How Many?
Day Two of the world post the Cass Review
I woke up this morning, day two of the world post the Cass Review and took a moment at the window of my bedroom before I headed downstairs. The newly blossoming pear tree is right outside, and I tried to envision pulling strength from each individual blossom on the tree. As I did so I started to count the blossoms.
Counting is such a mundane task. How many times today have you already counted? Counted the stairs as you descend? Counted the cars in front of you in line for coffee?
Counting is what always pulls me back.
I want patterns and data instead of words. My solid ground is science and hard science: numbers, fossils, epochs; not faces, hands or days. Today counting pulled me back into the spreadsheets where they count into the thousand.
I count blossoms and then in my brain I start to splice the spreadsheet into cohorts.
The 13 year old natal girls on testosterone. How many?
The 11 year olds on Lupron. How many?
The 30% lost to follow up.
“As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer’s long hair in water. I knew the weight was there, but it didn’t touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn’t stop.”
Barbara Kingsolver wrote this passage in the Poisonwood Bible. I bet if Barbara Kingsolver knew anything about me, she would hate me.
Lydia Polgreen so kindly pointed out, in our very brief exchange at the Genspect conference in Denver, that the Indigo Girls would hate me if they knew me.
Day Two of the world after the Cass Report and as much as we believe everything has changed, in my grief, in the tiny moments where I allow myself to consider stopping that dark stuff floats around me again and I know that in our county nothing has changed. Yet.
My sister has not spoken to me since the story in the Free Press came out. My mother will say she believes that I did the right thing; but she then asks questions to see how I respond about the abortion news from Arizona and I know she still doesn’t understand. We don’t have the core group of families we can invite over for an impromptu BBQ anymore. Locally my world has become insulated and quiet.
I have changed everything for everyone around me. And I can’t take it back, and I can’t stop moving but as tears blur my vision all I feel is this:
I want my Day Two here in the United States.
I am selfish and weak to even write this, I should only be proud of all my compatriots in England.
But the dark stuff still floats around me, the numbers still come quickly into my head and I know that in our country nothing has changed.
Yet.
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I’ll come to your bbq.
Sincere thanks for all you do to speak the truth. Unfortunately, your spreadsheet cant count the thousands of young people who will be saved from harm, but there are and will be many.
"We don’t have the core group of families we can invite over for an impromptu BBQ anymore. Locally my world has become insulated and quiet. I have changed everything for everyone around me."
This really struck close to home. I wasn't a whistleblower, but when we stood up to the school, the doctors, and our friends, relatives and neighbors, our world, by necessity, became smaller and smaller. I miss my naivety. I miss trusting experts. I miss the general feeling of order and goodness in the world. But most of all, I miss the support that comes from a large group of friends. I’m slowly trying to move past the betrayal and build a new circle of trust.
Thank you, Jaime, for all you have done. I know but a small piece of the price you had to pay.