Sturgeon Moon

 

Here I am on the night of the new moon, when darkness reigns and the starlight is all that lights the evening, posting a picture of the August Sturgeon Moon. I was trying to make it look like it was sitting atop the trees, but I didn't quite succeed in that. Close, I guess.

My mood matches the coming deep quiet of the long dark sigh that new moons bring. I have things I want to write, things I want to say, opinions I want to express, stories I wish to tell - and I keep my mouth shut. I do not respond to the things that disturb me on social media, I do not call people I want to talk to, I say nothing to upset the air, I try not to breathe, even, so that my breath will not disturb the path of some butterfly. It is as if I am full of fury and frustration, and yet I remain as silent as a thimble pushing a needle into a garment. Hush, my mind says. Speak not.

But here is my place to speak. This is my blog, the place I do, on occasion, allow myself voice. Sometimes it is a little voice . . . most times it is a little voice. Occasionally I will let loose with a very loud Fuck You, because that sums up all of the frustration and pain, in an odd sort of way. Just fuck you, fuck myself. Fuck it. That's such a great word, fuck. It sums up everything in one syllable.

The list of topics is long. I am angry that the abortion issue remains an issue. It has been an issue my entire life - literally since before I was born. When I was born, abortions were not legal. My mother told me (frequently) that she tried to abort me but backed out at the last minute. I don't know if this is true or simply words she said to hurt me, because she was more than capable of that. My mother should not have been a mother. Some women should not be mothers and mine was one of them. Maternal love is a myth we foist upon women simply to make them feel guilty when they don't want their children. It doesn't exist in every female. Maybe it doesn't exist at all.

When I was in high school, abortion also was an issue (late 1970s early 1980s). I remember feeling that I was a walking poster child for why abortion should be legal. I felt unwanted, always, and mostly unloved. I suffered terribly from depression that went overlooked and unchecked. I was moody and a troublemaker who made straight As. No one thought to address my mental health except for me and a few of my teachers, who sent me to see the school psychologist, which helped until my parents found out and put a stop to that. 

That is not say that there weren't good times or that my parents didn't love me - I have come to terms with the fact that they did the best they could with the people that they were. They were barely adults themselves, after all. My mother was 18 when I was born. She was only 38 years old when I married. Some women are just starting families then. It would never have occurred to my father that there were better ways of raising children, or that his offspring might have been better off not being around their mother. He was busy being a businessman, making his money, and people didn't think that way then.

This all came to mind this morning while I was reading the comments on the abortion issue and the new vigilante laws in place in Texas that allow for bounties on the parties who assist a woman in obtaining an abortion. One woman noted that her mother had wanted to abort her, and she wished she had been successful. Many other women expressed astonishment: do you mean you wish you'd never been born? And I knew that yes, that was exactly what she meant. She wished she'd never been born. The gods know I have wished it myself often enough.

Sometimes I take that idea out and examine it, that ol' It's a Wonderful Life thing. Haven't I made positive impacts somewhere? Doesn't someone have a better life because I have existed? Generally speaking, no. I cost my husband his chance to be a father - his choice, I know, he could have divorced me and remarried but he loves me - and while I can think of good impacts some of my articles made - thousands of dollars raised for Angel Trees, funds pouring in for someone with some disease, because I was really good at writing those heartfelt articles that didn't actually sound like pleas for money but were - I think too that had I not written those stories, someone else would have. I helped save a few historical landmarks. I helped keep the local cement plant from burning tires back in the early 1990s. Everything I have done, someone else could have or would have done, maybe even better than I did. In the grand scheme of things, my existence is about as significant as that of an ant with a broken leg.

Another topic that frustrates me is the ongoing battle of masks and vaccines. As someone who has spent her entire life avoiding things to try to stay healthy, this makes me want to grab people who are unmasked in the stores and shake the life out of them. Long ago, it was cigarette smoke. I'm allergic to cigarette smoke. My grandfather smoked and I was always sick after visiting my grandparents. I'm also allergic to milk. Foods I can avoid, but I can't avoid the thin curl of smoke from the glowing end of a Marlboro. 

Nor can I avoid the toxic wastes to my west that spewing out of the cement plant, which is my county's number one polluter, or the toxic wastes to my east that tumble from a truck manufacturing plant, the second largest polluter. I am caught in between them, living on a farm where chemicals are used constantly, Round Up© and other herbicides that settle in the body and transform DNA and does who knows what else to a person's internal chemicals.

So I spent my entire life avoiding cigarette smoke, which meant I didn't go to most restaurants, because they allowed smoking (or had a smoking area, which was always a joke - those vents to nowhere did nothing), and I sat in my car waiting for people to stop smoking in front of doors. I held my breath in mad dashes to my car if I had to wade through a cloud of cigarette smoke because I would be late returning to work if I didn't. I took (and still take) lots of showers to wash off the smoke smell. I didn't wear a mask because no one ever suggested it and I never thought of it. It's not our culture. I would have worn an astronaut suit if it would have kept me from being sick four months out of every year. I was sick so often I couldn't hold a job. I used to miss 35 days of school every year. Who does that and still makes As? Me.

Finally, back in the early 2000s Virginia wised up and implemented no smoking laws in restaurants. I could eat out without having a sinus infection afterwards! It was literally a breath of fresh air. A single law changed my life. It didn't help with other things - the smells of perfume that give me migraines, the colognes that send me into sneezing fits, the off-gassing of various carpets that ultimately make me ill. But it helped that I could go somewhere to eat without it being an anxiety-ridden event.

And now we're back to not being able to go places because people are assholes. They insist upon their right to make other people sick. These are stupid people, and if you're one of them and you're still reading this blog, I'm sorry, but I think you're an idiot if you haven't received the vaccine and/or you won't wear a mask. (You may have a medical reason not to take the vaccine, but anyone can wear a mask, I have asthma and I wear a mask, I know people on oxygen tanks who wear masks, so there really is no excuse, it doesn't cut your airflow or do anything dangerous like the dummies try to say on youtube or FAUX or wherever this shit fucking comes from. You just don't like it, is all. Grow up.)

These very same people think it's horrific that we left 100 Americans in Afghanistan, but they don't care that 650,000 Americans have died of Covid or that they might kill their own grandma if they won't wear a surgical mask. What kind of lopsided logic is that? Don't these people realize how hypocritical they sound? Why is one ok and not the other?

So yes, I am pro-choice. I would not have had an abortion myself unless the child was going to kill me and not live. If I were to die but the child were to live, that would have been a decent trade-off, I guess. But in any event, it's a woman's choice and not something the government should have any say in. It's certainly none of my business what you or you or you or anyone else does. I try hard to mind my own business, thank you.

I am pro-vaccine and pro-mask. I'm also pro stay-the-fuck-out-of-other-nations' business, cut the army in half, and spend the dollars on the children that have been forced to be born who could use a hand up instead of another kick in the ass.

This is what life is like on the dark side of the moon. I'm pretty sure no one wants to join me here. That's why I worship it when it is full and bright.