Kevin and I earned a $1,000 prepaid card when we signed the lease, but it’s only good for online purchases. This is because it’s not an actual card to swipe, just numbers. When we walked out of the leasing office from claiming it, Kevin announced to me that he was giving it to me as a “thank you”. Kevin is really happy to have moved here and credits me with having the idea. He told me that I have “bursts of genius”.
I used the card to pay my cell phone bill, then I paid off the rest of my car insurance policy. I added it to my Uber Eats wallet and have been getting food delivery with it a couple times. I don’t have any other bills except for the student loans. But I can’t use this for those- those payments need a checking account and routing number. So I started buying things on Amazon.
Amazon has grocery delivery! It sucks though. I bought 8 things, and they came in four separate deliveries. Eventually, everything comes! I got some books and accessories. I got a microphone because I want to start recording myself talking.
This morning I was browsing for more books and found this- it’s a book written by a Palestinian about October, 2023. I love the title so much.
“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”.
That’s a great title. It’s based on a tweet he made in 2023. That’s in the screenshot below.
I have not been following that war lately, because I was distracted by the Lindsay Clancy trial. The media hype of the Lindsay Clancy trial is dying down now, but it was really triggering for me when it was everywhere.
My mom claims that she had postpartum depression for 15 years. This would make sense if she kept having children for 15 years, but I was an only child. My mom was very physically abusive in my early childhood and verbally and emotionally abusive to this day. She always blamed postpartum, and subsequently me. I was her scapegoat for everything, and when I see women murdering their kids and blame postpartum, I actually feel grateful to be alive. I caught my mom saying once that she threw me in my crib when I was 20 months old, and I started “jerking around.” I asked her if I was having a seizure. She replied, “No you didn’t have a seizure, you were just jerking around and being dramatic!”
I tried to ask her later on about this event, because obviously I have no memory of it, but she now denies it and tells me I’m making up the story of her talking about it that one time. So it’s no use giving it any credence.
It’s even more triggering to hear millions of women saying, “I am Lindsay Clancy” and “I stand with Lindsay Clancy.” I can one thousand percent say that I do not stand with her, nor am I her. I had one child, and I suffered depression during my pregnancy. Once Anna was born, that depression went away completely, and I was elated for about 9-10 months. Then when she was about ten months old old, I was depressed for another reason. I think that’s when we started having marital problems? I’m not sure why I was depressed, but it wasn’t because of my daughter. But a doctor still diagnosed me with postpartum depression because “it’s been less than twelve months, and postpartum depression can onset up to a year after giving birth.” I wasn’t having it at all. To me that was BS and I didn’t want them blaming my innocent daughter.
So I'm not Lindsay. Technically, I’m her kids. The thing is that saying you aren’t Lindsay has awarded women with a label of having internalized misogyny. Internalized misogyny? I just don’t believe in murdering children. If that makes me a pick me or “not a girls girl” then so be it. Why would I want to be something else if it means “understanding what it’s like to want to kill your kids”? Who wants to understand that?
“Educate yourself about mental illness.”
“Educate yourself about postpartum depression and the difference between postpartum psychosis.”
How about No?
I loved the title of that book, because I would like to believe that someday in the future, preferably in my lifetime, people will look back on the Lindsay case and see how wrong it is for this large group of women to react that way. I hope they see that it sets women back. It’s not the people who are choosing to be stay at home moms, have large families, choose female dominated careers, grow long hair, marry men etc who set women back. These people who “are Lindsay Clancy” are. Because regardless of what you suffer from, it’s wrong to murder kids, and I cant believe I have to say that. We aren’t going to be taken seriously in the long run if we are excusing murder.
And I will never in a million years believe that “It’s not an excuse it’s a reason.”
All of the nonverbal communication around that disclaimer screams that yes, you want it to be an excuse. Excuse/reason/whatever. Seems like the same thing.
When children die, it’s a loss for everyone. Children have so much potential. It’s not that “they would have cured cancer.” The cure for cancer is already known- catch it early and remove it. Cancer is diverse, “the cure” isn’t a one time event, and when people say that, they are being smart asses. They aren’t talking about curing cancer, they’re saying that each child isn’t that special. But they are. They could have become anything. Maybe one of them would have made universal full body imaging more accessible to non-extremely-wealthy people. Not the “cure for cancer”, but an increase in catching things at stage 1. 🤷🏻♀️ Maybe Cora would have become a caregiver like me, and maybe she would have made your end of life experience enjoyable and with dignity and joy.
The constant trigger from that news story has affected me a lot the past couple months. I’m trying to move forward, but I’m realizing I need to advocate for children more. It rips me apart to see women standing by a child killer like those kids didn’t matter. I’m not sure if I need to become someone who doesn’t watch the news. The news is everywhere. I don’t know how to tune it out. Maybe I can teach myself to transform that energy into advocacy. And maybe- one day, everyone will have always been against this.
