All questions. No answers.

It has been three months since I started the saunas and mayan spiritual healing. In those three months I have been almost pain free. However, in the last couple of days the old familiar knife up the ass sensation has returned. My mind is spinning. What has changed? What am I doing differently? All of a sudden I am less free and more rules. I am checking my bones...all there? I am checking, inventorying, assessing, and measuring.

Is it the bites of frozen yogurt I had? The nibble of chocolate? I skipped a few days in the sauna.

Is it going to be like this now? Always questioning. Is my freedom a mirage of conditions? If I follow the rules than I will be able to live pain free. Somehow, this irks me. Not knowing what controls the sleeping dragon, the endo, is frustrating.

So, today I will avoid sugar and dairy. I will sit in the sauna. I will take a long walk. I will try to feel roots under my feet. I will try to grow roots. I will try not to try so hard. I will let the soft belly of earth remind me to stay here - in my body - although I imagine it might feel good to be a bird.

The Pain Game, Part 3

          Smith College. Haven House. 1995. I shared a room with Iris, born in Korea, raised in Queens. We were sisters from the start. I was tall, she was short; she possessed deep conviction while I was ideologically awkward.  But we shared Wordsworth, Blake, and Keats over cheese pizzas, roasted nori strips, and vodka. If I labored over a paper, Iris knew how little I slept. If I had a call from the doctor telling me that I needed exploratory surgery, Iris was the one to overhear. My friend and my roommate, she knew more than most. If I was going to let anyone close, it was Iris, though even her I kept on the other side of a deep crevasse of intimacy as a point of personal policy.

            On September 19th, I was scheduled for laparoscopic surgery. Images of my uterus had come back with dark stains. No one knew what would be found, but probably, they promised, nothing too serious. Exploratory surgery is just a look-see; a hide-and-seek game between long steel utensils and soft, slippery organs. At nineteen years old, I had just had my first pelvic exam by the resident college doctor who was, peculiarly, male at an all female college. Although the military schools in which I was raised had educated me ad nauseam about the female reproductive system, I was still so young and tender at my own exploration. How was it, then, that strangers now possessed the power to do all the exploration they wanted while I was defenseless under a veil of drugs?

            The night before the surgery, Iris stayed up until the small hours of morning with me as I traveled the terrain of my grief. She laughed when I imitated flapping vaginas and fell silent when I raged at the injustice of surgery, pain, and fear. And when I cried angry tears and Iris drew closer and put her hand on my leg, I swept it away and growled like a rabid animal, “Don’t touch me!” 

            Iris had asked if she could walk with me to Coley Dickenson Hospital in the morning, but I had told her that there was no need since there would be nothing for her to do except wait around in a boring room with a boring TV broadcast that she probably couldn’t turn up or down. Besides, the hospital was two miles from Haven House and in the mornings, the road would be gridlocked with sucking and wheezing cars huffing it up a hill expelling their heavy exhaust. Although there was a path that snaked between the broken pavement and an overgrown field of Queen Anne’s Lace and plantain plants, it was one that seemed less intended for walking and more for shredded tire scraps and runaway hubcaps. I wanted to protect Iris from this harshness - this sensory assault.

            At 4:00 a.m. I finally got out of bed, still dressed in the clothes from the day before and made my way to the empty shower room. From the time I was young, taking a shower frightened me; I heard things on the other side of the water like doors opening, floorboards creaking, sinister voices whispering. I regularly turned the water off and on to see if I could hear more – but always nothing, just the few drips of water falling off my skin. Although I was tired and bloated from crying, I tried to look my best for surgery. I oiled my skin with Palmer’s coconut oil, imagining that my surgeon would have a flash of regret at having to cut into my perfect, beautiful skin. I put on my best Calvin Klein underwear in the event that anyone noticed.

            Downstairs in the kitchen, Diane and Thelma, the Haven House cooks, had already started washing potatoes and peeling Roxbury Russet apples.

            “Hi Diane,” I mock flirted. She was a stout woman in her late 50’s who was stern in the mouth and feather soft in the eyes. In the two years that I had lived in the house, I had developed a kind of working partnership with the cooks: I complemented them on their hair or their mashed potatoes and they made special poached eggs for me even if it was not on the menu or warmed up left-over pasta for me if I was going to miss dinner.

            “Whatcha doin’ up so early, girl?” This was Thelma, always calling us Smith women girls no matter how many times we lectured her on our politically correct status.

            “I’ve got exploratory surgery at Coley Dick this morning,” I said casually as I reached for a water glass. Thelma smacked my hand away before it could disturb the perfectly constructed glass tower.

            “Girl, don’tcha know that you can’t drink anythin’ before you get the knife? You gonna go and mess up your drugs and then you’ll be real sorry if you wake up before they done. Now, whatcha doin’ getting surgery anyway?”

            “I’ve got tumors or something. I don’t know. Maybe it’s cancer, or maybe it’s nothing. I have to go find out,” I choked out. Thelma and Diane were okay as long as I could joke, but the second either one of them expressed concern for me, the deal was off. I wanted to get out of the kitchen as fast as I could.

            “Who’s goin’ to take you, honey?” Diane asked.

            “I’m walking. I’ve got to go.” Dismissing their questions, I put my head down and headed for the door. Although it was still early, I grabbed my coat and left Haven. The brisk September morning air cooled my cheeks where tears started to run into crooked rivulets. I wanted this alone walk. I wanted this alone pain. I wanted each step along the polluted roadside path to hurt just a little. I wanted to feel the pain of my body before the knife gave it cause.

            This pain, I already knew, could not be discovered by a knife. It had no diagnostic code, no prognosis, no treatment plan. This was a pain that moved like dark smoke through my veins; lurked behind my kidneys, my lungs, my liver – it was lighter than my breath and faster moving than a surgeon’s hand. It was an ancient pain whispered into my infant ear by my drunken father. A pain he called rage. It was a pain that dripped out of my mother’s breast – a woman beaten by the hand of her father, her husband. It was that nameless ghost that was to forever be my playmate.

How, then, do you fix this pain? Is it by naming diseases? Biopsying tissues? Blood tests? Bone tests? Through bottles and bottles of pills? Is it through therapy and cruel diets? Through writing and telling? How could I have looked that surgeon in his eyes and told him that although his cuts might be mastery he would never find the source of all this suffering – all he could do is give me a scar to prove the endless trying.

            Hours later, I was wheeled out of the operation room. My eyes were slick with petroleum. I heard the surgeons at my side explaining that they had removed two blood-filled cysts and discovered stage IV endometriosis. The surgeon had pictures of the offending uterus, but all I saw was a blur of some primordial cave. “Probably this will affect your fertility,” he said keeping pace with the fast moving gurney, “if that was something that you were thinking about.” Was I thinking about my fertility? I don’t know. All I was thinking about was how empty that hallway felt with all the nurses and doctors hovering over me.

Real Life Dressed Down

How did it happen that I exchanged a painful period for writer's block? I was full steam ahead as long as I was thinking I was outrunning endo pain... then, that train never came and I just stopped. I didn't just stop writing, I stopped "intensely" caring about anything having to do with my healing practice, herbs, flower essences, spirit guides - basically everything that I have invested the last decade of my life in.

Is this apathy?
What is this, and where am I?

Last I saw myself, I was wearing a bleeding heart and a ripped sense of self. Have you seen me?

I thought pain-free would mean that the things I love and care about would intensify and I would have all this free time to think about canning peaches and knitting pantsuits. I thought I'd write a book in a week and be invited to be on Oprah. I really thought that pain-free would be an orange smily face in the sky and I would be dancing in the streets with flowers in my hair. Maybe my dreams didn't really believe that I could heal. Maybe I didn't count on healing.

Okay, this is what I did:

1. I started having an infrared sauna everyday.
2. I stopped eating everything except organic meat and organic vegetables (this is not me writing in hyperbole - I'm really serious!)
3. I went to a Mayan spiritual healer three times.
4. I started talking to my uterus (maybe like six times in two months).
5. And, I told my partner that I was feeling really angry that for the past two and a half years we've been focusing on her fertility and sending positive thoughts to her uterus while my own uterus has felt neglected (okay, mostly neglected by me) and I have been secretly aching with the desire to be pregnant.

This seems like a reasonable amount of leverage to catapult me into timbuktu.

A dream revision:

Me without endometriosis is just me. Sometimes I am active, witty, and forward moving and sometimes I am inactive, dull, and stagnant. I am learning to see both sides of this orb - my life. Today, I am cranky and anxious. Can I find my body in all of this? Can I find my brilliance in the dull dull dull sky?

with love,
s

The Pain Game, Part 2

Day 2


No pain for the second day.
My siamese twin has been cut clean.
I look for you in the usual places -
wretched teeth tearing me open,
fist and muscle, tissue and bone.
But, you are nowhere.
You are free.


And, I am here,
in this body house -
haunted by stories and scars
without you.
Who am I
now?

***

I had a summer of lust, cigarettes, whiskey, and bleeding. I was 19 years old and on my way to South Carolina to be a camp counselor. My thin nylon tote bag was packed: a bathing suit, two t-shirts, a pair of cut-off shorts, a toothbrush and 30 bucks, the last of my loan money. Everyone else had gone away - summer homes, camps, European vacations, and prestigious internships. My first year at Smith College had been brutal in many ways, the privilege of my peers not withstanding. I was, quite literally, the last one on campus with nowhere else to go and no one to go with me. For the first two nights, I hid in one of the campus houses and slept on a bare mattress. The routine comfort of school days were now replaced with empty echos of laughter and the fleeting visions of friends running down the empty hallways. It should be noted that Smith has a long tradition of hauntings and ghost sightings. There is nothing more lonely than a house full of friends that are not there anymore.

The third day I hopped on a Greyhound bus bound for Bar Harbor, Maine. My brother lived in nearby Ellsworth and I knew that I could find work in the tourist town. When I finally arrived, I had no quarter to call my brother or nickel to scrape the gum off my shoe. I headed to the YWCA where they gave me a bed in the solarium. I didn't have any food, but there were nuns and cans of waxed beans. I ate, made friends with the weathered, battered, broken women who washed ashore and had been ushered, like me, to the safety of the Y. Stories came easily. Lily, in jeans and a plaid red shirt, walked for five days along a highway to escape her abuser. She was raped twice along the way. “It was hard, but I was fed,” she told me again and again. Suzy, with plenty of rice crackers and peanut butter to share, talked about children she left behind and money to be made off of rich tourists. She was a dreamer. She offered me cigarettes whenever she passed me on the front porch. Although I didn't smoke, I took them anyway knowing that she had to take care of somebody. Later, I would offer them as barter for food or friendship. 

It took me two weeks, but I found work in a deadhead shop during the day and at The Golden Anchor Inn during the night. Back at the solarium, a long haired girl my age moved in next to my bed. She was on summer break from Thomas More College and while her friends who migrated with her stayed in fancy inns and worked as maids and bartenders, she opted to stay at the YWCA and study with the nuns. She was a curious dichotomy of virtue and vice. With pretty blond hair parted delicately to the side, she peered at me with the clearest blue eyes. “Do you party?”

Party? Me? Yes, I was 19, but I also had not yet smoked cigarettes, gotten drunk, taken drugs, or attended a party where Pictionary was not the central focus. Yes, I had grown up in Germany and gone to discotechs (dance clubs) and sipped blau Nacht (blue night - a mixture of Blue Curacao and Amaretto). Yes, I had gone unchaperoned to Italy as a 15 year old to escape military school. I had kissed one boy, Anton, an Italian theater geek who I didn't even like. But, partied? Was I an innocent? Yes.

“Do I party? Sure.”

That night, instead of going to The Golden Anchor, I followed my nun to Bar Harlem, a transient neighborhood hidden by mansions and gourmet shops in the center of town. Streets were dark; buildings were shacks with plywood doors and crumbling cement stairs. Drunk sailors who bellowed, puked, and passed out in the streets were left there like crumpled paper lanterns guiding us to the party house. Once inside, the nun vanished into a room of boys and booze and I found an empty chair and a book of densely illustrated pages - a kind of Where's Waldo for adults. I lost myself in underwater menageries and imagined safe places on college campuses where the biggest threats were ghost children laughing in the halls and hiding term papers in Norton Anthologies.

A boy, whom I will call Diego, fell onto me. He was profusely apologetic and profoundly drunk. He was drunk differently from the other kids. Diego was not joyful. He bit at the tequila bottle every few minutes like it was the only thing he could do to keep the golden liquid from strangling him. His blue eyes were red and something else. Something like falling or being trapped. Although I wasn't asking for his company, he was the only one talking to me, so I let that happen. And later, I let it happen that he walked me back to the YWCA. I let him put his arm around my waist because at the same time I had put mine around his. And because, for the second time in my life, I felt that invisible door open between two people who are about to kiss, I let that happen, too.

It should be said that Diego was a mystery to me. A white boy with a shaved head, blue eyes and a Latin name; he was a self-proclaimed skinhead. Having grown up in Germany where skinheads were a real thing, thugs with weapons and violence in their eyes, Diego's tight black pants, steel-toed boots, suspenders, white crisp oxford and multiple piercings were laughable to me. Although he watched Romper Stomper everyday, a cult classic for the skinhead, apparently, he vehemently denied racism and sexism. His father was a poet who killed himself when Diego was 14. He was a philosophy student at a small liberal arts college and quoted Sartre's La Nausee at length. He painted pictures of me that looked more like Pocahontas knock-offs (he was fascinated that I was Lakota and German). Mostly, Diego was tender and severely injured.

Eventually, I left the Y and moved into a shack in Bar Harlem with a greasy over-weight cook, a sailor, and a New Yorker who worked at a kaleidoscope gallery. My room was a closet with plywood walls and two stained twin mattress beds fitted into an L-shape on the floor. There was just enough room to open the door and fling myself over my New Yorker roommate onto my own filthy bed. Diego and I had no place to go, so we made out in the dark streets along with the other summer lovers and sometimes used a hood of a car for a bed. 

Diego was rarely sober and spending anytime with his mouth was like sipping my way through a bar. Eventually, I found whiskey. Here was an alcohol worth my time. It smelled like an old leather chair and stung my mouth like a bitter slap. It reminded me of someone far away - lost to me and my childhood. It reminded me of my father, a man I had never known. I drank it down desperately and vomited through drunken chaotic tears while Diego held my hair.

The days went by. Nights watching the dark ocean through the window at The Golden Anchor, days folding Grateful Dead tie-dyed t-shirts, and the hours in between drinking whiskey, smoking clove cigarettes, kissing Diego, and crying about dead and absent fathers. Unbeknownst to me, a secret was brewing in my body. The moment I had put my arm around Diego's waist, I had started to bleed in oceanic waves and did not stop. I did not have sex with Diego that entire summer partially because I was terrified of his sexuality, partly because he was terrified of mine, but mostly because I was having the longest period of my life. By mid-July the alchemy was complete:  I was anemic, pale, suffering from chronic tonsillitis and my first yeast infection.

My smoky summer of lust and whiskey was over. I called a friend from Smith and had her meet me half way between Northampton and Bar Harbor. I needed to go home, to that vacant campus that had kicked me out before I had found a place to go. I needed to find a doctor and nestle back into the bosom of books and papers and all-nighters spent in the library. I woke Diego up from a mid-day nap, my nylon tote in hand, and apologized for being one of the many that would leave.

***

But,
I was left, too.
I had no father.
I had no mother.
No home to run to.
No arms waiting for me.


Instead
I ran into blood
and into pain
I merged my breath
with a vacant body
and told myself
HOLD ON.


HOLD ON.

The Pain Game, Part 1

Day 1


I have this recurring dream:
I am in a small cave wrapped in tangerine peels and sandalwood scents. A kettle is gently tittering on the fire. Someone is coming up behind me. I cannot see her. She is rubbing oils on my arms and whispering secrets into my hair. I cannot hear what she is saying.

***

When I was 12 years old I started my period. It arrived as two brown streaks on my underwear during an episode of Magnum PI. My Dad was sprawled out on the couch, one leg hiked up on the back like a very long fat cat and the other curled up like its lame cousin. This was my Dad's nightly ritual: Cocoa Cola, TV, couch, sucking his teeth. That, I could count on. Intermission to declare my passage from maidenhood to womanhood was definitely not an option. Since my mom was working late, I absconded to the bathroom to wedge a toilet paper roll between my legs and study the folded brochure in her tampon box.

The next night it was Falcon Crest and a passed note to my bleary eyed mother who was still in her work uniform. It read: I think I started my P. The news did not exactly bring with it fanfare, streamers, or presents wrapped in red paper with very mature ribbons. Instead she promised, through taut lips, to take me to the store in the morning - which would have been day three of my now full flowing period. (To be fair, I should mention here that we lived in a small farming village in Germany and a trip to the store was an hour and a half away. Also, I should clarify that there was only one English speaking channel called AFN, American Forces Network, in which shows like Magnum PI and Falcon Crest were favorites despite the fact that most people in the United States had seen these episodes seven years prior.) Once again, I found myself in the bathroom with my underwear around my ankles trying to figure out the right angle of tampon insertion - which at the time felt like an awakening to a secret women's torture ritual.

Day three of my period started with a long drive and then my mom pushing me out of the car, forcing me to navigate the sanitary napkin aisle solo. This was mortifying. Here I was in a military PX (post exchange), a 12 year old nubile, trying to read boxes and boxes of menstrual pads while a legion of jarheads lurked about. I grabbed a box and ran out the door. When I got home and unwrapped the old-lady-scented plastic package I realized that these pads were about the size and width of a mark (small German paper bill). I'd need about seven of these stuck on my underwear mosaic style to actually do anything. This time when I took my mom's tampon box into the bathroom, I was determined. I inserted one halfway up and walked around like a seasoned cowboy for three excruciating hours.

Day four and the bleeding slowed down. At school I got a pass to the bathroom every 30 minutes to check that I wasn't leaving a bloody trail. The toilet paper was government issue - did I mention I went to military school - which means dispensed in very small thin folded rectangles. To wipe on an ordinary day, one would have to pull about 75 of these things, one at a time. On extraordinary days, it was a 10 minute exercise in tedious repetition. Consequently, most of the girls in my school either walked around with personal rolls of toilet paper hidden in their book bags or suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome. By evening, the bleeding had reverted back to the brown streaks. This did not seem right. Had I injured myself by jabbing my innards with the tampon or pulling it out before it was ready? At the time, it seemed like it had caused serious internal bleeding. Was I dying?  While my family watched MacGyver, I fiercely consulted the Merck manual (the source of my later developed hypochondriasis) for clues of my imminent death. I found something about kidney disease and frantically wrote a new note to my mother: I have brown streaks. Do I have a kidney disease? Renal failure? To this, my mother and her sliver mouth, flicked the paper aside and resumed her ironing and TV watching. We'll talk about it later. That's all she said.

My biological workings were as accurate as a Swiss made watch - every 28 days I started my period at 9 am. Only during daylight savings did I fail to bleed exactly on the hour. By the third month, I had secretly taken up tampon wearing. My best friend, Mary, finally showed me how easy a tool this was. On a non-period day, she pulled down her pants, swiftly plunged a tampon in, answered about 50 questions ranging from "can you poop with a tampon in," to, "are you sure you don't feel a thing?" and then with as much panache whisked it out and popped it into a used Coca Cola can.  After Mary's demonstration, I stole tampons from my mom's medicine cabinet and only used the tiny stick-ons for back-up. About six months into my tampon use, I confessed to my mom that I had been using them. Her reaction was a merry-go-round of anger, disappointment, nonchalance, and back to anger. I don't exactly remember what she said, but I remember going away from that conversation feeling like the town whore for inserting something up my "body," the word my mother used for vagina.

Nevertheless, I continued my rebellious tampon using and bled happily for the next seven years. I was a non-complainer and never let a bloody day stop me from competitive running, swimming, or playing tennis and soccer (and German soccer is way more brutal than American soccer - even the scrappy soccer I played in Texas did not compare to the broken ribs, smashed fingers, and concussions I suffered at the feet of fussball). I bled like a guy with a bloody nose, no problem.

***

I am sitting on a soft nest of straw and silk hairs. I am having my period and there is no shame in this blood staining. Through a small opening in the cave, I see the even coolness of moonlight. I am laughing and the moon is laughing. I wake up from these dreams with a terror in my chest. I have been crying in my sleep and in the morning my eyes will be swollen. What was it she was telling me? A secret? 

Light as a Feather

It is Sunday and I am on the downhill slope of pain. I am elastic with happy--expanding in the ribs and taking it all in.

Today, I ate two chocolate truffles.

Rebel.

I am happy and tumbling towards green pastures of life with resounding laughter and youth. If only for this moment, let me be blind to all the edges--let the next moment retreat back into the dark woods. Let me just be here, this moment.

Later, I will tell you a story about the beginnings of endometriosis: whiskey, lust, dirt, blood. Later, a story about the beginnings of spirit guides: hospital, pneumonia, vomit, haunted rooms.

For now, a conversation with Seth, my spirit guide:

Me: Why do I have endometriosis? Genetic probability? Karma? Spiritual lesson?

Seth: And what do you believe? And what do you want out of this experience? Where is the portal hole for you? Will you walk into pain? Will you believe that there in infinite sweetness in this place that can feel so cold to you? Can you breathe in a place that promises nothing--that holds no light for your deliverance? What does it mean for you, dear s, to be here in ribs with a heart that's still beating? What do you want?

Me: I don't know what I want? Maybe softness, maybe a hand to hold, maybe someone to tell me that it's going to be okay. I want to collapse in some wise lap and be pet on my hair. I want to lay here in silence and watch the light crescent over the earth. I just want a full breath in peace.

Seth: And, what will you do now to have it? Will you ask someone to touch their hand to your face and tell you, "Sweet love, it will be okay?" Will you sit in a quiet place and let that be enough? Can you stop seeking and see that peace is not so far away. What is endometriosis? Maybe, a fair question is, what is endometriosis for you? Perhaps, a sweet salvation?

Me: Yes. Maybe. But, what do I do? I am so afraid of pain. It terrifies me. I want time to stop on days like today. I just want to be here, frozen, heels in the ground. I want to resist the next moment that might change the way I feel in my body. I don't want to feel pain.

Seth: It is not easy, s. It is not easy to lay the body down for this wind called pain. But, you cannot fight the weather. You cannot demand the sun to shine and the rain to hide. You can warm yourself and be kind to yourself. You can prepare for a storm. This is your relationship to pain right now. You cannot stop a force of nature just because you will it to disappear. It is a wild force of nature, pain. You must be wise, prepare and not fear. How to do this? Ask yourself, what do you need in a storm? The shelter of strong. Find this in human companionship. You need the warmth of fire. Find this in the fire of your heart. Write stories. Read stories. Laugh. Build fires. Sit in blankets. Give to yourself. You see, when you stop wishing pain away, you can use your efforts to prepare. When you are prepared, you can sit. And when you sit, you will listen to the wind. What is the wind pain telling you?

Me: Is the wind telling me to write?

Seth: The wind is telling you a story. Be light in your body and the wind will take you. Let the pain take you to a new place--an unexpected place. No resistance. Lay your head down. The wind will carry you.

Me: I'm scared.

Seth: But, the pain is not. Give your fear to pain and watch it burn into ash.

Bones Are Heavy

It's Friday and all day today I have been hovering between bones and clouds--lightheaded and rootless. If I were in my pajamas in bed watching Netflix movies, then who cares. But Friday is a work day and there are rituals of work to live by. Shower. Dress. Eat. In the office by 10. Professional. I am a healer. I work with spirit guides. All communication channels must be clear. People are paying good money for this.

I am sitting across from my client.
She is timid, shy.
She watches me for clues.
Am I listening? Am I hearing her? Can I feel her?

I am trying.
But, I am nauseous again today.
I feel my face flush.
My stomach rumbles fiercely.

Are you okay? she asks.

I don't know. How can I know? What tests can I take? What proof is there to be had? I don't know.

I started a new treatment. It's a chicken and vegetable (yeah, that's it) diet called the Eubiotic Diet. It's supposed to help decrease the inflammation in my body so that I am not in pain every second of my life. So far, I feel spacey and hungry and pissed off. I want butter. I want hard alcohol. I want pizza because, damn it, it's Friday. I ease my discomfort by spending a small fortune on the few gourmet permutations of chicken and vegetables at the grocery store. There aren't many and so I convince myself that coconut is a vegetable and buy frozen coconut pops.

I like to see myself as an adventurer with an intrepid palate. These days, all the adventure I get is whether or not I can get to my office ten blocks away without having to make a wild u-turn home for the toilet.

I want to save face.
I tell her, "Yeah, I'm fine. It's just the energy moving through me."
But,
I am hungry.
I am so hungry.

Marco. Polo.

I have endometriosis.

What that looks like is a ghost. You cannot see anything.

There is no sore to pick. No wound to bandage. No scar to prove anything.

This is what it feels like:

The slowest cold slice of a very long sword.

I feel each cell divided.

Something deep and unknown is being cut open.

I feel myself dividing and I do not know what will become of me.

This is also what it feels like:

FUCK YOU

I HATE THIS

THIS HURTS SO MUCH

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME

Then, a calm. A cry. A hurt. A betrayal.

Endometriosis is a ghost disease. I cannot see it, but I can feel it occupying me. It’s a vague sense of mystery and confusion. I cannot hear what it is trying to tell me. It’s a language I have not learned.

Dear Endometriosis,

What are you trying to tell me?

Love, s

I am creating this blog in the hopes of learning the language of endometriosis. This is a dialogue—one part of the cell shouting across the chasm to the other. Somewhere, there is truth.

Marco.