I was at work when Hannah sent me a link to the leaked documents exposing the future of Roe v. Wade in our country. “disappointed but never surprised,” I wrote back, as if on command. always disappointed, never surprised. we knew this was coming, we saw their hand: they never tried to bluff.
I was scheduled to work intramural volleyball with my coworker Trudi. it was raining on-and-off, enough so that our shoes were wet ten minutes after we clocked in and our pants were spattered with mud. inconvenient, but not enough to ruin the day–all we had to do after setting up the nets was sit under the umbrella and supervise. Hannah texted me two hours into my shift and the weight of it settled slowly enough that I didn’t notice, I sent my one-off response and in doing so shut down the potential for any serious dialogue we’d have about it. thirty minutes later Trudi, while scrolling tik tok, turned to me and said: “okay: the hardest would-you-rather questions of all time, are you ready?” “fire away.”
“would you rather live forever or die today?”
easy, I thought. “die today, for sure.”
she looked at me with raised eyebrows. I didn’t waver. it was a simple question but the answers were less so. maybe if I hadn’t read the news from Hannah I would’ve considered the alternative. but the signs are everywhere–many of us are unclear about the “forever” of the future, if we’ll have a sustainable society, if we’ll have a planet at all–what kind of masochist would want to live to find out? “umm, okay,” she said, “would you rather be friends with your soulmate, or date them knowing it’s going to end badly?”
by the time I clocked off work I couldn’t feel my toes. I walked home in the street, listening to “cause” by rodriguez, watching my muddy shoes hit wet pavement. cause how many times can you wake up in this comic book and plant flowers?
I texted my mom. “don’t give up,” she said, “the pendulum swings and there are still plenty of good people in the world.”
she sees it differently, and she’s seen more than I have. I don’t like to talk to her about things like this because they get me down in a way that’s tough to reconcile with anybody, let alone with a woman who is in part responsible for my existence. and I’m sure she’s right–there are plenty of good people in the world–but does that matter? do they matter? do we matter? do I matter? at what point can I acknowledge that good people exist and not find solace in that fact? does solace like that exist in a world that rewards blissful ignorance?
I got home and turned on the shower as I took off my clothes. I told my roommate there was no telling how long I’d be under the hot water. I thought about posting something to my instagram story, maybe sharing a graphic–adrienne maree brown posted a good one, white text on a black background screaming ABORTION IS A HUMAN RIGHT. maybe I’d write my own thoughts over it, something like if you aren’t mad you aren’t paying attention. but maybe that’s shameful, I thought, it isn’t in my right to tell somebody how they ought to feel about something they might not even be aware of.
and this is all unfolding in the shower, this piece as I’m writing it right now, because I kept thinking. of course I find this sort of emotional prescription to be shameful: I exist in the echelon where we can afford to not pay attention. and I thought about my choice of that word, shame, the roots of it.
I’m still ashamed to admit that until november 8th, 2016, I would sooner tell people that I “don’t like to talk about politics” than enter into a conversation deeper than my basic party affiliation. after a lifetime of watching my mom go to bat for her beliefs in the echo chamber of a town I grew up in, talking politics was synonymous with welcoming confrontation. neither one seemed worth the risk to my good-natured and non-confrontational reputation1.
I woke up on november ninth as hundreds of thousands of others did, feeling like the most naïve, apathetic fucker in the world. I lost most of the innocent benefit-of-the-doubt I had bestowed upon humanity as a whole, secretly vowing that the next time wouldn’t hurt as badly if I could pretend I saw it coming. on the spectrum of naïveté and nihilism I leaned hard into the latter, failing to acknowledge my position as a white woman with far less to lose.
maybe this is why these situations always boil down to shame for me: shameful if I don’t speak or post publicly about them, shameful if I do and my voice makes anyone else feel in any way like their opinion is wrong, or like they didn’t do enough, shameful to speak on something of which I have no personal lived experience. so I prefer to just listen, which brings me back to this idea of paying attention.
I’ve had friends and family ask me to stop urgently reading the news because of the direct effect that it had on my stress levels, and the respective toll that took on those closest to me. it gets so complex so quickly. while I understand that we weren’t meant to have “news” like this–so far-reaching, so unavoidable–I also understand the ability to ignore it as a sign of privilege or danger, most times as both. those who advocate for turning off the news entirely will always have ground to stand on, based on the way our current news and social medias work: there’s always going to be a new tragedy in the headlines because trauma sells2. and those who advocate for paying attention will always strike a chord in me because if they aren’t paying attention, then who is there to start the revolution?
since eighth grade, we’ve learned about the magnitude of Roe v. Wade in relation to women’s rights in our country. it was projected in front of us as this lighthouse, this beam of hope that if they could pass Roe in the 70s just imagine what we can do for women today. and in 2017, at one of the most peaceful protests in our country’s history, we marched on Washington in defense of the same constitutional rights that formed the basis for Roe v. Wade. we knew the threat was there and we would rise to meet it.
we’ve been aware of the revolution, the controversy, the opposition facing women nationwide if Roe were under threat or overturned. and we’ve watched for months, years, as they’ve begun to chip away at the infrastructure protecting those with the power to give birth. we’ve seen the line drawn, finely, between what constitutes “human rights” and what doesn’t, and we’ve seen women excluded time and again from that list. also ostracized are people of color, gay people, trans people, disabled people, incarcerated people–the list goes on. and we’re watching all of this happen in real time, it’ll make headlines, give us a reprieve from the tireless coverage of the dystopia in Ukraine, distract us from a planet that is crucially struggling to keep up with our constant human demand.
so here we are, under a democratic administration, watching the foothold of human rights in our country as it crumbles. sometimes it feels like there’s not much more i can do than pay attention. the cost of doing so is high but ignorance feels costlier. I would rather be depressed and aware. and there’s no resolve here, at least for now, because to wrap up news like this with a bow would risk the crushing blow of naïveté, and I don’t want to learn that lesson again. until the pendulum swings I will be disappointed, I’ll pretend I’m never surprised. and I will remain naïvely convinced that if I say I saw it coming, the disappointment will sting less.
1this introduces a whole other conversation that I don’t have time for here, but that ideally would hit some nail on the head about the idea of “fitting in” with male counterparts by being a) white and b) chill, unbothered; the whole notion that you’re a “cool girl” if you can not only bear witness to but contribute to their locker room talk. this is a role that I’ve fulfilled most of my life as it places me in an advantageous position in society, one that I’ve begun to put more effort into undoing. the more I pay attention the more difficult it is for me to comply with the expectations this position asks of a girl–namely the ability to ignore or write off any offense for the sake of friendship, brotherhood, etc. this role is also centered in discourse around white feminism and corroborates the notion that white women in power are more likely to achieve power if at some point they’ve sold out women around them by fraternizing as a means to elevate their individual stature in society
2this brings me to another point that I’d eventually like to flesh out more as to why we love to consume sob stories and traumatic news–my thought was that it functions as a selfish reminder that our own lives could always be worse etc., but I know there are other theories as simple as the idea of trauma porn (??is this similar to what I just mentioned) and also the concept of negativity bias blehhhh also capitalism bc at the end of the day it’ll all go into some small dicked man’s pocket
loose change 
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