Uterus For All of Us:
A neutral, independently fact-checked, objective, personal account of indisputable facts about a uterus and the American Dream, all starting with the movie Prometheus.
Image Description: A screencap from the film Prometheus. The character played by Noomi Rapace makes a face of pure horror and disgust as a squid-like alien is held over her abdomen in a surgical pod.
Content warning: This piece contains discussions and allusions to rape and sexual assault, depression and suicide, abortion rights, gender, and school shootings. This is a personal essay, not a reported piece.
It is June 9th, 2022, and I am watching Prometheus. The sort-of prequel and definitive return to the Alien franchise from Ridley Scott turned 10 years-old yesterday. I'm thinking about how the movie may be my greatest, concrete personal example of changed perspectives. I had never seen Alien when my boyfriend (18m) begged me (16f) to see this new release with him. Our high school romance was almost entirely constructed with twigs, handjobs, and a mutual love of such cinematic classics as (500) Days of Summer and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Research says I spent 77% of our relationship watching him play video games. He has three kids now, I hear.
I hated the movie -- at the time, at least. I felt sure of my opinion as, of course, I had no expectations about how the movie fit within the franchise. I was objective, curious, and disappointed. The movie did not dain to satisfy any of the numerous questions it posed with an answer. The suspension of disbelief was simply too far-fetched to grab me, an average movie goer. I had a lot more of Ridley Scott's work to discover, but if this was any indication, I can surely believe that Scott was a hack who might've seemed cool in the 70s and 80s to the less sophisticated and probably problematic people of my parents' generation. Also, why was Noomi Rapace half-naked for so long? Why was my boyfriend so gleefully reveling in this clear cut hatred of women?
I sparred with him. That's what we did. We were the “intellects” who debated the culture our classmates were too dimwitted to appreciate. My hatred of the movie was my love language to him. Even though he fervently disagreed, I sure showed him: Yes, I care about these things as much as you! I'm opinionated! We fell in love when we argued in film class about a Harry Potter movie. Passion was, for us, strong feelings, regardless of what those feelings were and how we came upon them – or if they were even real. Strong feelings were never truly feelings, they were a preserved identity of Logic that reverberated in our echochamber so aggressively, the result was only angry, screechy feedback.
We broke up shortly after, and I decided to accompany two of my best friends in seeing Prometheus again. Watching the movie in the company of loved ones who were patient with their thoughts and gentle in their care radically transformed the viewing experience.
I loved it. Somehow, even knowing what was going to happen -- or perhaps because of knowing -- I saw the movie again with completely fresh eyes. I took in more. More of it clicked. I had time with it. I didn't have to prove to my friends I had Feelings, and in a funny way, the experience was far more visceral.
It's June 9th, and I decide to rewatch Prometheus after learning it is now a decade old. I am thinking about how much removing the facade of performed intellect and objectivity allows for opening one's perspective, understanding better, and listening more. How you may even catch more of what is actually in the facts, in the DNA, than you did projecting your own self-important status of being a practical. learned human being.
But what I'm thinking about most is the same thing I've thought about since seeing Prometheus the first time -- the same thing that encouraged me to come back to it so soon, and the same reason I really wanted to come back to it today: Man, I fucking love the alien abortion scene.
It is January, 2022, and I'm at a standard visit with my Primary Care Physician. I'm mostly here to get a refill on my ADHD medication and to bring up some sleep issues I've been having. A recent independent study shows that 100% of the time I try to go to sleep without a light sleeping pill (Trazodone), I wake up after four hours with racing, terrifying thoughts, and can't get back to sleep. She refers me to an ENT to look into sleep apnea. I'm thankful to have a PCP who hears my concerns and guides me to treatment.
“Also,” I bring up, “About my menstrual cycles.... I know we thought we figured it out last year, but it's not just the periods themselves now. Increasingly, I'm cramping and bleeding between periods. It used to be for one extra day out of the month. Then 4-5 days. Now it's over a week. And I also bleed and cramp during PMS. On average, I am bleeding and cramping 75% of the month. My stomach bloats to the point of being hard to the touch and looking horribly distended. I am constipated for half of every month. And yes, when I get my period, I bleed up to 10 tbsps of blood. So uh, my question is: Is that all normal?”
I leave with a referral for a urogynecologist who specializes in gynecological surgery.
It is probably reductive to call it the “alien abortion scene.” Perhaps more accurately, it’s an alien extraction. An alien forced birth? An emergency c-section of extra-terrestrial proportions? It’s fucking rad, is what I’m saying. Not the idea of being unknowingly impregnated through a mix of seminal fluid and a bioweapon best described as liquid death, reaching an advanced stage of pregnancy in under 24 hours, and needing to hack a surgical pod not designed for pregnancy procedures to cut open your abdomen to remove an angry, hungry carnivorous squid monster before it kills you from the inside and out. But also, kind of that. In the context of fiction, in the framework of horror as a genre, it’s rad. I had never seen anything like that on screen before. In fact, I hadn’t sought out horror prior to this moment, period. I was an admitted scaredy cat, sensitive to jump scares, and unsure of my threshold for whatever sick, terrible images that might imprint on my brain.
But watching this scene for the first time? I was pure endorphins. I expected to be disgusted, to be mortified, but I kept replaying the scene in my head. Logically, of course, I thought – is this sexist? Why is this character being put through such cruelty? But something about watching the scene was cathartic. The body horror was so sick, it was satisfying. Having a body is blood, guts, and viscera. I never had nightmares. If anything, I needed to see this scene again. Pronto.
It is some school day in 2008. I am 13, and I can barely keep my eyes open in my eighth grade math class. I am exhausted. Since I woke up at 7am, I have been experiencing excruciating cramps. My body contorts itself, mimicking the same contractions meant to push out a human baby. Ibuprofen hardly helps, and now, the dose I took before school is wearing off. I already know there is a stain in my jeans that I have to keep covered until I can get home, and I just pray I can ward off any more leakage until then. I can smell the copper reek from my lap as I try to lay my head down on the hard desk. I don’t know how to describe the pain. I’ve felt it for a year, but it hasn’t gotten any more bearable. In the front, it feels like my organs are detaching from the inside of my body. I feel my insides ripping. I feel like I’m splitting in half. In the back, I feel my spine breaking. It feels as though something may jump out of my bones. I am conscious of every vertebrae across my lower back and every piece of muscle that fills in the gaps. They are ripping away from each other. They must. I feel like the skin on an over roasted ham being peeled off – tendons still clinging to the meat, a knife slicing clumsily between the rough skin and muscle to help them detach. It is around this age I begin actively fantasizing about stabbing myself in the abdomen. A nagging thought enters my head when the pain is this bad: You just have to cut out the infection. If you can cut it out, cut open the inflamed skin, the pain will go away.
I know this is untrue, but it feels right every time. My uterus is an ingrown intrusion that needs to be cut away so everything around it can finally heal.
I tearfully and privately ask my teacher if I can take ibuprofen from my bag. We are normally not allowed to take pills unless we have them held at the nurse’s office. I need relief now. She understands. She allows me to sleep at my desk while the class watches a movie. I am relieved by her kindness.
As the ibuprofen finally settles in, I can rest. My body has been trying and failing to heal all day, and I have lost so much blood. I just need to sleep.
I wake up when Tyler, the boy sitting next to me, loudly asks the teacher “How come Daniella is allowed to sleep?”
It is March 2nd, 2022, the soonest the urogynecologist can see me. I’m ready to finally receive guidance. I’m expecting some tests to be ordered, some possible medication to be floated. I expect to learn more over a few months, create a plan over a few more months after that.
After my intake, the doctor feels around inside me for half a minute. “Okay,” he says. “I’m going to have you meet me in the conference room so we can go over what needs to happen.”
It is some summer day in 2017, and I’m calling my mom. This is some of the worst the pain has ever been.
I am curled over on my bed, weeping and hyperventilating while on the phone. I know she can’t do anything, but I need my mommy. Everytime I’m in pain like this, I need my mommy.
I feel like I’m going to die.
“Hold on,” she says. “Your father is asking something.” She pauses. She returns to me “He says he normally doesn’t approve of this, but he’s asking if you have any pot you could smoke?” My dad has never done a single drug in his life. But it’s a good idea. I think of someone who might have some – the ex-roommate of my ex-boyfriend – and I stumble over to his apartment 20 minutes later with $20 in hand.
Before the high settles in, I think of how much I wish I had a surgical pod that could cut me open.
The scene is as good today as I remembered it 10 years ago. The speed in which the horror of the character’s situation settles in, and the traumatizing sequence of how she must rectify her circumstances is stunning. It’s gnarly and Lovecraftian. I’m grinning. A wave of familiarity washes over me.
It is October, 2020, and Amy Coney Barrett is nominated to the Supreme Court. I cannot bring myself to watch the confirmation hearings.
It is sometime in the early half of 2021. March maybe. I don’t remember when, I just remember the moment. My PCP is calling me with what I thought were the final results of my menstrual inquiries. I had a 3D ultrasound a few days ago. I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe nothing? When my doctor ordered the test, I finally brought up point blank what I had been afraid of for several months now: Could it be endometriosis? Enough symptoms overlap, but I don’t know enough about it. The ultrasound could eliminate a few possibilities and detect if anything was abnormal.
The good news, she says: No signs of endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, or any other condition to cause alarm.
In curious news, I do have a uterine abnormality. A deformity, actually. There is a uterine wall down the middle where there shouldn’t be. It’s rare, she says, but it also doesn’t affect much. I only need to have it removed if I want to become pregnant. If I became pregnant with the deformity, I would very likely – maybe almost definitely, if I may editorialize – miscarry.
She also adds: I probably cannot get an IUD with the deformity. An IUD may help with my severe menstrual symptoms, so it is up to me if I want to have it removed.
I hang up and walk over to my partner who is working from home. It is somber. It is all hypotheticals. Technically, I’m healthy. Technically, nothing is wrong. But there are decisions to make now.
I am 25, almost 26, and about to age out of my dad’s HMO plan. If I’m going to have any of this work done, now may be the only time I could afford to do it. But do I need to do it? I’m not sure that I want children. I’m not sure that I want to ever be pregnant. I’m not sure that it’s ethical to have children now.
When I was a teenager and started to feel my symptoms worsen – not just the cramps and profuse blood loss, but the weird shooting pains near my ovaries in between cycles, the way so often I felt wrong in my body, like there was always a foreign object inside of me, I started to have this strange omen come over me: I won’t be able to have children. The thought kept popping up. I never knew why. I had no evidence, but I sensed it. I can’t have children. Not without fertility treatment, at least. My body wasn’t made for it. It was too hostile.
I am not ready to make this decision now. I’m not even ready to decide if it’s time to decide. I’m with someone I love deeply who I hope to share a life with for as long as possible, but I never planned on us even broaching the idea in any tangible way until later. For now, we hug one another. It’s not the end of the world. It’s all fixable. But it is something we must sit with the knowledge of, now. Family planning isn’t some philosophical question for us to solve in the far off future. It’s a real fucking thing that has real implications, good, bad, and neutral, on us. It may never be easy.
We have to at least decide when to decide.
But the question sits. Because I am not ready to make this decision now. And my insurance expires, and I have to pay out of pocket for a new one – a deeply expensive one, but the only one that at least means I can continue to see my in-network doctor who really, truly hears me.
It is October, 2018 – Halloween to be exact – and I’m on an incidental first date. Well, I think it’s a date. I hope it’s a date. The coworker who has been making me blush and crush like I’m in high school again came out to my comedy show tonight. I was hoping he’d want to get drinks afterwards. He did.
What is more miraculous is that my half-comedic, half-rageful musical comedy routine in response to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court hasn’t completely horrified my cute colleague. I didn’t necessarily worry that he would be turned off by general anti-rape sentiments (and I sure don’t want to date someone who is!) but this was the first time I was doing this song. I wasn’t even sure if a seasoned, progressive feminist crowd would vibe with my doo-wop diddy titled “Thank You (For Not Raping Me)” that satirically congratulated men for doing the absolute bare minimum. I didn’t even know if I was smart or funny enough to pull it off (jury’s still out). It was a bold move to break this song out with this goofy crush of mine in the audience.
I’m having a perfect time with him, joking at the bar and getting to really know each other for the first time as strays who want to celebrate a Wednesday Night Halloween but have no parties to go to meander about in the background.
I’m for once thankful that I have my period. On Halloween, it feels magical. I wanted to take things slow with this guy. Too often I throw sex at a problem, namely when the problem is vulnerability. I wanted to make no sudden moves, to try a new playbook. I wanted everything to be right. I also still wasn’t sure this was a date.
I run to the bathroom to find that, of course, I have bled through. I’m wearing red and can get away with it. I’m so happy, I don’t even mind.
It is May 2nd, 2022, and I’m hovering over his shoulder and kissing his forehead when we both see the abstract from Politico about a leaked Supreme Court memo appear in his Twitter feed.
I have no more words. I sit on the stairs and dissociate for a half hour, maybe longer. Later, I drink. Later, I eye my full bottle of sleeping pills.
Too many people love me. I leave them alone.
My surgery is in a month and a half.
It is June 9th, 2017. Tomorrow, I graduate college. This morning, I buy Plan B.
I want anything but to think too much about the night before, but it is all I can think about.
He’s my friend. My friend.
I should’ve gone home. I should’ve. I knew. I had this sinking feeling that a friend is not a friend. He’s older than me. I’m 21.
He was my boss.
He caught me when I was craving love. He caught me when I felt alienated from my peers and abandoned by my boyfriend. And we became friends at work. It was okay that he was buying me coffee in the morning and telling me not to tell anyone else. It was because we were friends. It was okay that he constantly complained about his girlfriend to me. We were friends. It’s what friends do.
Do friends put you forward for pay increases? Do friends put together your work schedule? Do friends put themselves on every morning that you’re working to work alongside you alone?
Do friends look at you like that? Not lovingly, not even romantically. Like you’re a quivering animal? Do friends promise you nothing will happen, then quietly part your legs?
He caught me when I was craving love, and I did love him. I tend to throw sex at a problem. This was different. Because for once, he was a friend. I could value a friend. I didn’t feel alone, especially while at the soul-destroying minimum wage job I worked in the hours before 9am classes.
Do friends ejaculate on your face without warning? Do they roll off of you immediately without a word? Do they ignore you as you slide off to the bathroom to wash away the semen and the mascara? Does their friendship expire at the exact moment of climax?
And even so, I buy Plan B. I still have a boyfriend. There was no condom. My lap aches and burns in a new way, but I still feel like I’m ripping apart.
I go back and forth on telling my boyfriend. He has been withholding love from me. The past couple of months of our relationship have already been difficult. He wasn’t even going to come to my graduation.
I tell my closest friends I cheated. I don’t know what other words there are for it. My mom and uncle take me out for a graduation celebration that evening. I don’t remember it.
I say goodbye to friends the next day. I don’t remember the ceremony.
One of my best friends came and joins me and my family for dinner. I smile for the first time in two days.
I talk to one of my oldest friends about what happened. “Isn’t that…….?” they ask. I refuse to entertain the word. NO. I tell them. It is more complicated than that. They trust me. They are concerned.
I haven’t been intimate with my boyfriend since it all happened. I don’t know what to do. I already talked to my friends about breaking up with him. I’m unhappy. I love him, but I know he doesn’t love me.
He sleeps over one night a few days later. I am half asleep when he begins to push himself against me. I don’t move. He turns me over and gets on top. We don’t say anything to one another. I let him get what he needs. We both turn over and don’t talk about it.
Less than a week later, we break up.
It is sometime in 2016. Maybe summer. I’m seeing my PCP. This is a different one, the one I was seeing before.
I’m here because yesterday, I almost fainted at work.
It was the worst the cramps had ever been. Everyone on my shift knew. There was no pretending nothing was wrong. I was pale and running a fever. The catering lead was feeding me ice chips. I was slowly making sandwiches while sitting on a milk crate. I couldn’t stand. I had bled through my work pants. I was crying. I couldn’t help customers at the counter. I had already thrown up. My manager desperately tried to find someone to come in. Until then, I had to work. I ended up working until just 15 minutes short of when I was originally scheduled.
I tell all this to my PCP. She orders some blood tests and puts me on a birth control pill.
A week later, she calls me with the results: I have iron-deficient anemia.
GREAT! I think. Because now we have determined that there is something wrong, and we can finally get to what it is. Finally, I can prove that yes, I should not be bleeding this much. Something is wrong, and this is the first step.
But it isn’t. She prescribes an iron supplement, and that’s it. I’m confused. She says the reason my periods are so bad is because I’m anemic. I ruffle. Wouldn’t anemia be a symptom, not a cause? It is clear something is wrong.
She sends the prescription and schedules no tests and no follow-up appointments. I think about pushing back, but I decide against it. Afterall, she’s the doctor. She knows more than I do. I guess anemia has been the issue all along.
It is September, 2016. I’ve missed a week of work from what I have come to surmise is a kidney stone. I almost passed out as pain suddenly struck me at the Aparna Nancherla show at The Hideout. I stayed through the end. She was really good!
My doctor wasn’t available every time I called. I didn’t end up seeing her until two weeks later.
I couldn’t afford to miss any more work. I come back, still in considerable pain. I’m taking ibuprofen. One morning, I run to the bathroom from the counter. I feel a sharp object traveling through my urethra after a few minutes of patience. After that? Relief.
I keep my appointment with my doctor as likely infection symptoms have carried over.
I tell her about what happened.
She laughs. She doesn’t just laugh, she snorts.
“You didn’t have a kidney stone. You’d know if you had a kidney stone.”
Reader, I know I had a kidney stone.
It is September, 2018. I am mostly consenting to sex with a man who is almost 40 who I had been on two dates with. I am also drunk. I don’t realize he didn’t put a condom on until he’s already fucking me. My mouth tries to form the question, but instead, I move in and out of awareness.
The next morning, I buy Plan B.
A week later, I have a UTI that manifests into a kidney infection. This is one of many UTI’s, Bladder Infections, and/or Kidney Infections I’ve had in the last couple of years.
The thought pops into my head again, even if it doesn’t make sense: “I can’t have children.”
It is December 2016, and I have missed over 50% of my morning classes this quarter. Since starting birth control, I haven’t been able to leave bed. Every morning, I think about killing myself. Instead, I just lie paralyzed, hating myself even more for missing class. Missing classes I was excited about. Letting homework that interested me sit. I just lie there. My boyfriend doesn’t realize anything is wrong.
I quit my birth control.
It is April, 2022, and a darkly comic thought enters my head: If I had known I couldn’t get pregnant sooner, I wouldn’t have had to go through the extra stress of worrying about Plan B.
Cue the Curb Your Enthusiasm music, or something like that.
It is May 24th, 2022. I have given up on work for the day. I read about Uvalde. I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop thinking about the sickness of being able to murder children. Babies.
I can’t bring babies into this world. I can’t do it.
It is October 2nd, 2017. The Las Vegas shooting occurred two hours ago. I am in an emergency room signing a form acknowledging that I understand I no longer have the right to own or operate a gun – for my own safety.
I have never owned or operated a gun.
It is October 6th, 2017. Before I greet some of the new friends I’ve made, I see Harvey Weinstein’s face appear on the TV in the rec room. I sit down with some of the fellow inpatient residents and listen to the breaking story. In the present day, I remember reading the full text of the New Yorker story that night, but I know that’s not possible. I wasn’t allowed to access my phone.
It is mid-October 2017, and I am in the intake room for my first visit with a psychiatrist as mandated part of my discharge plan. For the first time, I say the word: “Rape.”
It is June 1st, 2022. I watch in anger as former friends brag about how you can tell when a victim is lying.
In October, 2017, saying the word “rape” saved my life.
I never want to hear from him again, but today, I do think that should he ever punish me for saying that word, I’ll finally know for sure that he knows he did it.
For however much of our mutual affection was born of pretention and proud geekdom, I really understood how important movies were to me during that high school relationship. And here was finally someone who met me on that level.
I was raised on movies. For all the emptiness and solitude I felt as a child, there are countless memories of my parents lovingly introducing me to something new; classics like Jaws; old Hollywood like It Happened One Night; indie darlings like The Station Agent; “high art” like Gone With the Wind; “low art” like Airplane!
I’ve discovered so many new-to-me movies both through my long-term relationship (surprisingly, he was the one who suggested a Criterion Channel subscription) and the restlessness of the pandemic. As more and more movies stick with me, I wonder what I would introduce to my once and future child as my parents shared with me. Would I introduce them to the playful absurdities of Miranda July? Would I pass on my mom’s adoration for Cary Grant? Would I hold them as we neared the end of AI: Artificial Intelligence? How often would I take them to the movies? What lessons from each tale would I impart? How would I make sure their world was as fantastical, vast, and inclusive as possible? How would I push their imagination, challenge their thinking, provide them comfort and laughter, show them other parts of the world, the inventiveness of genre, and the primal scream of something produced out of someone’s heart and soul? What blockbusters from my childhood would they roll their eyes at? What personal favorites would they proudly share with their friends? Who would they be? How can I do everything my parents do right, and how can I learn from every mistake my parents, my grandparents, that I have ever made?
For as often as I’ve thought I can’t have children, I’ve wondered if I could ever be a mother. I’ve always wanted to. My framework for motherhood and my timeline may have changed as I’ve changed as a person, as I’ve had new ambitions come and go, some stick, shit happen, personal feelings shift. But ultimately, I want a child.
As the cynic I am, though, I’ve increasingly interrogated what that means. Why does anyone want a child? Can anyone want a child selflessly? Should I ever have a child, how the fuck can I make sure with every fiber of my being that I protect them not only from the world, but from myself? My idiosyncrasies and my insecurities. My ability to be spiteful. The way depression can shut me down for days. The way my memory fails me. How can I be available? How can I be open? How can I be empathetic? How do I stay strong for them, but never let them think I do feel and fuck up as they do? How do I give them the wisdom of a parent when now, at the age my parents were when they had me, I still feel like I know nothing. I feel like I only just now can begin to understand how this stupid little world works. How do I protect them? How do I protect them? How do I protect them?
It is March 2nd, 2022. I’m in the conference room, waiting for the doctor. Models of uteruses split down the middle are scattered across the table. Posters about polyps face me.
I wait about 15 minutes – maybe more? – until the doctor returns.
Surgery. He cuts to the chase. I could not have surgery, yes, and here are my other options.
Birth control pills – except they make me want to kill myself.
IUD – but I can’t get one without surgery to remove my uterine septum.
Pelvic Floor Therapy – but there isn’t significant evidence it will work.
But I can have a laparoscopy, which will identify the endometriosis he is almost positive I have, have the septum removed at the same time, and have the IUD placed.
And then I think: Endometriosis. I have Endometriosis.
I always knew I had Endometriosis.
A later ultrasound to do further imaging will determine that my cervix has been displaced by several centimeters due to my organs gluing. There are growths where my uterus is attached to my rectum. That feeling of something sick growing inside of me – it was always there.
Tentatively, I schedule a surgery for June 17th. Tentatively, I plan to have the procedure as he described, including the IUD.
I go home and I read more and more and more. I think about my other options. I think of what happens if I don’t get it done. I think of what happens if I do.
I’m in pain nearly every day now. There aren’t any more options.
I mark my calendar and move forward. In three and a half months, I will have surgery.
I have had nearly 10 doctors appointments between then and now to prepare for this surgery. Along with the copays for these procedures, I’m looking at a nearly $10,000 hospital bill coming my way. That’s WITH an HMO plan. That’s WITH access to the doctors that I have – an amazing PCP, and a top recommended surgeon. I’m on a couple of message boards for people with endometriosis. Many of them have gotten these procedures, and it has helped monumentally.
Most of them have still had the endometriosis come back. They get the surgery again. And so on and so on every few years ad nauseum.
There’s no knowing what might happen to me. But as I see Supreme Court decisions and my surgery coinciding, I also wonder how long many of these options will be available. I wonder if I will always be able to have an IUD. I wonder if this procedure would be considered “Gender-Affirming.” I wonder about healthcare and insurance costs. I wonder if the treatment plan that comes up most often in my message boards as the most effective option – total hysterectomy – will always be on the table. It is hardly on the table now, as a yet-unmarried childless woman under 30. I didn’t notice until filling out the forms that my hospital was a faith-based hospital. And should I choose to have children – will my endometriosis present complications? What happens if I have complications? What happens if I need care to protect my life? What happens if I lose a pregnancy?
I had a therapist at the start of the pandemic who reassured me there was no use gaming out the “What-Ifs.” I believed and still believe that to be generally true.
But these what ifs are much greater than anxieties. Decisions made by everyone from myself to the Supreme Court of the United States can drastically change my future. Not only my future in the existential sense, but the future of my health. And that is only to speak to my health.
Maybe that what-ifs don’t come true. Even as things are now, exactly as they are now, it took seven years for a doctor to acknowledge that my excruciating pain and severe blood loss was abnormal. It took nearly fifteen years for someone to protect me from that pain, to envision that I could do more than go through over half of my life pleading for reprieve and pulling for whatever energy I can muster. And even as things are now, with access to treatment, I look at a lifetime of complications. I have a disability. That disability has and always will affect nearly every facet of my life – and it is only because this world envisions my uterus as a problem. My disability is a threat to labor. My health is a threat to economy. My gender is a threat to control. I have always felt diseased and disconnected to my body because it has only ever felt like a vessel for sickness. It is a sickness to keep private and quiet, a sickness that can only eat at me. And every social service at my disposal, even as things are now, has actively worked to prevent me from curing that sickness. It is a system that will allow me to die – whether I am passing a kidney stone at work, protecting an abuser for my own safety, financially deprived for merely trying to stay alive – the odds are stacked.
A recent study says there is a 90% chance this world will abandon me when it matters most, and if it doesn’t actively kill me, it will make the future so inhospitable, that I kill myself.
And that is only to speak to my health. Not the health of all those I love and care about, of the innocent babies being slaughtered because of guns and of police insolence, of my trans family who dare to break out of the prison of their bodies, of my precious loved ones giving their entire identity to low-paying jobs to just barely pay the bills.
And that’s with things as they are.
It is June 13th, 2022. In two days, there will likely be a decision made about the future of abortion care in America. If not then, it will be soon.
And I write, exacerbated, all the thoughts that pour out of me. Everything that has stewed since the start of 2022, and many things that have stewed for so much longer. I think about uteruses, and blood and guts and viscera, I think about Pride Month, I think about shame. I think about fear. I think about wishing I could’ve seen my Uncle’s drag shows when I was a kid. I think about guns. I think about trials, and He Said/She Said, and how #MeToo so briefly saved my life. I think about babies. I think about the babies I wanted to have, the babies I could have, the babies I’ll never have. The babies that learn things today that I never did. The baby I was, so alone all the time, so wrong in her body. I think about the baby I still am now. I think about the babies who will grow to love movies. I think about the babies who will never grow. I think about how much I love babies, and I think about how absolutely wrong it feels to have one now. I think about whether it will ever get better.
Too many people love me, so I have to believe that it will. To imagine that feels like another absurd “What-If,” but the possibility – it is there.
It is June 9th, 2022. I like Prometheus. It holds up. It exists in this strange time following when blockbusters were a little weird and the characters weren’t the brightest, and this impending period where all movies are written by committee and every piece of IP is judged with the same daunting authority as a Supreme Court ruling.
What I understand now that I didn’t quite then was how the movie’s cruelty isn’t towards the singular female star, but towards humanity. Particularly, towards the Western desire that everyone must answer to everything. That we all imagine ourselves as Gods, and when we discover a new God, we expect them to see us as a peer – but we are an enemy. A scourge. We are a sickness.
I do not know that I fully believe in the movie’s outlook, but I understand it. And I think about Creationism and myths and Gods. I think about how often we confuse facts for feelings, and vice versa. I think about competition. I think about care. I think about what a radical world it would be if it were full of care. If instead of demanding God answer to us for the Hell he has put us through, for our registered indignities, that we created our own Eden. That we protected one another. How do we protect one another?
But, most of all, I am thinking: Man, I really, really fucking love the alien abortion scene.
Good shit. Found the typos, but who actually cares. Thank you for sharing your experience. It is excellently written, on top of being both well-paced and powerful.