Harley Rowe
Bio
Stories (6/0)
Ignorance is but a raging Bull
I tie my shoes and head out the door. As the wooden crease of it's side meets the house's frame and seals itself into place, I wait patiently. 1, 2, 3... The door wooshes open with the force of a woman much larger than my mother's small 5 foot 7 frame would suggest. She yells to me from the doorway; "Remember to tell them to call me to come pick you up when it's time for your shot!". I look up, nod, turn around and sigh in disdain. Here we go again. It's annual vaccination day at my high school - today my classmates will be receiving their HPV shots, ensuring that, unlike our parents generations, we'll have a shot at lowering the rates of this disease, which carries with it increased rates of ovarian cancer and cysts - while I, on the other hand, will be going home. It's become an annual tradition. My mother's ignorance grows, and I'm forced to go along with it due to my age, despite the development of my own critical thinking skills. For the past couple of years I've watched with frustration as my science teachers explained the benefits of our annual vaccination requirements at school only to have to go home to my mother's incessant - and unsubstantiated - anti-vaccination ramblings. My father used to say that ignorance is like a raging Bull, fighting it's way into our minds with force and stubbornness, hoping to keep up a facade of strength at all costs. My mother, he said, carried these characteristics with pride and though exciting at first, he soon got tired of arguing with someone who could never admit to being wrong, no matter the evidence, no matter the conversation. He left her and to this day, I have never been able to view her through a new lense. If ignorance is a Bull, my mother is a matador, constantly indulging in it's rage. So today is the day. The grand annual tradition in which I will be picked up from school early, without getting my vaccine, and have to walk down the hallway with my mother by my side, passing by the sea of prying eyes and the hushed whispers of disapproval. I'll keep my head down in embarrassment but it won't matter. My mother's head will be held high and I'll appear like an accessory to her ignorance, despite my opposing views. I'll wish I could protest against her and stay, knowing I'd never get away with it. And it'll fucking suck. My mom will get home and put on some conspiratory video by some right wing dilettante with non-existent critical thinking skills and a penchant for manipulation and I'll voice my disapproval only to be met with an onslaught of "facts" about the correlation between vaccines and infertility, autism, early death and more... I'll sigh and go to my room, defeated and exhausted by the prospect of trying to argue with someone who favours the logic of 4chan idiots to the scientific findings of infectious disease specialists. Maybe it was her upbringing that led her to be this way. A childhood filled with natural remedies and a healthy dose of medical distrust. Maybe it was all the information she indulged in in her online groups, unsure of who else to turn to when the people in her life rightfully opposed her dangerous views. Upbringing and confirmation bias aside, she remains set in her ways like a stone statue, blinded or unwilling to see the harm of her ignorance.
By Harley Rowe3 years ago in Fiction
A with an E
I'm really furious. I want so badly to be empathetic and understanding as she’s clearly in pain but if I'm being honest with myself I truly just feel burning rage. Where is her compassion? Where is her selflessness? I was worried about being ill after it and worried about throwing up all night and I still went. Where is her compassion for all those who die of this illness? For all her friends and family who want to be around her but might start to rethink this due to fear of being infected or infecting others in their lives - despite their own sacrifice and efforts - due to her selfishness. She’s been the most compassionate and understanding of how I feel and my disappointment at missing out on my first year of university along with everything that's come along with that and yet she won’t do the one fucking thing that would help everyone be able to return to their schools, workplaces and lives with some semblance of safety. I've been so fucking depressed and lonely. I've missed out on so many moments of my life I thought I'd have. No end of senior year, no graduation, no class trip, no first year of university, no dorms, no friends in Montreal, none of it. And still, I am incredibly blessed. These moments missed are extremely minor inconveniences when compared to the devastation and loss families around the world have faced due to this pandemic, losses I’ve been so grateful not to have experienced firsthand within my own circle of loved ones. It is a privilege that I can write this. It's a fucking privilege that we have access to life saving medicine that so many other people wish they had access to and don't. It is an unfair fucking privilege and it's unfathomable that more people aren't enraged at how unfair it truly is. But what's more enraging is that people that are given this insane amount of privilege to help protect their loved ones - and the strangers they interact with alike - and they choose not to. Not based on science or any other credible indication of threat but based of internet spewed delusion. We've got fucking infectious disease specialists who are worked day in and day out to develop such effective vaccines in groundbreaking time and who continue to work twice as hard to provide accurate, updating information to counteract misinformation and quell misguided vaccine anxiety and STILL people refuse to get vaccinated and walk out of a fucking appointment they have scheduled due to complete misinformation provided to them by their own fucking self-conceived and entirely unsubstantiated conspiracies. Anxiety is irrational. I understand that, probably better than most. Anxiety is irrational and does not respond well to logic. But when the most intelligent and well educated people within a certain area - in this case, infectious disease - who have been studying the subject for decades, tell you that having a five minute vaccination appointment can help save lives and you still allow your own selfishness and misinformation get in the way, it is infuriating. Fucking enraging. I don't want to hear you say one more fucking time that you feel badly I missed out on a "normal" first year. That's time I will never ever get back, it's just gone. Your year was probably extremely difficult too but, as you've yourself mentioned, you didn't miss any major milestones. Still it's time gone and that can be lonely and depressing and still despite this, the fact that both of us are still here, healthy and breathing without any devastating losses to bear is incredible. This past year and a half is not your fault, it isn't anyone's fault. But if you can't look at the past year and a half and bring yourself to make such a minor sacrifice to help prevent another year and a half of the same, I never want to hear any sympathy or complaints from your mouth again. It's so fucking enraging. You so badly, probably more than most people I know, want to go eat at restaurants again and "go back to normal". You break restrictions and constantly complain about restrictions and feeling lonely and sad at the current state of the world. SO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. You have this fucking privilege to actually do something to change it and instead you don't and it's so hard to be sympathetic about that, as much as i try. And trust me, I'm trying. I've been on so many anti-vaxx websites trying to understand your perspective, trying to really understand so I can be supportive and hopefully quell some of your misguided fears and still, no matter my efforts to be patient, kind and informative, it amounts to nothing. You don't go through with your vaccination appointment, you put those around you and yourself at risk and you still insist on going to a different province despite a potential risk of an outbreak at a local preschool even though you're entirely unvaccinated. God, it's frustrating.
By Harley Rowe3 years ago in The Swamp
Out of the blue, into the black and back again
Gun to my head, I'm dared to breathe. It may be the last breath or the first of many. It's hard to tell, the only thing that's sure as I stand on the dusty floor of his family's barn is how close I am to becoming part of the soil that comes through the cracks in the concrete. I love him, loved him? He stands next to be, blood dripping from his stomach. I say dripping but the fountain of red is best described as spurting. A chaotic reminder of the conscience that will soon dissipate into a void space none of us can describe or come back from. As Neil Young once sung, he'll soon be out of the blue and into the black. I don't have time to wax poetic right now, I am about to die or commit the biggest betrayal I could ever fathom. One so brutal I'd have to run away from everyone I know, hidden away someplace, unable to speak of it, too ashamed to admit what I've done. I'll probably be so wracked with shame I'll kill myself anyways. I almost let him pull the trigger. His grip is loosening as his pulse dissipates. His mind is playing tricks on him and his speech is incoherent. I am watching the person I love most in the world die and I am too afraid to join him. We made a deal. The last one we'd ever make. We'd go out together. Consensual Murder Suicide. We'd reach a point where we'd both succumb to our worst depressive episodes and we'd have no energy or will to continue. No more music or aspirations, none of it would matter and we'd burn out together. A burst of violent light, a couple sharp sounds and it would all be done. No more loneliness or lost days spent wishing for night to come again. Eternal night. We picked a spot, set a date. He stole his father's gun and we drove to their childhood barn. We brought his old record player and our favourite records to go along with it. Some candles, our favourite food, a pack of cigarettes and a couple of grams of whatever we could find. A proper send off. We've arrived now and I really thought I'd be ready to go. Why am I so afraid? Everything's all set, it feels impossible to get out of it now. I really thought it would feel like closure, it would feel like the right time. We checked the time an hour ago. We had been sleeping on this dusty floor for the past 3 days. Our last vacation. I felt good, I felt safe. Maybe even happy. Happier than I've felt in the past 6 months, at the very least. I thought we should call it off, maybe we just need to spend more time together. Get away more often, concentrate on what makes us feel like staying. I remember their faces. Everyone I love, everyone I want to avoid hurting and everyone I know I'll be leaving behind. It's too much, for a second I cock the gun and almost pull the trigger on myself while he's sleeping. I can't keep thinking about it, I'll talk myself out of it and then I'll just be cycling through the motions until I end up here again, alone. This is the right decision, this is the end. He woke up, decided he was ready to go, said didn't want to discuss it anymore and shot himself in the stomach. He looked at me with anticipation, wondering when I'd do the same. I didn't. I just stood there staring at the finality of what he'd done. I felt numb and devastated all at the same time. Paralyzed with fear, I just stood still. He picked up the gun, offered to do it for me, on my say-so. He put the gun to my temple, turned off the safety and waited for me. I stood motionless, aimlessly waiting for a moment I felt ready. It never came, his grip got looser and I started to panic, knowing I wouldn't be able to do it alone. Now I'm standing here, next to him as he begins to nod off into oblivion. I don't think I can bear this loss, I've got to go, I told him I would and I don't want to leave him alone. But I can't do it. I'm frozen, knowing what I'm doing is irreversible. I stare down at my feet as they sway back and forth in panic, across the barn's dusty floor. I can't look up, I start counting the twigs, imagining where they all came from, how they got in here, if I had drug them in with me and if they'd be the last thing I see. I'm not panicking anymore, I feel paralyzed by my own resistance, waiting for a sign to come and pull the trigger on his behalf, utter my consent through it's mouth. It never comes, the minutes turn into hours, turn into days. I'm still standing there, frozen, staring at the ground as the earth begins to rot where I've been standing. My shock has immobilized me and made me immune to any natural desire to eat, sleep, drink or go to the bathroom. I haven't looked for him, I know I won't be able to bear what I see. So I just stand there, my feet become entrenched in what certain to one day be a crime scene. I count the mice and flies and small rodents as they pass by me through the day, some stop to smell at me, certain I must be dead or close to it. I just observe. I'm like a nun who's taken a vow of silence, I never thought I'd be this quiet. Then, as the leaves that were stuck to my head start to wither, I walk out into the light that awaits me in the dark. I look behind or below me and see the barn waiting for me to return, someday in the future. I didn't leave behind what I had promised of myself and I can hear it beckon to me. I will never truly be free. And then I open my eyes.
By Harley Rowe3 years ago in Fiction
5150
In 2016, my life changed. I moved to Rome, Italy from Ottawa, Canada because of my parents work and spent the next 3 years moving schools and trying to find my footing. I had moved away from my friends, my dad and all my extended family and was now in an entirely new environment. I changed schools and upon my first day at my new school, I was knew instantly I wasn't going to feel welcomed or comfortable here. Unfortunately I was right and for the next year and a half, I spent most of my days feeling like I was out of place, no matter what I did or who I was with. Throughout middle school I had been in a cocoon. I wasn't popular but I had a solid group of friends who I had known since elementary school. There was never any question as to who I'd sit next to in class, or at lunch, or who I'd walk with in the hallway on the way to class. I had my group of friends and I constantly felt a sense of safety, want and belonging around them. I fit in and felt loved. I never acknowledged how much of a privilege that was. Having suffered from anxiety since I was a young kid, I never knew how challenging it would be to have to face new people without anyone familiar, how awkward and out of place I'd feel everytime I tried to make a new friend. Being at a new school, every inch of comfort I had previously felt was violently torn from me and I didn't know - and still don't know - how to cope. I used to spend my days and nights trying to envision the ways in which I'd finally be able to find my place at this new school, in this new city. I'd come up with all kinds of reasons I didn't fit in - or reasons I didn't feel like I did - and try to pick them apart bit by bit, sure that the problem was with me. I was defective and it was my fault, something I was lacking or doing wrong that was causing me to feel empty and alone all of the time. I lived in a constant cycle of projected reinvention. I was constantly coming up with ways I could be cooler, more likeable, prettier, funnier, just so that I'd be accepted. And it never worked. I still don't know why. But i do know that I spent an extra 6 months of my life internalising everything I felt and forcing myself to stay somewhere that I needed to leave from. I'll elaborate. After my first year at my new school, I felt dejected. I had some friends but still felt completely out of place and anxious within my school and with my peers. I spent the summer completely avoiding any thoughts about the year to come. I went home to Ottawa, visited my friends and tried to forget I had ever felt like such a fucking loser. In Ottawa I was safe. My friends liked me, made me feel loved and accepted and the idea that I was inherently worthless based off of my ability to fit in or be liked started to fade into the background. The other thing I should mention is that my first year was clouded by one particular girl who had made it her mission to be mean to anyone she didn't think deserved her respect, anyone who wasn't as "cool" as her, whatever the fuck that means. She was the undisputed queen bee of the school, the most popular and feared person simultaneously within those 4 walls, despite being much younger than the seniors that attended above us. She came from a powerful (and rich) family and attending a private school meant that somehow that mattered. Having attended public school up until this point, back in Ottawa, (there are no english public schools in Rome), I was new to an environment in which we were all assessed and given merit based off the price of our clothing, the brand name of our purses / shoes and our family's net income. She made it her mission to humiliate me and anyone else new to the school who she didn't feel deserving of her time. She'd make sarcastic remarks, act kindly to your face and then spread rumors behind your back. I felt like I was in a Tina Fey Mean Girls remake. All of that to say, she was definitely one of the many reasons I had hated my first year at that school and at the time, I felt it easier to pin all the issues I had had fitting in on her presence rather than evaluate the overall social environment at the school. She was leaving the next year so I spent the entire summer in blissful denial, sure that come September I'd be welcomed with open arms and feel a sense of belonging I had thought impossible with her attendance at the school. I could not have been more wrong. September came and left and I spent my lunches sneaking into the library after my 3rd period class, anxious to get in before anyone saw me and made fun of me for it. I spent every single lunch there. Eating, alone at a desk counting down the minutes to the next class where I'd at least be able to hide behind the solace of my teacher's presence, knowing I wouldn't be forced to interact with anyone I didn't feel comfortable around, if the teacher was explaining lectures and class material. I had gone from being an outgoing, confident pre-teen with lots of self-assurance and self-worth to being too shy to make eye contact with anyone and avoiding conversation at any cost, hoping not to be perceived as awkward or anything else I perceived as being negative at the time. Eventually, I got so depressed that I was considering suicide on an minute to minute basis. The only times I had reprieve from these thoughts were when I could distract myself by indulging in other people's lives, people who felt belonging, love and hope. I spent so many hours hiding behind my screen devouring movies, tv shows, music videos, youtube videos etc. I would watch shows where I related to the characters and find solace in the fact that even if I felt deeply alone and unconnected to my peers, I could connect to these characters, get invested in their lives and find solace in our similarities. I didn't feel as alone or as rejected when I spent time engaging with people that seemed to struggle with similar feelings of isolation, despite not knowing them personally. I spent most of those lonely lunch periods finding solace in music, specifically.
By Harley Rowe3 years ago in Journal