Bodies, bodies, bodies
on saying goodbye to my uterus
1. In nine days, I will be bidding farewell to my uterus. She will be removed from my body alongside the very large fibroid that has taken up residence inside of her and has become a rather unwelcome and disruptive tenant over the course of the past couple of years (and in particular the past several months). I have decided to call her (said fibroid) Marge. And also the child I never wanted. She is not a child at all, of course, but a) referring to her as such brings a little levity to the situation (for me, at least) and b) the anti-choice men of this country are so deeply uninformed about reproductive health they could easily mistake her for an actual fetus and try to prevent me from having her removed.
(If you think I’m kidding about this last part, please know there are full grown men who believe women can’t pee with a tampon in, this guy who was certain women’s bodies could just refuse to become pregnant in the event they were raped, and also the Idaho representative who thought women could swallow a camera for a gynecological exam. Also: remember when NASA wanted to supply astronaut Sally Ride with 100 tampons for a mere SIX DAYS in space and they were worried it wouldn’t be enough? Reproductive illiteracy is a national crisis, if you ask me. But I digress.)
While I am doing my best to find humor in an otherwise mostly humorless thing, I am also pre-grieving the loss of my uterus. Which might seem surprising to some folks considering I have never used it to grow and incubate a future human — as is its intended purpose. But this grief isn’t about childbearing, it is about the relationship I have nurtured with my body over the course of the past decade. It is about the fact that I actually like my period (or, I did, before Marge got her hands on it) and (gasp!) love the ritual of bleeding. It is about not hating my body for the first time since middle school and the (understandable, I think) apprehension I feel about how surgery might cause that to change.
2. Moving my body — and, in particular, lifting heavy things — is the number one way I manage my mental health. I am legitimately concerned about how the post-surgery weight and exercise restrictions (I cannot lift more than 10lbs for SIX WEEKS) are going to affect my mood. I am afraid of how long it might take me to rebuild any strength I lose during that time. I’m worried about my bladder falling out of my body once I resume deadlifting, squatting, running, jumping — which, for the record, is not likely to happen, but still. (Also, I have a great pelvic floor therapist, don’t you worry.) Athlete has been a central self-identifier from the time I learned to run. Will I have an identity crisis or spiral into a deep depression in the wake of this procedure? I sure fucking hope not, but — given what I know about myself — I’m trying to prepare for the possibility and have a contingency plan in place just in case.
3. Is it weird to say I like my uterus? Because I do. And it turns out people will say some strange things to you when you tell them you’re having yours removed. The discourse around women’s bodies (and also just bodies in general) is undeniably fraught and this upcoming medical procedure is making me aware of that in new and illuminating ways. And being childfree has added a kind of flavor to the conversation I honestly (and perhaps naively) didn’t see coming. Like the assumption that those of us who are intentionally without children would feel nothing but relief — or at the very least neutrality — about having an organ surgically extracted from our bodies. I know a lot of people have their uteruses (uteri?) removed for many different reasons, I know it isn’t necessarily an uncommon procedure, but it’s still a big deal, you know? I’m currently experiencing my last period ever. Which is just weird and I’m having A LOT OF FEELINGS about it. I did not have hysterectomy on my bingo card this year and I’m finding myself admittedly a little unprepared for this moment.
4. Getting free enough to choose a childfree existence has not been a small victory in my life. And it has not been the easy path I think some folks assume it to be. I had to unlearn SO MANY THINGS and deconstruct an entire belief system in order to get here and feel good about it. And you know what? Some days I still don’t feel like a good enough woman because of my choice not to procreate, for my refusal to “be fruitful and multiply” as I was instructed from the youngest of ages to do. The culture at large also fetishizes motherhood (even while it does very little to actually support mothers) and there are plenty of people (men and women alike) in this country who believe a woman CHOOSING not to have children is failing to fulfill her duty, is selfish and therefore less worthy — and less womanly (whatever that means) — as a result. We’ve come a long way, but we’ve also not really come that far.
5. Let’s talk about thinness, shall we? Which is apparently back en vogue or something? (As though it was ever actually out. Who were we all kidding?) Maybe you’ve been under a rock (or a weighted blanket, if you’re lucky) and have somehow missed the Ozempic craze and the recent ubiquity of the suddenly slim celebrity sighting and, well, the Oprah of it all, but thinness is having a moment. AGAIN. As someone who came of age during the heroin chic aesthetic of the 1990s, was personally victimized by low rise jeans in the early 2000s, and was convinced by all manner of media outlets that Jessica Simpson was gross in this outfit and Britney Spears was disgusting in this one, I HATE THIS FOR US. I also spent many years struggling with body dysmorphia (sometimes still do!) and overcame an eating disorder, so this all feels very personally confronting if I’m being honest. Because while I have stopped chasing thinness, I have admittedly not yet fully extracted the thinness-as-moral-imperative brainworm that infected so many of us Millenials (and also GenX-ers) at a devastatingly impressionable age.
Which brings me to this: The idea that I could drop a few LBs as a result of losing my uterus (and my Marge), is not the consolation some folks seem to think it is. Like, “Sorry about your surgery but at least you’ll be thinner!” My eating disorder brain still lives inside my head, and while it is much quieter and very often imperceptible these days, it perks up when it hears these comments and wonders Do I NEED to be thinner? Spoiler alert: I don’t. Let’s once and for all stop commenting on people’s bodies. Their past, present, and potential future bodies. Okay? Okay.
6. When I found out about Marge and it became clear I would need a hysterectomy in order to remove her, the first thing I wanted to do was call my mom. Which, obviously, can’t happen. I’m losing my uterus and my mom is dead. These things might seem unrelated but they’re intimately intertwined. I can’t explain it. It’s just true.
7. Once I’m uterus-less and off the narcotics, I do intend to write about my experience of surgery and beyond. And perhaps talk more about what the past several months have felt like, as Marge has expanded her territory inside my body and made her presence ever more impossible to ignore. What I’m currently trying to focus on is the most likely outcome from all of this: that I feel substantially better six months from now than I have in at least three years. Fingers crossed, friends. FINGERS CROSSED.
Thanks, as always, for reading. See you on the other side.
xoxo
❍ Sorry I’m late — I was ruining a man’s day
❍ The egg-freezing industry's shady sales pitch
❍ 78 Patients and 10 Hours Inside an Abortion Clinic in the South
❍ Penance by Eliza Clark, a novel masquerading as true crime that is really a commentary on the true crime genre as a whole
❍ Atul Gawande — On Mortality and Meaning from the On Being podcast with Krista Tippett