Living in post-Roe America Before You Can Vote

A Guest Perspective from a South Carolina High Schooler

Since many of our first thoughts were for young people growing up with less rights since the overturning of Roe, I invited a high school junior to offer her take on what it’s like to live in a post-Roe America. She wrote this essay, about the loss of freedoms and choices:

I am only 16. I had the first kiss that I truly recognize not even a year ago.  I am going into my junior year of high school. I don’t even have my driver’s license yet. In almost every aspect of my life, sexual, emotional, and academic being the most prominent, I have watched my choices stolen from my very fingertips.

The first one, whisked away far too soon, sits roughly on my palms.  When I was 14, I was sexually assaulted. I was no woman. I wasn't too trusting or naive. I wasn’t silly or damaged. I wasn’t to blame. A decision was made for me that day, and now a decision is being made for me again. After the overturning of Roe V. Wade, my first thought was of her. I thought of her having to grieve who she was. I saw her shaking on the couch while telling her mother. I watched her cry while stepping in the shower, because her own body was too much to bear.

Though I have packed away many of my memories surrounding the actual assault, I can clearly recount the days after. I like to think it's my own way of telling me that I could handle it. That I can handle it when I unpack the other memories too. I now ask myself what would have happened if he hadn't stopped. I imagine if it happened now instead, and how limited my options would be. I feel the deep, digging, pain of fear for those other young women, those just starting to grow up. I have such a future ahead of me, we have such a future ahead of us all. To tell a woman she must carry extra weight, to tell her she must endure and let go of those nasty, unhelpful dreams, is unimaginable. How can they look into the eyes of a child, into my eyes, and tell me that I do not matter, that what I want does not matter.

To grow up is beautiful, but to be pulled up from the head, forced into the light, is cruel. Though we cannot place blame fully onto unsuspecting young men, I will gladly put a little weight atop their backs.  I’ve learned that they are impressively emotionally unaware, couldn't communicate the way they feel even if the world was ending, and lightly force onto you the “luxury” of growing up. Even as a young girl I was uncomfortable with my emotions. I remember sitting in an Ingles parking lot, around 8 in the evening, and sobbing. It was my Dad’s weekend with me (my parents are happily divorced) and I was refusing to leave my Mom’s car. We sat there for an hour, me crying, him trying to coax me out of my refusal. I ended up going home with my Mom. On the ride home, I wouldn’t tell my Mom why, I couldn't even tell myself. I didn’t want to recognize my anxiety in leaving her, or the anger I had at them for not working out, but mostly it was the shame that sank into me the moment my Dad started to cry. Over the next few days I remember the feelings growing, beginning to push against my eyes, begging me to cry, to just acknowledge their existence. It became a habit, ignoring everything, plucking happiness from the stem and hopefully grasping it to my chest.

Being uncomfortable with your emotions and being emotional are two absolutely lovely traits to have. You get to feel every feeling at full brightness and are able to continue refusing they’re there. It's like staring down headlights, knowing full well you're about to get dramatically run over. And I got run over. Multiple times.  I won’t talk about the boys, mostly because they don't matter, but I do want to say a genuine thank you to them. They forced me to sit down and have a full course meal with my feelings. Some of it was anger, which has always been a bit of a scary feeling for me, and a good amount was total and all-consuming despair.

It has taken me two years of wrestling with past habits and automatic reflexes, but here is what I have learned. I am allowed to be emotional. I am allowed to cry when Beth dies in Little Women. It's not shameful for me to get angry instead of staying patient. And it's not unacceptable or weak of me to be sad when a boy doesn't feel the same.  There are moments where we must all pick ourselves up by the metaphorical scruffs of our necks and give a good shake, but we must also choose for the softer moments to shine through. Whether that be when we don’t get offered a job, a relationship, romantic or platonic (because it's important to recognize they both are equally challenging), or a day was just unexplainably difficult. We must make the choices for ourselves, give ourselves the kindness to heal. To be strong is not to be unfeeling. To be strong is to watch the ebb and flow of those feelings, smell the sea salt tears waft up from their waves, and still choose to swim to the other side.

I have bared much of my soul to you, so why not swim a bit deeper. I am sure you are able to remember a time when you have been ignored, disrespected, treated as a choice rather than a privilege. Pluck the feeling from your memory and hold it close. Now that every woman reading this has done so, let's all take a nice little imaginary look around. Acknowledge that, no matter our differences, there is always something we are able to connect with.

I don’t know how to fix this. I cannot tell you exactly how to keep moving. The only advice I can give you is the advice my younger self provides each day. We must keep going, we must get up and brush our teeth. We must endure, because if we do not make this choice, little women will lose their intoxicating freedom.

I recognize that I am young. That I have a lifetime to live, and I am nowhere near grown up. But I sincerely hope that it does not discourage you. I hope you have learned something today as I have while writing this. I will leave you with a few simple words. Show up for yourself, choose with bravado and tell all those who take a decision that is rightfully yours to fuck off, because being angry is an asset, never a disadvantage.