Do I Have To Tell You?

I was so stupid when I found out I was pregnant. I had no idea. I was 14 years old.

That I didn’t know missing my period meant pregnancy. Do I need to be ashamed? Do I have to tell you how many pills I swallowed to hide my shame? Do I have to tell you how it felt to have tubes shoved up my nose as they pumped my stomach at 15 years old?

A Woman’s Choice

But in just a few seconds, the test showed positive. Yes, I was pregnant. I called my mother at once and told her everything. Fortunately, she already knew that my husband Jim and I had been having marital problems for a while and that I had looked elsewhere for sex, so she wasn’t at all surprised. Nor was she judgmental.

Twitter’s Echo Chamber

I began tweeting my dislike for the president and even made a few replies to his public tweets. One tweet, in particular, annoyed me. He took a meeting and wanted us to pat him on the back. One meeting? Obama probably had 2-5 meetings every day he was in the White House. Trump needed a pat on the back for one meeting. It was laughable at best. I got over a thousand people liking my rebuttal tweet to Trump. It felt good to be noticed, but then I felt a little narcissistic for being pleased with the response. I hadn’t written anything newsworthy, but I got a lot of pats on the back. I had to tell myself step back and look at the big picture.