I promise, I am listening
She says:
“You know you’re pretty pretty, right?”

I try not to let her two cents fall to the floor.

It frustrates her
that I can’t seem to take the compliments she hands to me. They
slip through my fingers
with a nervous laugh. When I bend to pick them up
I find them too heavy to carry.  She takes them from the floor,
as if they weigh a cloud and a breeze,
and wraps them around me
like a favorite sweater.

She says:
​“You deserve sweet kisses and long hugs. Everyone does.”

I tell her about how bad I am at hugging. That I never know
where to place my arms and always squeeze too tightly.

What if I hold on for too long?
​
She tells me:
“There is no such thing.”

I’m working on believing her.

She says:
“Don’t waste your time kissing boys with no lips. 
Don’t waste your loving on people who won’t say it back.”

Says:
“I hope that one day the compliments will be easier to carry and, on that day,
you wear them like a crown. 
If you want,
I’ll help you hold them until you’re ready.”

-L.V. Morton

In all the stress and hustle of the last few weeks of life, I nearly forgot that one of my favorite times of the year is upon us: National Poetry Month. I usually try to challenge myself to write at least one poem every day during this season but, due to the loops that my life has been tossed through recently, I choose to, instead, focus on a project with less deadlines but more heart. 

Over the past few months, I've been writing poems "after" people. Some read more like letters to friends and others read like confessions. I like to believe that our stories of relationships can be relatable and personal at the same time. To save postage during this time, here is the first of a series of poems/open letters I've written and will write about the people in my life and the ones who have left me along the way. Written about a year ago, here is the first selection from i hope you never realize this one is about you.

​Life has eaten its way between us.
This message has been overdue
since the beginning of time.

I’m jealous of the space between you and me
because it is that much closer to you
than I’ll ever be.

I ask for your forgiveness
and your remembrance,
though I fear I don’t deserve either.

I know the dull ache 
of a sprained memory
and the sharp pain of being forgotten.

So, if this comes as a surprise to you,
my friend,
I hope it is a happy one.

-L.V. Morton

When I graduated from college, I weighed 175 lbs (BMI 29.1; overweight). Four months earlier, at the start of the semester I weighed 190 lbs (BMI 31.6; obese).  I can confidently say that I was healthier and happier at 190 lbs, working for minimum wage at Barnes & Noble than I was at 175 lbs, a college graduate with 2 degrees and multiple accolades.
 
 There is a kind of guilt that I carry about my collegiate journey in that, while I was starving myself to the point of concerning (if not drastic) weight fluctuation, I constantly preached body positivity and standards of confidence that I couldn’t live up to myself. I talked academically, personally, and online about acceptance and the power of loving yourself. Even when I dropped over 20 lbs in the span of a few months and gained it back again even sooner, I was considered to be overweight at every point throughout that cycle. Looking back, I think being a plus sized person made the horrible treatment of my body seem less drastic to me.

For most of my life, I have been so afraid of the prospect of being big, that I turned food into something that I had to earn. From the age of ten, my pediatricians encouraged me to count my calories and use apps to track my exercise that did little more than add to my shame. I told myself that I was not like my friends with skinnier and more desirable bodies and had less of a right to the same nutrition. What a deadly combination: food as currency for achievements, weight-loss as a consequence of being unproductive, and praise when the pounds start to fall off of you. Eventually, through some perversion of the transitive property, I was being applauded for my failure to feed myself and my failure to meet my goals.

I got by in school, completing my two theses, getting departmental honors, even winning a writing prize. It breaks my heart that these achievements are marred by the ghosts of hunger headaches and the faint taste of Ritz crackers and mango Naked smoothies (my only meals most weekends). I find it hard to be proud of these accomplishments because of the twisted logic I used to reach them. Often, there are thoughts of the other, less essential, things I never did because I got too used to being hungry. I never applied to graduate school. I never submitted to any of the publications I planned to. I never messaged her back.
​

After graduation, I moved to Los Angeles for a summer internship. It was strange, at first, because no one was expecting me to be constantly working or producing something. I worked twenty-five hours a week and the rest of that time was mine. There were no page quotas to meet before dinner. There was no endless list of neglected projects and obligations. I was also very financially insecure. I payed $700/month to share a room with two other people and a bathroom with 5 others. I ate what I could afford and that was mostly rice, potatoes, and pasta. Inevitably, there was weight gain.

 The clothes I brought with me to Los Angeles started to get tighter. In July, I caught a bad cold and went to the doctor for a check-up. My chart said I weighed 201lbs. I stared at that number for a long time.
 
It was something to be feared, wasn't it? 200+ lbs. The doctor said nothing about it; he just told me to drink fluids and get rest. Those 26 lbs caught me off guard because I didn't notice them, even though it only took two months for them to join the party. 

I learned two very important things during those summer months. The first was that I love food. I love cooking and treating myself to one good meal every two weeks that direct deposit hits. I love feeding people and having them enjoy my cooking. I love photographing food and watching cooking videos. I would die for Claire from the Bon Appetit test kitchen.  The second thing I learned during that time was that I loved making/doing things and that this love still existed when I wasn’t holding food over my own head. For the first time in what felt like (and probably was) months, I could bring myself to write poetry and edit photos regardless of how much food was in my stomach.
 
I won’t lie and say that I quit cold turkey and stopped using food as a motivation to get things done. I’m still actively working on that (and will be for a very long time).  I do know this: despite how the saying goes, you are not what you eat or when you eat or how often. If you eat nothing, you do not become nothingness or even less than you were before. All you become is hungry. An empty stomach is not a clean slate, no matter how flat the belly that covers it. At 201lbs, most people would say that I am too much, but the joke is on them.
 
I have no plans to stop growing anytime soon.

-L.V. Morton

How's that for a clickbait title, huh?
Anyway, it's something that needs to be said. While the topic has been at the forefront of news and media for years, many Americans are unaware of frequent attacks by officials on organizations like Planned Parenthood that provide free services to people needing care related to children and birth. This includes methods of pregnancy prevention like offering condoms and free or reduced price birth control options.
In a society where the term "abortion" gets people fired up in opposition or support of the practice, it would seem like easy access to birth control and information about safe sex, which would decrease the amount of women who must seek an abortion, would be important to those on every side of the argument. This has not been the case.  In a 2017 article, the Baltimore Sun referred to this resistance as "The war on birth control." Attempts to rein in the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act were present from the very start of  the Trump administration. The resulting changes gave many companies the ability to to deny its employees birth control coverage and made funding less available for long-term pregnancy prevention such as IUDs that have gained popularity among low-income citizens as methods that require less maintenance and attention. 
​

But, Lorina, it's 2018 outside; I thought this conversation was over.

Why yes, ominous voice of the internet, it has been a minute since actions were taken but the effects are still being felt today. Planned Parenthood is still trying to fight back with petitions, campaigns, and fundraising to keep facilities running and providing services that were affected by regulation changes (Make sure to check out their work if it interests you to find out how you can help). It was in the comments for advertisements and posts about these efforts that I made an interesting discovery. It is no secret that a variety of people use birth control for a variety of reasons. Birth control helps to prevent pregnancy, reduce the number of (or even stop entirely) menstrual periods, and even provide pain relief to those who deal with chronic conditions like endometriosis. However, it terrifies me how many people are willing to support birth control for those seeking pain relief but not for those seeking pregnancy prevention.

It is important to acknowledge that birth control is used for many things other than pregnancy prevention. It is also important to acknowledge that it shouldn't matter what a person uses birth control for. We cannot support one use more than we do another. The bottom line is that birth control and contraceptives make life a lot easier for people. It takes away a lot of stress from those who are sexually active. It makes having a career and productive life easier by limiting periods. It relieves pain for those who have no other economical way of dealing with it. Birth control is medication and everyone who could benefit from its uses should have the opportunity to obtain it. It should not only be the pain of people that drives you to action, it must also be the want for others to live as comfortable, stress-free, and productive citizens. 
​So, I don't care what you use birth control for; I will support any person and their right to seek out life-altering medication because that's what decent people do.

I love leaving people with resources so here are a few:

• If you have been greatly affected by a lack of access to birth control and have some knowledge about what oral medications work best for you, please visit PRJKT RUBY,  a company that aims to revolutionize affordable birth control by providing a month's worth of different generic brand oral pills for as low as $20 a month. There is no insurance needed and all users must complete a free online consultation before completing their order. Medication is delivered directly to your door, making it easier for those without access to reliable transportation.
• For those with friends or loved ones who have less access to information about birth control due to a language barrier, MedlinePlus (VIA the US National Library of Medicine) offers information in a variety of languages including Spanish, Russian, Farsi, and Tagalog.

​
Feel free to include other links or information you have on the subject of affordable birth control below. Catch ya later!
​