I walk toward the doctor’s office, heart racing, my palms beginning to moisten. I inhale, exhale a few times. Still, I gasp for breath.
How much will this cost me? What will be my diagnosis this time? Will I survive what’s happening to my body?
I had scheduled a doctor’s appointment after enduring a cycle so heavy, I feared I might lose consciousness. I am a 46-year-old single woman who lives alone. The thought of someone finding my decayed body weeks later at the bottom of the stairs haunts me.
The doctor presses into my stomach. I feel something rattle inside me. My body stiffens in pain.
“Your uterus is the size of a 14-week pregnancy,” she says, eyes widening.
“Wait—can you repeat that?” I say.
She nods. “I can feel a large fibroid in the front.”
For a moment, I hold my belly. I sit with the self-betrayals: the times I ignored pain, quieted intuition, and numbed trauma with distraction.
After prescribing medication, the doctor tells me to get dressed. I slip on my jeans, my body still trembling.
Tears streaming, I drive away in silence. I ask my body for forgiveness.
For every time I pushed through pelvic pain and called it discipline.
For every time I stayed when my body recoiled.
For every time I said yes when my body screamed no.
For every time I believed suffering was a woman’s rite of passage.
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