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. The thing is, 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 if 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 a lot 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 and saw my mother holding me by the wrist and hitting me with all her might - the way she said, stop touching 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,” my brain exploded, and everyone there 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. Or an apology from a narcissist. Or 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 from the wrong person. For me at seventeen, this idea burst through 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 fucking 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 heroin 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. And 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 really 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. And 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 conversation about something difficult with a person who has shown me that isn’t the kind of conversation they want to have. Or I spend time explaining why I feel the way I do, and support my feelings with evidence and facts and all kinds of links, 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. Like, it’s totally cool. 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 yeah, announcing them is kind of this key thing, so I did. And then underneath the event details (and some of you know this part because I wrote about it last week, too), I included all kinds of reasons about why I feel the way I do, with links and evidence, and well, you know, those pesky facts I like.

And one of the things that happened is 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! And allow me to say 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. And that, to me, seems like a very important thing 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 to leave their states to get lifesaving care. 

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.

And this is why women in so many of the 22 states with restrictive abortion bans are being told they have to come back to the ER when there is no doubt that their lives are at stake. No doubt by anyone’s standards. Because the laws are written poorly, and how is a doctor to know what qualifies as “her life is at stake” if that is not defined? Idaho 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 her life to be at stake. And doctors in some of these states can lose their medical licenses and/or go to jail if they act to save her life, and are later brought up on charges. Doctors are moving out of those states, too, because who wants to go to school for eight years, only to worry about being arrested for doing the thing you’re supposed to do? And infant mortality rates in these states are rising, too. 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 on these bans. Roe v Wade - law of the land since 1973 and supported by 62% of Americans across party lines- was overturned thanks to TFG, 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?  https://fiscalnote.com/blog/demographics-state-leadership). 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. And 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 the 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.

I can’t even keep up with all the things that are wrong. Yesterday TFG 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. But if your response as a woman seeing a man debase other women is to defend him? My sister, you are in trouble. And if you think men like that care about you, your rights, your dreams, your best interests? You’re going to the hardware store for apples.

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” because it turns out 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. It never is. Maya Angelou on the topic: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

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

If you’d like to meet me in real time to talk about going to the hardware store for apples, I’ll be here at 11:15am PST 8/30/24, or you can wait for the Come As You Are podcast version. As ever, I’m so happy you’re here. Thank you for spending some time with me.