The last school year was a difficult one, but a joyful one, too. Busy beyond all measure. Over in a blink. But in the blink, something happened to my body that I ignored in the busyness, and now that I am free of the grind, I have to face it. In the last three months, I’ve had periods of unbearable pain. I think it’s my reproductive organs, and I’ll know by the end of the month. My blood pressure has been immoveable, not yet dipping below 150/95 with doubled medication. Every six hours when the ibuprofen and tylenol wear off, I feel like my uterus is trying to claw its way out of my body. I’m bleeding, always. These symptoms are google-able, and when I google them and find a word like “fibroid” and “cyst” I am comforted by the banal nature of the word. How many times have women in my life mentioned fibroids and cysts? All the time. But the pain of it!

When I had my baby, I was shocked at how painful a c-section was. People had told me, sure, but until I experienced it, I’d had no idea how ridiculous an idea it was to have major abdominal surgery to remove a baby and then not be able to sleep for three months while trying to keep the baby alive– no physical therapy, no real after care besides checking the incision and making sure I didn’t want to kill myself or my child. And anyway, what struck me was once again how banal the conversation about c-sections and motherhood are/were. So many women have had a c-section. It’s not like its newsworthy. Then they just get on with their lives, and even go back to work and/or take care of additional children. But the pain of it!

What care did I want that I didn’t get? My husband held the baby while she screamed and later cried so hard she vomited so I could shower and pump milk in the bathroom (and okay, pumping milk in any kind of space is hardly self-care), and people brought us food and told us the stories about how birthing their children almost killed them, too.

Did I have a chance to really look at it, and cry for the horrors of childbirth, strapped to a table, unable to move or see anything but the light above me until I saw my own baby, whom I did not push into the world? Have I ever told anyone how deeply sad the entire experience made me, even though it’s balanced by the joy of my child? Maybe I have said so, maybe a hundred times. But the sadness is buried in the busyness.

So now it’s now, and everything hurts. The pain wakes me in the middle of the night, and I check the time to make sure it’s been at least six hours since the last time I took something for the pain. If it has been, then I shuffle to the bathroom, take a few pills, shuffle back to bed and wait for the grip of the pain to ease a little. In the moments of intense pain, I am scared of cancer. And if I am not afraid of cancer, then I am afraid of surgery. And I am afraid of dying before my daughter is an adult. And then whatever I have taken starts to work, and then I am afraid of my blood pressure leading me to some early death in which I don’t see my child as an adult, where she has to figure out life without a mom.

My aunt had fibroids and adhesions and eventually a hysterectomy, and she is 75 years old and shrinking, but okay otherwise. My good friend from work just had a hysterectomy. She feels so much better.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend who has lost about 60 lbs and has made deliberate choices to improve her health. She said that she had to make a decision to live because she knew, like you know, that she was dying. And she did not want to die on the couch in her forties, so she’s doing the things she knows she needs to do to live. She’s moving her body. Eating less. Paying attention to what her body and her brain are telling her. It’s hard, and it did not make her a happier human being. But then, neither did ignoring her own health and passively dying.

And I guess what’s at the heart of what I’m trying to say is that I feel very small and weak here in my giant body. Other women have fibroids, c-sections, abdominal surgery, and their houses are cared for, and their families don’t feel ignored, and I am comparing myself to other women and admitting that I am not strong, and I do not feel capable of creating or finding strength to do difficult things, and other women do/can/have.

How many times have I made a decision to live and then gone about doing the things that I know that I should in order to feel the best in my body and in the rest of my life? I am not brave. I make a decision and then subvert the decision, like an adolescent rebelling from the parent who lives in my head. Once upon a time, I made a decision, a series of decisions, and I lost 85 lbs and ran around the block in the morning and limited calories and applied to graduate school and moved 1000 miles away from home because I believed that I was chasing happiness. I really believed it. Is it enough for me to choose to live, and have that be enough?

I’ve had two doctors appointments in the last two weeks. I have a blood draw today. Another appointment on Friday. An ultrasound just after my birthday. A follow up appointment or appointments. An appointment with a specialist in the beginning of September. I am on the medical industry conveyor belt again, and I have a feeling that the end of this belt ends with abdominal surgery and something being taken from me again. I do not know how to prepare to grieve or how to advocate for myself because I want to advocate for compassion and company in the process.