“It wasn’t my first mutilation, but it was one of my best.” - Awkaeke Emezi
I am altered, you know. I’m six months post hysterectomy, thirteen months post salpingectomy. I spent every day of eighteen months in some kind of pain. The ways I coped were your standard dissociative pretending that I’m functional. You know, no big deal. It served no purpose to speak on it; nobody (not even my doctor) really cared that it felt like I had been ripped out of temporality. It was of no import that the only time I entered the house I call my body was only when the pain chained me to myself. I learned to exist liminally: hurrying and waiting, asking with no answers, caring for the shell without really feeling it. When your life is a stack of medical claim forms and pre-authorizations, you learn rather quickly to hover, to step out of your own shadow for a bit. Your autopilot is on autopilot. Memories are fuzzy even as you make them. You always suspect that you won’t wake from slumber, because this has to be the beginning of death. It certainly isn’t any kind of living.
You sign the forms that say you’re responsible for billing if (or when) the insurance company denies your claim. An insurance claim is how your medical provider tells the insurance company to keep their end of the bargain.They are supposed to honor the contract upon prompting, pay your caregiver, and wait for the next claim. My claims were never denied, thankfully. I got the MRI, the CT scan, the transvaginal and abdominal ultrasounds (9 of each, over a year’s time), the depo-provera, the oral progestin .. the resistance came from the two doctors who refused to test the boundaries of their disdain and condescension long enough to listen to me the first time. This is relevant, you know, because my chart says something about claiming pain. Not reporting it, but claiming it, as in they don’t think it’s real until they decide it is. I agreed to pay for two kinds of claim denial, just in case.
The series of tests, imaging, consultations, and drugs took up so much space I didn’t dare dream or hope. I couldn’t clean or organize a house where I mostly slept and cried. I only halfway expected to make it through a work day or week, never really connected to anything. My home, an extension of my body and overall self, not a welcome or loving place. I could not escape or replace either my body or my home. Caring for either was pointless. I was going to be in pain again before I knew it; no need to sift through old mail or put my clean clothes away. I wasn’t dying, I wasn’t living. Just waiting.
I went into my hysterectomy hoping that I’d “feel better” afterward. Better than out of it, better than stoned all the time in the interest of bare minimum productivity. All well wishes for an improved quality of life didn’t land in my heart as they were intended to. Instead, my brain eked out a series of “thank you so much,” and emoji combinations that made me feel less guilty about my disconnection. I told myself it was okay to do the least because I lacked the spoons for sincerity outside of wanting it all to be over (and wanting to slap the docs who didn’t listen). I didn’t know if my quality of life would shift, though I wanted certainty that shit wouldn’t get any uglier for me.
I have stabilized. Pulling myself out of the chasm between the first hospital trip and the last post-op visit has been gradual. Sometimes, recovery is a grudging taskmaster sending me back to zero like a game of Chutes and Ladders. The house I call my body and the apartment I call my body’s home have welcomed me in ways I wasn’t prepared for. I no longer fill my time with activities or people for the sake of feeling visible. I am remaking my apartment in my own image. Liminality is an occasional place I visit; limbo is not my portion anymore. The claim I lay is to myself and this altered house, which holds my past-present-future consciousness. I make love in, with, and for this body and my mind. I laugh for my peace. I dance for my power. I am at home with an undeniable claim.
Author’s note:
I wrote this essay loosely based on a tweet thread inspired by Awkaeke Emezi’s FRESHWATER and how it gave language to something I previously understood only as feelings. I adore Akwaeke’s whole situation and I thank them for being.