Order from Disorder

 It’s been a foggy few months but the past month has really been dissonant. Luckily, the bad back pain, dizziness, and nausea was tamped down by taking iron supplements, but it’s still a slog. I’ve been sleeping a lot and eating feels like a chore. Bending makes me feel not a day less than 100 years old. Sometimes I can feel weird throbbing or pokes in my lower abdomen when I’m just lying in bed.

But support groups are helping me find info. My next appointment is coming up on Tuesday so I’m hoping for some more forward movement towards the solution. I hate this sort of limbo where I’m grasping to fit all I can into the small windows of time I can sort of function.

The craziest thing is that I was never warned this was not only a thing but a common thing. That the cases of fibroids that didn’t cause trouble are actually lesser than the ones that leave women in suspended misery and depression while our healthcare system treats it like it’s not a big deal… despite the fact that we’re insisting it’s robbing us of a functional life. Despite the fact that I’m not spreading this whole suspended process on social media, I feel like on the other side of this, I do want to find a way to spread awareness. Yet when it only affects women, it often just gets pushed aside and ignored even more. Don’t say Breast Cancer Month is a thing though. Men aren’t excluded from the diagnosis. Them being disproportionately affected only makes it more taboo for those few men to discuss it, to nobody’s benefit either.

It’s weird how often you see the ridiculous things that people believe about women’s anatomy; not just how men resent us thinking we do things like having control of when we have periods to form excuses for not doing things but also how some women have no clue how their unique anatomy works or even where everything is. That it’s somehow perverse to normalize these parts as easily as the rest of anatomy. That they never come up even in high school science classes and that sex ed, which is a weird place to isolate it, can be opted out of as well. Why, in an age of more advanced genetic testing, we’re still so archaic in the approach to the significance of those differences.

I guess because they’re tucked inside our abdomen, it’s easier to forget their prominence in our overall health. Yet it’s because men’s reproductive organs are so accessible and easy to alter that it’s always been weird to me that women are expected to be more sacrificial in protecting against sexual interactions and their consequences. That even though a woman’s choices and surgeries are decidedly major and proximal to many other important organs, men’s ego and cowardice and discomfort over being altered is less considered the better alternative despite very well being the case. It’s always been so odd to me that the much higher risk to women is considered the acceptable sacrifice despite the very low risks to the men.

Not being sexually active, I don’t really have a horse in that race, but it all branches into health concerns that only affect women and how they are similarly pushed aside, even by women, unless we are hit with the worst of it. And then we look for very private places to find answers because we don’t want the weird politics and judgement that always stirs up when a woman has a decision to make about those parts more protected than her. And yeah, I donate to Planned Parenthood because this feels like an active way to make sure women have access to help, yet I can’t help but feel I want to do more for awareness. Similarly, I don’t like how awareness is usually approached so I think a lot about how to be more effective. How to be subtle but strong, almost subliminal in the delivery of things that need to be common knowledge…

In any case, I’ve been able to keep my spirits up with small things. Installing lights above the kitchen sink and a paper towel holder. Climbing up on a ladder to dust my high shelves. Doing some laundry and cleaning. Just managing to find the things I can do rather than the things that remind me of what I can’t do right now. Crocheting little projects. Doing graphic designs.

With my nephew graduating from high school this year, I really want to start looking for design jobs again. But finding stable work also has to wait for getting my health back in order. In the meantime, I give myself challenges to keep my skills sharper. I care for my pets and look for ways to make life smoother. I plan and prepare for recovery. I fill the wait between with manageable tasks, confront all feelings as valid and let them pass through as needed. It takes great effort to balance things that used to be second nature. I anticipate someday having a body that works in a way that makes sense to me again. I don’t know this body and it feels weird to be in it. I can’t wait to feel like I belong in my own body again.