I've wasted time, or not been productive. I hate that I use the word 'productive' as much as I do. I take stress naps and wake up exhausted, and I check my bank balances every day because I have an anxiety that what I have will be taken from me at any moment. I feel shame, and I don't know for what.
I think this is all called exhaustion. I think this is all called being stressed and overwhelmed and not dealing with grief and taking too much on and ignoring the important things and losing the essential things and turning into the worst part of your parents and then fearing you're not turning into anything worthwhile at all. I want to be more quiet. I want to stare out the window more, I want to read on my couch for hours without worrying that I'm missing something. I want to put my phone in a box and put that box into the closet for the weekend. I feel guilty for not doing any of those things, and no pleasure in the things I am doing.
This is a long intro. This was supposed to be a post about how Texas is shitty and how, since The Voice, I've written about abortion access and rights. I wanted to write about how planned parenthood saved my life twice, by giving me information about my pregnancy that was fair and good and put me forward instead of the conservative agenda my dad put forward, that saw me as a sin and not a person. They saved me too, by giving me access to birth control I couldn't afford. I wanted to write something about all the different ways writing hasn't gotten us any closer to convincing people that maybe women shouldn't have to carry fetuses to term if they don't want to, that they exist as more than just reproductive machines.
But I just feel tired. So I'm keeping this space small, and safe. I am posting below some abortion funds that people can donate to if they feel so inclined, to help people access abortion care if it is no longer safe for them to do so where they live. And I want to hold space for the people who are exhausted and discouraged. It is okay to be like this. It is okay to want to stare at the wall for a little while. Let others take up the mantle when you no longer have the strength to do so. We will be coming back.
Abortion Funds:
The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.