Tried to stay silent

Last presidential election I was very vocal, very active and very passionate.

With this current election I was just as passionate but without the stamina of my younger self.

Last presidential election I was an intern for a pro-choice organization (which has since, apparently, lost it's funding in the state of NM). I was just coming out of a major depression, just beginning to feel optimistic about the financial risk of earning a college degree, just living with my parents again and generally just trying as hard as I could to grasp onto some hope.

Generically I could say I had been looking for some change.

I was in a new space with an assault of distractions that I could not delegate away this year. Having years ago learned (ish) to deal with depression, attained a degree since, and living on my own (and then not)-- Change had happened. Had been happening. In a universe that offers no constancy I had learned to make fewer plans and hope for the best.

So this year I had not taken my opinion and hopes to the streets which might be why I was so nervous. What if my ounces of efforts in a sea of campaigning in the community is what would cost me my comfort and safety in this nation?

A hope for the best turned to a sigh of relief for my values.

And I never mean to impose my values on others.

I live in a country that is, with more hard work, moving towards marriage equality. Ideally, I'll get married one day. But I don't think I could do so happily when I know that people I love (and people in my nation) were being deprived of the same emotional, spiritual, and LAWFUL bliss. How can any American fall in love, look their love in the eyes and say “I do.” when so many others are being denied that preciously elemental moment?

Think about how your heart would swell in that moment.

And how so many hearts are breaking and waiting to feel the same.

I live in a country that, with little effort, is going to protect the reproductive rights of women. As a woman who has suffered a miscarriage, had an illegal abortion as well as having experience with the legal and medical aspects of abortion... I can honestly say, from all ends of a spectrum... there is no singular circumstance that can dictate right from wrong when it comes to these choices. Legitimacy can not be defined by “God's” intent.

I do not believe that God ever intended for me to be raped when I was young. I believe that I came across a person that did not intend to act humanely towards me. I do not believe that God ever intended for me to lose a child that I intended to keep. Or that I was being punished for the mistakes I'd made. I believe that environment and biology created a situation in which prevented me from carrying to term. I do not believe that God no longer loves me because I could not (and elected to NOT) have children with men who did not love me. I think God, for whatever “God” is, doesn't really give a flip about that sort of thing but if “God” did care... it wouldn't be unforgiving. I think God would say something like, “Good call. Because having a child with someone who does not love you/ respect you and/or likes to punch you in the face/ emotionally abuse you... is not what I intended.”

Obviously the reproductive choice thing is a HUGE issue for me. Even as I get older. And especially because I'm older and faced with the reproductive challenges of being exposed to the wrong type of HPV.

Which brings me to another thing.

Stop slut shaming young women over an HPV vaccine. SERIOUSLY. On any occasion that science is capable of staving off a plague of STI... just stop making it about how no one has any business having sex and start making it about how everyone has a communal obligation to protect themselves and others. Stop lying about the numbers. Stop lying about saving yourself for someone that is coming along. And stop lying about how it's “not that big of a deal.”

It is a really big deal.

Universal healthcare? A big deal. Totally worth it when we calculate how much we're wasting on treating those with preventable problems that have turned south... or terminal. Or, you know, the emotional calculation of how many men, women and CHILDREN go without treatment because of an unbearable cost to families.

You can start to see why I'd been silent. No one wants to hear this from me on a daily basis.

Decriminalizing a basic drug that is contributing to violence in a national neighbor? Also a big deal. The American need to consume an “illegal” substance has devastated the sociological stability of a nation. No. A few nations. Americans lack the dignity to accept responsibility for their addiction to consumption.

Not just to drugs. We also like to criminalize women and men in the sex trade, despite the fact that their actions are often coerced. We let the johns off with a slap to the wrist without offering any sort of rehabilitation for prostitutes. It's in and out of the “corrections” system for them.

I can go on like this. Forever.

We like to shield ourselves with personal “values” without taking into account that.... the singular value does not serve the masses.

Our quality of life can't be improved by trying to cater to one set of ideals and circumstance.