Today I outted myself as an abortioneer to one of my friends. I’ve given hints that I do abortion work; I told her I worked at a clinic “like Planned Parenthood” and once let it slip that there were creepy protesters that annoyed me. (Oh, and there’s that time I asked her to discreetly find out that if some of the guests at a recent dinner party were super conservative and conservative enough to protest.) We managed to have lunch together this afternoon and I mentioned something about stress at work…blahblahblah. She asked why I didn’t talk about it and I got squirmy, told her I was uncomfortable, that I wasn’t sure if she knew “what I did,” and didn’t want to upset her. She started to laugh and said, “Um, I’m not a rocket scientist, but I’m no dummy either. I pretty much put the pieces together that you work at an abortion clinic.” Fairly painless other than the fact I felt a bit idiotic.
I adore this friend. Our kids play together. Maybe that’s why I was worried about how she’d react. I supposed I feared I’d lose a friend: I mean, I know abortioneers who’ve been dumped by friends for their work at the clinic. It could’ve happened to me, too. Thankfully, it didn’t…
Lesson learned, though. Maybe I shouldn’t always be so slow to talk about myself. To open up. To share about my real life. It only adds to the isolation that we sometimes can feel from being an abortioneer.
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