in 9th grade, i was suspended from school for three days for writing a story about a woman considering abortion.

i had printed several copies out at the library and left them anonymously all over the junior high. it took administration a while to discover i was the purveyor of such scandalous material; another girl claimed credit for it though was quick to tell the truth when they were going to suspend her. she heard from someone who heard from someone that no one else could have written it but me. i didn’t blame her- the truth sets us free. so i told the truth.

i remember sitting in a chair across the great expanse of the principal's desk as he told me all the ways in which i was wrong in not only sharing the story, but in writing it at all. i asked him why… seemed trivial to me to be reviled for a thought piece. he said, “abortion is evil, advocating that is evil.” i asked him how i advocated for either option: i’d written out the weight of each choice upon her- having a procedure that would terminate the pregnancy or raising a child borne from sexual assault. the story left her decision as a cliff-hanger- it could have gone either way and there was no blame for it. it was reality. i used a lot of religion to show whatever she decided, she was still a child of god, she was still deserving of empathy, grace, help.

i was very aware of the perception on abortion in my small bible-belted town, though i made the piece open to interpretation- she faced a difficult choice and “judge not lest ye yourself be judged.” i told him that. he wasn’t very happy about it. he brought my parents in to discuss my godlessness and obvious distaste of authority.

my parents were almost always working, trying to keep food on the table, though it was always a toss-up week-to-week whether we would have power, water or enough to eat. rarely did we have all three at once. that was okay, we got by. though having them take time off work to discuss their “problem child” was a punch in the gut. it was just a story, why was a story such a big deal?

//once there was a knock at our door. dad was away, he drove big trucks for days/weeks at a time, and mom was asleep, so i answered it. there were two small children: beaten, gaunt, starving. they said they were hungry. they were nearly translucent. i immediately thought “scurvy.” i’d read about it in “Cider House Rules,” the book i was reading by John Irving that prompted the problematic-for-everyone-else abortion story. i gave them oranges the school had given me to sell to raise money for… the school. ik i would be charged for them, or my parents would be, and we couldn’t pay for them, but i figured i’d just swipe some from the cafeteria if i had to, they wouldn’t know the difference. an orange is an orange. tho then my mom woke up and took us all to the police station to drop the children off. i already made ten plans in my head to feed and take care of them even though we were poor, but she wouldn’t let me. it made me sad. it also made me very aware that most adults didn’t have a clue of how to help- the police took those kids right back home to a world of beatings for trying to run away. to me that was more “evil; “ adults washing their hands from helping because their system of red-tape told them they had to.//

so there i was at 13 years old being told i was evil. my dad didn’t understand why i would be writing about abortion in particular, though he probably assumed i was sexually active and asked if i was in “trouble.” i wasn’t and i wasn’t; he took me at my word. he knew i was different, but not a liar.

it was also very apparent he didn’t care what the principal thought about my words. he said, “fine, suspend her, she learns more on her own anyway than from here.” the principal's face contorted into outrage and bafflement, but my dad was a rebel and according to him, he would “never ever be any good.” (that part was a lie; he learned to conquer the demons he’d found at the bottom of a bottle, tho that took over another 10 years.)

his belief in me made me feel good. my mom, on the other hand, was an absolute wreck. she assumed, as always, that i’d already been “spoilt.” she had asked me so many probing questions since i remembered learning to talk- i just knew she had been hurt sometiem, probably often, by another, probably many, so when i was hurt as a child, i never told her. i just kept seeking a way out of it. what could she do, what could anyone do, when so many hurt people kept hurting people? and life worked itself out, the one that hurt me first and most had died when i was little, so i had already let that go. and i had learned to read the different kinds of hurt in others that would be unsafe for me, so i stayed to myself, safe, quiet.

so in 9th grade, i was suspended for three-days for daring to write a think-piece on abortion.

i spent those three days writing my heart out.

#WorthIt