TRIGGER WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF RAPE, STALKING AND VIOLENCE. PLEASE DON’T READ THIS IF IT WILL BE UPSETTING FOR YOU.
First, let me just say this right up front: I am madly in love with the movie “Frozen”, especially the song “Let It Go.” What does this have to do with abortion, you may ask? Anybody who has read any of my posts knows that I tend to meander and take a long time to get to the point. This is going to be one of those times. If you have something better to do, or just think I’m overreacting, then I would suggest you move on. If not, well here it is. The whole story. The rape, the abortion and the reason I am letting go to tell it on this blog.
Before antis or anybody else goes, “What?’, and says “OMG! YOU AREN’T PRO-CHOICE BECAUSE YOU ONLY ADVOCATE FOR ABORTION IN CASES OF RAPE!!”, please chill out and read the rest. I am telling my story only. Everyone else’s story is their own and I don’t care why those women in the lobby with me, or women in lobbies in clinics all over the country are there. It is none of my business.
Back to “Frozen” now. I always adored Elsa. I loved how she felt like she had this secret she had to keep, this image she had to portray and the joy she felt at not having to do this anymore. This is what I’m feeling now, so when I listen to “Let It Go” I’m certainly not referring to the power to freeze stuff, but I am referring to the ability to stop trying to be the person people expect me to be and hiding something that was not my fault like some shameful secret. You see, Elsa did not ask to be born with her powers any more than I asked to be raped and become pregnant.
So while this movie has nothing to do with rape or abortion, the idea of having to keep secrets, be perfect and be ashamed of things not your fault you can’t cope with rings long and loud with me.
I won’t bore you with the entire song, just most of it. While I have posted a trigger warning at the beginning, I will say again that if you are a rape victim who is triggered you may want to skip this post because I am letting it all go.
So when I listen to this song, I hear Elsa sing “the wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.” She isn’t talking about what I was thinking years ago right after it happened and my “legitimate rape” got me knocked up, but she has the same feelings and thoughts. Do I tell? Do I ask for help? Do I report this rape? How will this change the way people think of me because I had a few consensual sexual encounters with this man? Will my father kill him? So I do what good girls do, I keep it all inside. Our justice system, while improving, is not particularly kind to rape victims. Everyone has a right to a good defense. I just wasn’t in a position to have my entire private life shoved out in a public trial, so I didn’t report.
Elsa sings “don’t let them in, don’t let them see, be the good girl you always have to be. Conceal, don’t feel.” I know exactly what this animated character is feeling. I wore a turtleneck to work to cover up the bruises on my neck. I never told anybody about the nights I sat in the Wal-Mart parking lot weeping for an hour. I was afraid to get out of my car because my rapist was still stalking me. I lived in the same apartment for three more years because I refused to be defeated. Smart? Probably not, but I am a stubborn creature and in spite of the stalking it was my way of fighting back.
After what seemed like 100 years of night terrors, they finally stopped. I got therapy. It helped, to some degree to let part of it go. So it is true that “it’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small and the fear that once controlled me can’t get to me at all.” I’m not afraid to go out by myself at night. I’m not afraid to be home alone at night. I’m not afraid to go to Kroger at 3 AM because I have insomnia and know it will be empty. I let the fear go. I don’t have to fake it anymore. The fears that once controlled me can’t get to me at all. OK. Mostly they don’t.
Now let’s skip ahead. I have so much more I could say about rape and stalking, but that is for another time. Even though only one can’t get pregnant by “legitimate rape” because our women’s bodies shut the whole thing down, I did. I don’t have regular periods, but I knew it within two weeks because I puked morning, noon and night. Every single time I puked I relived the rape.
I knew what I was going to do immediately. Abortion. Even though I had family support and it is likely my rapist/stalker would have married me and would have wanted the child, my decision was made. I told no one. The nearest clinic was over an hour away in another state. I immediately called Planned Parenthood and scheduled an abortion that couldn’t be done for 4 more weeks because this particular clinic did not offer medication abortion yet. I didn’t even know my blood type so I had to make an extra trip. Luckily, I was a workaholic with a huge pile of PTO time.
Once I had made the trip to the clinic for blood typing, there was another hurdle. I needed someone to drive me after the procedure even though I was only having local anesthesia. I realized I could pay a homeless man to sign for me as my driver, because of my decision to tell no one who knew me.
Don’t get me wrong, I have always been pro-choice, but when you are a sheltered girl from small-town Kentucky who moves to a slightly bigger town to go to college and then stays there, but has to go to the Big City get “that thing” done, it is still scary.
I still blamed myself for opening the door the night he banged on it for 15 minutes thinking I didn’t want to disturb my neighbors. I had to be a good girl. I had to not disturb anybody with my personal problems. I opened the door hoping he would be quiet. Oh, he got quiet and so did I. It is hard to scream when a man twice your size has his hand around your throat. I blamed myself for years. I have finally stopped. I finally let it go.
The end of my story comes with the abortion. I’ll spare you the details of knowing I was pregnant. Why I took the test? I’m still not sure. My periods are and have always been irregular unless I was on hormonal birth control, which gave me pregnancy symptoms. Keep in mind before you decide against any form of hormonal birth control, I am a rare special snowflake when it comes to medication side effects. Mostly, women go about their daily lives with no problems. Sigh. Envy.
Anyway, I being the good girl who kept her two consensual sexual partners a secret, as well as her rape, also kept her fear of being pregnant a secret. However, you can bet your ass the day my erratic period SHOULD usually but didn’t appear I ran down to the store and got a pregnancy test. That faint pink line that changed my life. I went to get more tests. All faint pink lines. That and puking hit reality home. There was nothing to do but make that appointment. The decision was actually made before I ever took the test.
So here I am, letting it go.
I’ll tell you there were about 12 of us in the waiting room. One woman was teary. A few were stoic. A few leaned on the man with them. Why were they there? None of my business. To tell the truth, I wasn’t feeling very chatty. I kept my nose in a book, eagerly awaiting my name to be called for a procedure I had heard was awful, terrible and painful with no anesthesia. I felt alone, but somehow my aloneness gave me power. I knew when this was over I could “walk away and slam the door.”
Me, being me, had made sure to be the first to check in and the first up at bat. I’m not sure how I managed to walk down that hall, undress or get in the stirrups. I suppose we all do what we have to do. One of the things I had to do for myself, not because the law mandated it, was see the ultrasound. Don’t listen to what the antis tell you. The clinic WILL let you see your ultrasound if you ask. Seeing my own little sea monkey in there actually gave me peace of mind.
I won’t say the procedure was something I would do for shits and giggles. I will say it was over in about five minutes and I received excellent care with no complications at all. I don’t know where my homeless faux driver went, but after a few minutes in recovery I went to my car to begin the drive home. Think what you want of me, but halfway home I realized I was hungry. I pulled off the exit midway home and ate four cheeseburgers and a large order of fries from the McDonald’s drive-through on the way home.
No puking. It was my first step to letting go.
I’ll be honest, I still have trouble reading these antis who say giving birth to a rape baby “heals” the woman. Maybe it does for some women. It wouldn’t have for me. Honestly, those four weeks waiting were horrid not because I knew I was on abortion countdown, but because I knew the spawn of that man was inside me. If any lurking antis have a comment about “death penalty for crimes of the father”, all I can say is shove it. There was no baby. There was a woman who desperately needed an abortion. There was a woman who had night terrors. There was a woman who held elderly patients’ hands as they died and worked with abused children long after this happened.
If that abortion hadn’t happened, that woman would not be here. If I had to walk through an awful gauntlet it would have broken me into pieces. I would not be the woman who has helped more people than CPCs, abortion protesters and blowhards like Jill Stanek, Lila Rose and the whole of AHA.
I have helped more people than they ever will. I don’t care what they think of me or if I pop up on their Google alerts. They are profiting from abortion as well and they are the hypocrites and the Pharisees Jesus preached about. They pray and preach loudly, but make money off the same industry they condemn. If it should cease to exist, so would their livelihood. Hypocrites, every one. Praying loudly on street corners or the modern version, the internet, so everyone can see how pious and merciful they are. Yup, we “pro-aborts” read the Bible as well and I still consider myself a Christian. A Jesus Christian. Not the blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus anti so-called Christian protesters worship, but the dude who said to “do unto others as you would have done unto you.” I doubt Jill Stanek, Lila Rose or the vast network of “groups not a group” AHA who seem to be making big money off of their opposition to abortion are what Christianity is about.
So here I am. Letting it go. If you are a rape victim, I’m sorry if I triggered you. If you are not a rape victim, don’t take this as a sign that I think abortion is only acceptable in those cases.
You know when abortion is acceptable? When the woman gestating the pregnancy decides she doesn’t want to be pregnant. Period. End of story. This is just my story and every woman who goes down that sidewalk has another story that is none of my business.
I once read an anti-post that said a woman claimed she didn’t think about the rape but remembered the abortion every day. She needs therapy. I can tell you the year, day, hour and minute I was raped. I couldn’t tell you the day I had an abortion. I didn’t need a widdle-bitty baby to cuddle and heal me. I needed an abortion.
So here I am. Letting it go.
I had an abortion. I didn’t check the “rape/incest” box because I didn’t want it to flag any need for further discussion of the issue. I made an appointment for an abortion and I was going to get one.
I don’t regret it nor do the hundreds of lives I have made better. That could never have happened if I had been broken into pieces by “peaceful sidewalk counseling.”
I didn’t need a baby. I didn’t need a non-medical ultrasound. I didn’t need to report this to the police to validate my experience. I didn’t need others to tell me what to do.
What did I need?
To let it go.
There are a lot of women and girls with more and less traumatic experiences who need to let it go on their terms. If they come to you, don’t judge. It isn’t your journey.
But this? This grammatically incorrect post is me letting go. If you are a woman who is feeling guilt about rape and/or abortion I encourage you to join me in letting it go. It took me three months to write this post but for the first time in many years I feel free.
So should every rape victim and every person who has an abortion.
