Personal History--Why Limbaugh has just got on my last nerve.
I'm 57. This means I was just growing up when things like birth control pills were becoming available. But I had two problems. One, I began having periods at the age of nine--no one knows why and at the time it was less common than it, sadly, is now. Not only did I have no background for dealing with it but I had dysmennorhia (maybe misspelled), i.e. periods so heavy and so painful that I missed school a couple of days a month and spent them curled up in a ball, throwing up, in pain so bad that I often had to see a doctor. The doctor was little help, of course. Teachers wanted to know why I was absent so often, and I was horrified at the idea of telling them. I remember a school principle once actually questioning whether the story I sobbed out after he made me tell him was true.
Now add to this the fact that I grew up in a shipbuilding town that was, in essence, one giant construction site. My family (who for many reasons I won't go into was no help) owned a restaurant that catered to the workers, so I was subjected to a daily barrage of "commentary" from the kinds of people who make up Rush Limbaugh's audience. I thought of them as a pack of dogs and myself as the prey, and it was all I could do to get from school to the safety of home as they drove by, screaming the kinds of things that Limbaugh makes a fortune saying. I spent many days in hiding, afraid to go out in my own yard or to walk down the street alone. Their assumption seemed to be that, because I was female and alone I was fair game. This went on from age twelve or so until I left home at seventeen, married to someone I shouldn't have married, but free at last to be an "adult"...and to go on the pill.
My life changed at that moment. I no longer had to live with daily abuse and I no longer had to suffer crippling pain and severe bleeding. I was able to actually think about what I might want to do with my life on my own terms in so many ways, when to reproduce, how to stay healthy, how to work without being out so frequently that my job was in danger, and when to say "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" when some mangy pack of dogs tried to reinforce its own sense of cohesion by using me as a scapegoat for their own insecurity and rage.
And Limbaugh, enough is enough. We women and girls--yes, girls--are not yours to rule, to torture, or to scapegoat. We refuse to suffer at your hands. Thanks to reproductive medicine and a somewhat more enlightened world, we are our own. So on behalf of my younger self and the selves of every young girl who needs the support of us older, wiser survivors, you can take your little pack of hounds and you can all go straight to hell.
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Beautiful, Eloquent, Intelligent, Articulate, Cultured, Empathetic, Principled---
----->YOU<------
Everyone, everywhere should read this!
Thanks for sharing your story----you are *not* alone!!!!!!
And frankly this whole debacle has some healing vibes for folks like me! (And I suspect everyone ith any heart at all is "folks like me"
R&
