Yours to love

Chapter 30: Lillian

Author's note: To my fellow ladies, I want to remind you how strong you are. 

This chapter doesn't have much to do with what is going on in the USA, with the repeal of Roe v. Wade, with the right to abort being taken away from women, and with the women who will be affected by this decision of the Supreme Court, but it has to do with women, and how their rights and bodies are too often neglected, disrespected, suppressed. But this chapter also has to do with how women come back stronger every time. 

Too often, men, white men mostly, take advantage of the strength and power they have over women, because, according to them, they are superior, and we are weaker. And we don't deserve the same rights as them, we don't deserve to make decisions about our own bodies, our own lives. 

But we aren't weaker because we are women. In this world, women are weak because those who control our society, those who make the decisions for us, are mostly men, patriarchal men who do not give a shit about women's opinion, and well-being. But by disrespecting us, by threatening our lives, by taking away those rights we rightfully earned, they only make us stronger, because when one of us is discriminated, judged, endangered, we rise together. And we will, over and over again, until those men, who do not deserve to decide for us, realize that abortion isn't a crime, it doesn't make us criminals, just as, according to those men, carrying a gun doesn't increase the risk of shootings and killings. 

So, when they say we aren't pro-life by being pro-choice, I say that's bullshit. Being pro-choice, giving the right to women to decide for themselves what they do with their bodies, if they have children, when they have children,  it makes me pro-life.

I am pro-life. Women's lives. 

This chapter is dedicated to every woman that will put their lives in danger by doing an unsafe abortion. This chapter is for the thirteen-year-old girl who will get her innocence taken and who will bear her rapist child. This chapter is for the high school student whose condom, sadly, broke, and now have to decide between being a teenage mom or just a teenager. This chapter is for the woman who finds out that the egg didn't make it out the fallopian tube and risks dying from internal bleeding if she doesn't abort. 

This chapter is for women, my strong fellow ladies, that deserve the world, but are given so little when it comes to rights, and freedom. I thought we were beyond that, but we just went a hundred years back. And I am sorry. 

***

When Blake knocks on the front door, I run downstairs.

My aunts got here earlier than expected and I had to lock myself in my room so they would cut me some slack. They got here and were all over me, telling me that they can't wait to see Blake, asking me if he is a good boyfriend, if he's as handsome as he was a few years ago, demanding to know every little detail of my love life. I love my aunts, they're fun to be around, but they are nosy, they have no filter.

As I am hoping for a second of peace and quiet to welcome my boyfriend, even though I saw him half an hour ago, we are swamped by fifty-year-old women the moment I open the door.

"Blake!" my three aunts exclaim in sync as they basically jump on him to give him a hug and a kiss on each cheek, leaving six lipstick marks on his face.

God, this is going to be a long night.

They guide him inside, interrogating him just like they did with me earlier. Mom calls her sisters to the kitchen and they leave us alone.

"What a warm welcome," Blake laughs, and I grab his hand, leading him upstairs.

He sits on my bed and I head to the bathroom to go get some wipes. He looks at me, questions in his eyes, but when I begin wiping the red lipstick off his face, his mouth forms an "o" in realization.