The Injustice

Having enough kids to form a soccer team is one of my main aspirations in life so I felt conflicted not embracing the opportunity, however surprising and untimely it was. But after pragmatism set in, I was 100% behind my decision – for the most part. My reason was and remains simple: I am not ready. I am not mature or selfless enough to be the mother I want to be. And I have neither the mental nor emotional nor economic resources to raise a child on my own.

Even though I believe that it is our responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves, I have always found it odd that we assume a fetus would invariably choose its own life over the life and welfare of its mother and family. Why do we make that assumption? Is such a choice moral? Is it not incumbent on the parent to make the decision for the fetus?

On the other hand, when a soul decides to incarnate, doesn’t it select its parents – or parent – and life circumstances? And when I cross that line and say that I have the right to choose if the human being living in my womb should die, at which point does the value of life begin? When the fetus has fingernails? Right after a child is born? When they are three years old? When they bring home their first A for calculus? I don’t know. And I’ll never know. Life is often about choosing the least of all evils, is it not?

The moment I amped my rationalizations up to a self-serving degree, the paralyzing emotions I’d felt during the initial aftermath began to dissipate. One by one, they left – fear, guilt, denial, anguish – as if to go out for some beer and chicken wings and then never come back. Yet, abortion continues to be a confusing and hellish experience, just not for the reasons I’d foreseen.

What I’m realizing is that society now judges me as a woman who has fallen from grace. It’s as if there’s an unspoken law that women could have the freedom and right to choose their own future, but only on the condition that they are duly ashamed. And what strikes me as particularly unjust is that while I’m obliged to shroud my abortion in private remorse, the man involved has not been made – and will never be made – to feel marked for shame. It irks me that only one party is saddled with the weight of this perverse social contract, wherein abortion is considered a women’s problem, for which women must pay the price.

… Yes. And on Thursdays I sit in the backyard and burn my bras.

Anyway, I’ve always prided myself as someone fairly open about my own person, quirks, defects, blunders and all, of which my abortion is – as I’ve come to understand in the last couple of months – not included. Suddenly I found myself with a new identity, that of a person with something to hide. And I hate it.

The first rule of abortion (for women) is that you don’t talk about your abortion outside of your therapist’s office. And as far as I can tell, this rule applies even to women who are otherwise proud, confident, and pro-choice. They are happy and eager to shout about women’s right to have an abortion — just not their own. And I empathize with them completely.

But storytelling is vital, distinctly so and especially so, when we are told to keep quiet. There aren’t enough honest conversations about the painful and complex curveballs life sometimes throws at us, and it’s essential that we try to change this. Today I write anonymously because my story involves others who don’t necessarily want to be identified, but it's a step nonetheless in the right direction. One day we will all speak freely and put a face to each and every one of these precious stories.

The Pill Plan

My mum has always had a sort of hippie, au naturale approach to health and medicine so I never really had a particular doctor or even clicnic that I would visit regularly growing up. She’d stress the importance of listening to your own body and understanding what it was trying to say by way of green mucus, ulcers, and loose stool. She’d prescribe a warm cup of honey and lemon for a sore throat, a plate of chicken liver after a visit from Aunt Flo, a pot of ginger tea for a tummy upset, and always sleep, sleep, sleep, no matter your ailment.

So, being someone who doesn’t take Panadol or even vitamin capsules, contraceptive pills just wasn’t something I’d ever considered. Hell, there was even once I tried to twerk and then downward dog my way out of taking the morning-after pill until my cousin screamed at me, “are you fucking insane – how does dancing and yoga help in any way? ”

I’d been bleeding for longer than what was healthy, so my gynae prescribed me some contraceptive pills in a bid to curb my bleeding and chill my hormones out. Even though she definitely used more professional medical terms when explaining this to me, I still had some qualms about her decision. And also a lot of faith that my uterus would calm down and cooperate soon.

My options were to either bleed to death or risk nausea, weight gain, and some wicked hot pulsing acne on my chin. So I bled for another week and then had to be given a talking-to by my mum (oh, the irony!) before I eventually took my first pill.

Today I am happy to report that I’m 5 pills away from the end of my first course of Meliane. Apart from the migraines, which feel very much like someone driving an electric drill right through my skull, and my erratic mood swinging like a pendulum defying all laws of Physics, the last couple of weeks have gone by much better than I had anticipated.

I never really took the responsibility of birth control into my own hands because I’m too afraid to stick an IUD up there, the sympto-thermal method seems hella confusing, and as mentioned my impression of the pill up until recently had been ugh. It’s such a silly decision to let the onus fall on the dude, while I just lingered in this kind of in-between place that put me – a perfectly educated kale-eating urban dweller – in a very vulnerable position. As it turns out, pulling out happens to be not that much riskier than using a condom in terms of pregnancy. And is often the preferred method of many other perfectly educated kale-eating urban dwellers. But as it also turns out, guys can be total asshats.

So, really, have your own game plan, girls.

There are plenty of options out there and not every one of them will be equally well-suited to you and your body, so put in the time and effort to figure out what is best. Whichever you choose, it is going to come with some side effects, but the point is to choose something. Have a plan that is NOT Plan B. Prevention is better than cure! Or rather, prevention is better than abortion! Please take my word for it.

Birth control is essential to the liberation and empowerment of women because it allows sex to be almost entirely isolated from child-bearing and reproduction. But only almost. And any woman who is making sex with a man needs to be aware that she is implicitly embracing this risk. It’s really not rocket science and I’m not sure why I never thought of it this way before – probably because it lowers my libido – but even if you take the necessary precautions, there will always be a tiny, tiny, chance that partaking in this act now may mean making a choice between terminating and not terminating a pregnancy further down the road.

Scary, isn’t it?

The Older Folks

Azelia Banks dropped a lot of wild truth in her interview with Playboy magazine last year, which I felt deeply resonated with me. “I love older men. The things in an older man’s house are better – his furniture, even his knives and his pots. And they smell better. Young guys, they may skip a shower and shit like that.” Amen to that. Aside from their high-end kitchenware (be still my heart) and mastery of daily showers (and maybe a deep-seated desire to "live in sin" and piss my parents off), it’s hard to explain my fascination with older men.

I have nothing against guys my age, but my interactions with them over the years have led me to conclude that a lot of them, maturity-wise, are about 11 years old. Most of them still play with action figures when nobody’s looking and spend their time jacking off to images of Heidi Montag. Needless to say, falling in love with the average 23-year-old male is like falling in love with a really sophisticated mandrill – except less exhilarating. And more demeaning. And less fun. And more offensive. And less enlightening. And more repugnant. You get the idea.

Nobody really needs to be told about the allure and fun going out with a significantly older person entails, so I’m just going to jump right into the not-so-fun-stuff a.k.a. the realities that we sometimes blatantly ignore cuz GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN(DS). Amirite?

When I first started involving myself with older men, I was all “age ain’t nothin’ but a number.” But that’s actually not the case, and the fact that I believe this now but rolled my eyes back then proves my point exactly. Hindsight is 20/20.

Whenever I used to plot sticking my tongue into an older person’s mouth, I was inevitably tempted to rationalize the stretch of time between our births by citing the “magic seven” rule, where it’s stated that subtracting seven from my age and then doubling it would give me the socially-acceptable maximum age of anyone I wanted to date. So for the 23-year-old that I was, the upper age limit was 32 (i.e., [23-7] x 2). The other side of the rule defines the minimum age boundary: divide your age by two and then add seven.

But every so often, even after doing the math, I found myself hanging out with a 39-year-old on some weekends because, like pollution, true love knows no boundaries. Also, there’s something incredibly satisfying about responding to your feelings, flipping the bird at societal norms, and letting your inner freak flag fly. In such instances I tried to justify the situation thusly: “Well, my aunt and uncle (or whoever) are sixteen years apart and they’re doing swell, so LET’S GET THIS THANG GOIN’.”

Everyone knows a happy grown-up couple with a significant number of years between them, and even if you don’t, you can always Google George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin and let them be your inspiration. But here’s the catch: They are all adults, in which case, how old they are in relation to their partner matters much less. Time seems to behave in a more bizarre way when we’re younger because everything changes so quickly, and for a young person who hasn’t yet figured out his or her place in this world, every year is a pivotal one.

Anyway, here are some musings I’ve had after charging ahead heedlessly into some May-December romances, that I wish I’d bothered to think through a little more because older men can be complicado.

1.
Love and sex are still the absolute jam whatever your age is, but what I’ve found is that the hot mystery of figuring out how to do them is mostly gone for the older person who has been there and done that a million times over.

It’s nice to be around people who seem to have it all figured out, who are assured of themselves and their interests – a quality that usually increases the longer we hang out on planet Earth – because it’s like finding a cheat sheet to life. But what’s just as nice and actually much more fun is sharing the novelty of things – in bed and in life – with someone who is also just learning about them.

It’s cool to be turning to the person you’re boning for wisdom. But you can also learn stuff from your parents, grandparents, siblings, bosses, the internet, your dog, the bible, your best friend’s mum, and anyone and anywhere else, really.

2.
Having a significantly older partner can severely limit the activities you’re able to enjoy together. Chances are you won’t be able to hang out with each other’s friends without everyone feeling a little awkward, or kiss in public without attracting a handful of side-eyes and potentially the attention of authorities. Also, his head will probably roll if you tried to bring him home to meet your family and I’m quite sure he won’t be appreciative of tequila shots on a Wednesday night.

Basically, the only thing I did regularly with my significantly older partner was watch films in his apartment. And that one weekend we flew to a neighbouring city on impulse. Sounds really spontaneous and romantic, right? UH, NO. Not to be a wet blanket, but flying solo with an older guy who is unbeknown to most of your family and friends is how a lot of murder stories begin. Please be smarter than I was about this very basic tenet of common sense, because everyone loves you just the way you are: alive.

3.
The biggest question you should ask yourself about an older suitor is this: How long before his hairline recedes to the back of his head? Kidding. It is this: Why has he chosen to date me instead of someone his own age? Your natural response might be the one I gave myself, “BECAUSE WE ARE A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN AND I AM A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE AND I AM VERY MATURE!!!!” To be fair, this answer is not completely untrue but is probably not the main reason why a grown man might be sniffing around your doorstep.

Far more likely is the fact that a lot of older people seek out much younger booty because they themselves are insecure and feel intimidated by women their own age, who aren’t easily impressed by confetti and dry ice. Some may even be trying to nurse a midlife crisis by way of a naïve twenty-something. (I don’t know – it’s their life!)

Any adult knows that seducing a much younger person – even a smart, willing, self-aware younger person – carries with it a power imbalance that is ripe for exploitation and manipulation. You might feel like you and your older person are emotional equals, but when age and gender differences come into play, they can be leveraged to persuade you into stuff, no matter how self-possessed you are. Unconsciously, you might end up making choices that aren’t in your best interest just to re-establish the pretense that you’re totally mature and that y'alls two are peers.

This is all starting to come across as “A DIRTY OLD MAN STOLE MY YOUTHFUL INNOCENCE,” but that could not be further from the truth. I made my own decisions and actually enjoyed majority of the time I spent dating older dudes. At this point, I think it’s worth mentioning that I’ve been feeling a temporary distrust in humanity of late and a vague but omnipresent suspicion that everyone is out to hurt me, which I’m attributing to the hormone pills I’m currently taking on my gynae’s orders.

There are plenty of loving, mutually respectful relationships between people born decades apart. And not every one of these affairs is going to end up a daytime soapie about forbidden love, social taboo, and sexual corruption; sometimes it really is just about two people with many years between them who really like and respect each other. It’s totally workable, as long as you remember: Lolita is not a love story. OK? All right, now run along. Don't be afraid to try everything once. Or twice. Or however many times till you figure out what works and what does not work for you. As always, be safe and enjoy the high-end kitchenware, ya lil minxes.