Tell me, how am I supposed to get out of bed in the morning knowing that in the eyes of my country’s government, I don’t even belong to myself? If my body is not my own, then neither is my life. The sole purpose of my existence has been predetermined to be an incubator for babies that I do not want, that may belong to men who never had my permission to put them there in the first place.

What you are telling me is that his few moments of pleasure are worthy of my entire lifetime of trauma. My efforts of taking what little control I may have of the healing process and aftermath of the situation, deemed to be more of a heinous crime than his initial violation of my existence — a slap on his wrist for the knife to my throat. A season of his discomfort behind bars, not even guaranteed, for a lifetime of me potentially having to wake up and see my rapist’s face on the person who calls me “Mommy,” when I wasn’t even ready for someone who resembled a man I actually loved to call me “Mommy.”

Imagine living in a country where a man’s orgasm is more valuable than your own life.

More valuable than your own physical, mental, or emotional health. More valuable than your own hopes and dreams. More valuable than your accomplishments or the generations of women who struggled, fought, and died before you so you could make your own choice on who you wanted to be and what you wanted to do with your body.

It doesn’t matter if it hasn’t happened in your state. The fact that it is happening in your country at all is an impending death sentence of your own bodily autonomy. These patriarchal ideologies are a fucking disease spreading like wildfire through our country’s blood stream. I personally don’t know how long I can live in this sickness.

I refuse to make a home of decay.