Choice.

I am pro-choice.

Thankfully, I have never been placed in the position of having to choose to have an abortion myself. 

I have, however, seen first hand the decision making process required when I drove a close friend to a clinic thirty minutes away and sat in the car waiting for her, unwilling to bring my new baby inside. I didn't want anyone who had made that choice feel guilty.

Abortion is legal. It has been since Roe vs Wade in 1973, however, the history of abortion dates back to the 1800's in America. The first laws attempting to regulate abortions were passed in 1821. Think about that for a minute. Think about what life was like for women in the 1800's. Women couldn't vote. They were basically baby making machines, restricted to aspirations that could only include the home and family. 

It startles me to think of the new push to defund Planned Parenthood. The (mostly male) Republican candidates spit those words out of their mouths as though they were poison, something to be embarrassed about and cast away.

What they don't understand is that Planned Parenthood prevents abortions. Planned Parenthood performs breast checks that lead to mammograms that save lives/prevent breast cancer. They provide necessary STI checks to people who otherwise couldn't afford them. They perform pap smears and catch cervical cancer before it has a chance to become more insidious. 

And even if they didn't? Even if they did 100% abortions? 

Abortion is legal. You don't have to like it. You don't have to make that choice or even be nice to someone in your life that has made that choice (even though that does kind of make you an asshole). But to attempt to change the laws that make abortion safe and legal for anyone who has to make that choice so you can be more comfortable in your religion or personal ethical code? That is unconscionable. 

This world is built on personal choice. How to do your hair, what job you choose, who you marry, what religion you follow... all things that make you an individual, with autonomy.

Don't push your religion or choice on me. The right to choose is just that... a right.

And I'll be standing there, wearing and waving pink, making for damn sure you know how hard people have fought for centuries to allow that same choice.

Chelsea Dagger.

The last time I heard Chelsea Dagger, I was standing in a crowd of people at the Chicago Pride parade. The Stanley Cup sat proudly on the float, there was cheering and excitement.

I stood there, surrounded by cheering, and cried. My tears were tears of joy, of course, but they were also tears of grief.

Tonight is the first game of the regular season for the Blackhawks. I will celebrate. I will cheer. But I will, above all, miss my sweet puppy.

Chelsea was hit by a car just after the Hawks won the Cup. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't miss her with my very soul, that I don't wish she was still here, letting me hold her up and make her dance to the music.

Thankfully, my memory of seeing her tiny body crushed by the car, the noise of the impact and the feeling of screaming comes less and less frequently. But every day her absence is made clear.

Brambles.

My heart is brambles, barbed wire, landmines. There are days when everything is sunshine, days where I casually skip through the landmines with a grenade held gingerly between my front teeth, eyes closed, missing detonator after detonator.

Then there are days when I swing my feet to the floor and immediately hear the unmistakable click of landmine, prepping to explode. I hear the blast, I feel myself being ripped limb from limb and yet I am still expected to get up, put on a smile and put on a show. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.

The truth is, I'm never fine. Even in my most pristine, flexible, death-defying moments I am still perched on the edge of oblivion. The specter of anxiety and depression looms directly behind me, breathing smoke and brimstone down my neck.

But I fight on. I breathe through it, even on the days the smoke chokes my lungs. Sometimes I look in the mirror and don't recognize my own face, don't recognize the look in my eyes and the person staring back at me. On those days, I smile. I nod at her and move forward. She knows.