Blessed Be the Fruit

When I was seventeen I started going to Al-Anon meetings, which — in case you don’t know — are meetings for family members of alcoholics. I say that I started going as if I just walked down the street and skipped down the stairs to the church basement like it was no big deal, but that is not what happened at all. Someone I’d met at the restaurant where I was hostessing on weekends suggested it might be helpful. I’d talked to him about my mom.

My mom would never admit she was an alcoholic, and neither would anyone in her inner circle. In fact, she would vehemently deny it, and become furious at the suggestion. I might have mentioned once or twice that my mother’s rage was not something I ever chose to incite. So going to a meeting felt like a radical act, and doing it in the neighborhood where I grew up was even riskier. The church was a block away from the real estate company where my mother worked. If she spotted me ducking down the stairs, or any of her friends did? Forget it. I’d be dealing with an apocalyptic meltdown and repercussions for months.

It’s more accurate to say I started sneaking to these meetings. The first time I went, I wasn’t even sure I had a right to be there, because I was still doubting what I knew and had known for years. When you see something clearly, but everyone around you says you’re seeing things that aren’t there it messes with your head. Especially if this happens during your formative years when you don’t know yourself well, aren’t sure about so much of what’s happening around you, already struggle with enormous self-doubt, and have no one there to validate your perception.

Still, I knew, because of course I did. I was the one with the front-row seat, the one who helped her stand up when she couldn't do that on her own, the one who got the money out of her purse to pay the cab driver because she couldn’t do simple math in that condition. I knew the way the cab drivers looked at me with a mix of concern and sympathy, even at seven years old. I knew the day an older woman, a grandmotherly sort of woman, walked into the Ladies Room of the restaurant my mom and stepdad owned at the time, and saw my mother holding me by the wrist and hitting me with all her might — the way she said, “Stop harming that child right now or I will report you!” — it couldn’t be right for her to rage at me for no reason. I knew.

Seventeen or close enough.

Still, I snuck down the street like a thief, heart racing, scanning the environment for anyone I might know. Once, I saw a neighbor from our building, and instead of saying hi, I ducked behind a car and waited for her to pass as if trying to get some help was a crime. Once inside the church basement, I didn’t raise my hand to speak, but if I had any doubt about whether I had a right to be there it vanished about ten minutes into the first meeting when someone said, “This is why you don’t go to the hardware store for apples,” and my brain imploded. Everyone laughed like this was the most obvious thing in the world. It’s still one of my favorite expressions, and still something I have to remember from time to time.

Going to the hardware store for apples is what you do if you’re trying to get blood from a stone, an apology from a narcissist, affection from someone who doesn’t like physical touch, or approval from someone who likes to withhold it to stay in control. It’s a pointless exercise. They don’t sell apples at the hardware store, you’re in the wrong place, looking for the wrong thing. For me at seventeen, this idea burst across the synapses in my brain, lit up my motherboard, and short-circuited everything. My entire life, summed up in a catchy, funny saying.

Well, shit. 

No freaking apples anywhere. Photo by Oxana Melis on Unsplash

I wish that realization had been enough to change everything and get me headed in a different direction, but you can know a thing, and still have a control panel that lights up when mercurial people cross your path. For a long time, mercurial people were like human catnip to me. If someone seemed disinterested, my god were they the one (but not at first). My favorite game was The Bait-and-Switch. The guy who thought I was amazing, beautiful, smart, funny, thoughtful…until he had me. Then suddenly I’d become not thin enough, or my boobs wouldn’t be quite big enough, or my jokes wouldn’t seem as funny. Then I’d go to the hardware store looking for apples.

Where was the guy who thought I was so incredible, the one who’d chased me? He had to be in there somewhere, I’d seen him! I’d spent time with him, I was sure of it. Maybe if I could just be the chill girl, low-maintenance with no needs of my own, but really helpful to him, he’d show up again. Or if I was exceptionally thoughtful or kind. Maybe I should lose a few pounds, I could do that, no big deal. Maybe a few more. Maybe I could just disappear, maybe that would do it. So it would go until that became too painful, fruitless, boring, devastating, or I realized my actual life was in jeopardy and I needed to call it a day. Wave the white flag, cry myself to sleep, hate myself for a while, and try again. 

There are people who cannot say the words I’m sorry. I bet you know one. There are people who don’t know how to communicate openly. There are people who will always make your feelings your fault rather than look at their own behavior. There are people who will lie to your face. There are people who look at the very same world you do, and draw completely different conclusions about how to make it better.

You can do your thing, sometimes I do — I try to have a difficult, awkward or vulnerable conversation about something with a person who has shown me that isn’t the kind of conversation they’re willing to have. Or I spend time explaining why I feel the way I do, and support my feelings with evidence, even after they make it clear nothing is going to sway them. I did that this week as a matter of fact, yes I did.

What had happened was (am I the only one laughing at this obscure Richard Pryor reference? Probably.) I had an email exchange with a woman who was unhappy about a fundraiser I’m doing. Or more specifically, she was unhappy that I felt the need to announce the fundraiser, and I guess no one told her she can delete things, or scroll on by, or certainly opt not to come or support. People do it all the time. But the thing about fundraisers is you kind of have to announce them, or no one knows and no one shows up or donates or whatever, so announcing them is kind of this key thing. Underneath the event details, I included reasons about why I feel the way I do, with links and evidence, and well, you know, those pesky facts I like.

Then another woman wrote to me in all caps and said, NO ONE IS SAYING MISCARRIAGES OR ECTOPIC PREGNANCIES ARE THE SAME THING AS ABORTIONS! NO ONE! So I took a deep breath and we ended up having a reasonable, civil, even friendly exchange, but that is when I realized there are people who do not understand how or why abortion bans are impacting women who are pregnant — people who desperately want to have a baby, but find themselves dealing with a miscarriage or the agony of an ectopic pregnancy, or a fatal fetal abnormality, or any number of heartbreaking emergencies that can happen during pregnancy.

These seem like very important things for everyone to know, because if you don’t understand that, you won’t understand why people like Kate Cox in states like Texas have had to leave their states to get lifesaving healthcare. 

This next part is going to be intense, but friends, pregnancy is intense, so is childbirth, so are a lot of things, so please bear with me. If a woman starts hemorrhaging due to a miscarriage and goes to the ER — which is where any of us would go if we were bleeding out — and she happens to live in a state with restrictive abortion bans, she’s going to be in trouble.

There are two procedures doctors use to treat women who are hemorrhaging from miscarriage: a D&C (dilation and curretage), or a D&E (dilation and evacuation). In other words, the lifesaving healthcare a woman needs if she is bleeding out from a miscarriage or other pregnancy-related emergency — is an abortion. An abortion is the same thing as a D&C (procedure done in the first trimester) or a D&E (procedure done after the first trimester).

There may be other additional interventions needed, but this will be part of what she needs. The bans apply whether you need an abortion because you are hemorrhaging from a pregnancy-related emergency, or because you are electing to have one. Same procedure, same ban in effect.

This is why women in so many of the states with restrictive abortion bans are being told that though they may be in pain, and they may be bleeding or feverish, they’ll have to come back to the ER when there is no doubt their lives are at stake — and by that they mean no doubt by anyone’s standards. The restrictive bans are written poorly — they’re written by legislators, not doctors, and they’re mostly male, mostly clueless a woman’s reproductive system, pregnancy, and medical procedures — and how is a doctor to know what qualifies in their minds as, “her life is at stake” if that is not defined?

Idaho commanders legislators tried to parse it out. They started talking about how many of a woman’s vital organs need to be failing in order for it to be okay for a doctor to step in. It’s serious business because doctors in some of these states can lose their medical licenses and/or go to jail if they act to save her life too soon. Doctors are moving out of these states, because who wants to go to school for eight years, only to worry about being arrested for doing the thing you were trained to do? And maternal and infant mortality rates are rising. See how well it goes when we “leave it to the states”?

The woman then said to me, “Women in these states voted for these bans, and people in California and New York should mind their own business!” Wrong again, I’m afraid, no one voted for these bans. Roe v Wade — law of the land since 1973 and supported by 62% of Americans across party lines — was overturned thanks to a man with more shitty nicknames than anyone in the history of ever, and that is what triggered the states to write their own laws.

The legislators in the states wrote the laws (and guess what percentage of these people are women? 19% — isn’t that just terrific?) and there are only two ways for people to object once a measure goes into effect. One is to get the measure on the ballot in the next election, whenever that might be in whatever state they’re in, but not all states allow that. Guess who makes it really hard to get a measure like this on a ballot so people can vote yay or nay? The legislators who wrote it. Good times, right?

The only other way to fight is to sue your state for the lifesaving health care you need. Expensive and time-consuming and not very practical if your life is at stake. I’m bleeding out, honey, call our attorney!

A huge part of the problem is people do not know how anatomy works, how biology works, how reproduction works, or how our government works, but they vote, anyway, and they write angry emails about fundraisers.

I can’t even keep up with all the things that are wrong. Yesterday he who shall not be named reposted a disgusting tweet from someone who said something vile, demeaning and misogynistic about Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, accompanied by a photo of the two of them. Something that suggested in the most degrading way that they got where they got on their knees. This is a person running for the highest office in the land. If you devalue, dislike, and disrespect over half the population this much, that ought to disqualify you right there.

Do you know how long women and girls have been hearing crap like that? This is what a weak and pathetic man does when he cannot debate a strong and powerful woman on policy or merit. It is the lowest of the low, and I had a woman defending him over this and attacking Clinton and Harris. If you think it’s only men who throw around the old “what was she wearing?” trope, I’m sad to say you’re mistaken.

When you grow up in the patriarchy as a girl or a woman, the messages about your worth and your value are shaped by men, and it is not at all strange to end up hating yourself, even if it’s happening so far below the surface you don’t even realize — it’s just the water you’re swimming in. Having said that, if you are a woman and you witness a man debasing other women, and your knee-jerk reaction is to defend the man? If you think men like that care about you, your rights, your dreams, your best interests? You are going to the hardware store for apples. You just might not know it yet.

I didn’t go to Al-Anon meetings for too long; on and off for about three years, and after that, just once in a while for a “tune-up.” Tune-ups are good. Family members of people who struggle with addiction tend to have some things in common. One of those things is gravitating toward people who aren’t capable of doing anything other than letting you down, but hoping this time, maybe it will be different.

Maya Angelou on the topic: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Maybe you didn’t believe him the first time. I hope you believe him now, because our fates are tied. Things can get worse, but they can also get so much better.

This man has been showing us who he is forever. All you have to do is believe him.

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