MySelfLove

“How long have you loved yourself?” Professor Spires asked me recently during one of our beautiful, unplanned, and extremely engaging conversations.

I thought for a second and responded, “About two and a half years.”

Now that I think about it, the truth might actually be one year as I spent that first year and a half learning how to just like myself. I was just so happy that Spires even asked me that question. What I really wanted to say was, “I’ve been waiting so long for someone to ask me that!”

I have spent so much time building a relationship with my Self, I sometimes wish people would ask me how long I’ve loved my Self like they ask me how long I’ve been with my partner, Dan. Perhaps someone might think it an odd, or even a queer question to ask, but it seems quite fitting for today. Except for maybe some professors and artists – all people significantly older than me – I don’t know anyone my age who has yet to build a healthy relationship with their own identity and the body they reside in.

I used to hate myself. In fact, at one point in my life I had a death wish. But as much as I wanted death, when it looked me square in the eyes I didn’t like what I saw. One might say I was scared; I know I did back then. But now, perhaps I would redefine that fear as hope and the acknowledgment that I do have agency.

~

“Do you want to see them?” the nurse asked me as I slid off the operating table towards my clothes. Dazed on lydocaine and still frazzled I managed to puke up a “yaa.”

She rushed over to the countertop and turned back around excitedly, “This is what they look like. Each one will be tested separately to see if the dysplasia has spread.” There were three clear cups, each a miniature version of those cups I’ve had to pee in for pregnancy and UTI tests. They were filled with a clear solution. Inside each of those cups were small slices of my cervix, removed for more testing. And most importantly, these pieces were removed to prevent the onset of cancer.

I tried to look as close as possible. Each one floated about, spinning a little from the nurse moving so fast. They were dark red, almost black, and blood was emanating from them, dyeing the once clear, aqueous solution they now rested in. My uterus finally caught up with the impact of the surgery and started to clench. The nurse hurried back over to the counter, carefully placing the small cups down and organizing things – I didn’t know, or care to know at this point, what those clanking things were. Three pieces of my cervix were sliced off of me, and I wasn’t even sure it was worth it.

~

Two weeks after my first pap smear, I got a note in my mailbox saying my results turned out “abnormal.” There was a card for a doctor named “Kruger” attached to a pamphlet explaining HPV with the words “mild dysplasia” circled in blue pen. What the hell is mild dysplasia? Who the hell is Kruger? And why do I have a pamphlet about HPV? I shoved the pamphlet in my desk drawer screaming in denial.

Months passed as I was determined to ignore the issue. Later on I couldn’t handle the stress anymore so I called the school nurse, set up another appointment for a pap smear with hopes that maybe the first set of results was just a mistake.

Test results: medium/high dysplasia. I had to see Freddy Kruger. Whoops! I mean, Dr. Kruger.

He ripped me up. He didn’t explain to me the procedure. He never looked me in the eyes; in fact, he barely shook my hand. I had a colposcopy, and I didn’t even know what it was. My vagina stunk like stale vinegar and leaked brown goo for two weeks. I grimaced every time I had to pull my pants down to piss.

Results: mild dysplasia. Wait 6 months and get another pap smear.

A year goes by. I get another pap smear. The results are worse. I cry. I scream. What the hell is wrong with me?! I refuse to get cut up by that douchebag, Kruger. As far as I’m concerned he should fucking die. I finally tell my mom what’s happening. She tries to tell me my body will work it out and I have to explain to her.

Look, I have a fucking STD. Alright?! I need to get this shit figured out because I’m scared. I tell her about the first doctor and demand that no penis-bearing fuckwad will ever put a sharp object near my pussy again. Great woman that she is, she finds me an all female-staffed private gynecology practice in Syracuse where I end up with a better explanation of a colposcopy while sobbing my brains out. It’s a biopsy.

We’ve already figured out you have HPV, although we don’t have the tools yet to figure out which kind. A lot of women have this; in fact, when a woman gets an abnormal pap smear we assume it is HPV because it is so common.

It’s common? What?

Test results: Extreme Dysplasia/Pre-Cancer. Come back to Syracuse ASAP and get a LEEP. It’s like a colposcopy, only more of your cervix is removed and you get an anesthetic!

At least I didn’t have to deal with needles stabbing, poking, and tearing at my cervix. Just one needle for the lydocaine along with a sharp pinch, and then the heart immediately speeds up. I felt my face blush and I started sweating. I could feel my gynecologist’s hands brush against the inside of my thighs every once in a while. Was she cutting the pre-cancer out? I couldn’t tell. The nurse held my hand, blabbering about babies. I zoned her out, focusing on the wall behind her, sucking back tears.

~

After my LEEP procedure was finished, I thought about those three floating slices of cervix a lot. Every time I closed my eyes, there they were floating, dead. I couldn’t tell if I was scared of them, proud of them, or if they just grossed me out. I tried to think of them as symbols of trauma. One for being raped. Another for being abused by my father. And the other for….self hate? I displaced my problems onto them, thinking that those Three Pieces of cervix were the problem. And now they were gone. These problems didn’t bother me anymore.

Then one day all my troubles consumed me and I rushed over to my bedroom. I hid under my covers crying. What the hell was wrong with me?! I hated everything. But most of all I hated myself. Gawd, what I would have given to have just run away from myself and be someone else less shameful. Why did I have to have been raped and abused? My body sucked. I had migraines all the time. I hated that I was gaining weight. And my only source of happiness – my partner, Daniel – was always worried about me. I came with so much baggage and I hated it! I was a problem and I needed to be fixed.

I mention all of these happenings briefly to professors and students. I don’t mean to. In fact I regret it as soon as it spills out of my mouth. It was like these stories took on an agency of their own and found ways to slip out without my permission. A professor once said to me after my story jumped out of my mouth and into her ears: “It’s hard acknowledging one’s mortality.”

She was right. I couldn’t understand why, but even though I hated myself so much I knew I didn’t want to die. I’d thought of death before. In fact, I spent the earlier part of my life with a death wish dreaming about being gunned down by police or a gang and watching my parents mourn me. I dreamed of not existing, melting into the universe and becoming the omnipresent and completely neglected body of existence that surrounds and molds us, the space that binds us.

Despite those dreams, I was discovering that perhaps life could be possibly fun.

My gynecologist called me with hopeful results: my cervix still had mild dysplasia, however they were hopeful that by the next pap smear everything would be normal. I tried to stay calm. Every eyelash wished on was about having a healthy cervix, a healthy body. I engaged in activism, day by day, gathering sources to raise awareness about people like me, and finding resources for those already suffering: like me. I gathered the courage to tell my story about sexual abuse in multiple public settings. Slowly, things got a little better.

My next pap smear wasn’t normal and I walked into the gynecologist’s office sobbing again. She explained to me that a lot of women just have abnormal pap smears for the rest of their lives. HPV is permanent, and she treats it hoping that eventually it will lay dormant in my system and not bother me anymore. I deal with yet my third colposcopy, go back to my parent’s house, and sleep for the rest of the day. I am preparing for a sad and lonely future as an HPV infected scumbag whose cervix gets cut up once or twice a year.

My results: completely normal.

I do a double-take. I ask her again and she chuckles wholeheartedly. “Angelica, your colposcopy results came back normal!” I blush and thank her. Immediately, I call Dan and tell him the good news. Happily, I cry in between excited fits of what possibly may have been an acknowledgment, an appreciation for the remarkable surprises in life.

~

Now, I look back on my experience with my “diseased” cervix and think, “Wow, I’ve been to hell and back.” That wasn’t even the first time – and probably not that last. And you know what else I think? Damn, I survived that shit. I am proud, too!

Soon after my finally normal test results, I discovered happiness in solitude. This came by further realizing that pain is a universal language. And although it seemed like my pain ostracized me from the rest of the world – goddess knows I will never feel as lonely as I did then – pain was what kept all of us from connecting with each other. The funny thing was: All of us are/can be connected by our pain. I really learned a lot by acknowledging that everyone knows pain in some form or another. Imagine if every pained individual – and I’m hypothesizing that everyone is – came out and shared their experiences feeling insecure, incompetent, incomplete! We would be acknowledging the shit out of our fears and banishing them for good!

I am thankful for my big mouth, because if I never got my stories out I never would have met so many survivors. I have also met a lot of assholes, but like the stories of my fellow survivors they encouraged me to keep exploring and sharing. My big mouth and my compassion for others is the root of my activism, my healing process, and my identity. Without any of these things, I would not be alive.

And so I crack myself open once more to share with you a love story, my most humiliating and terrifying experience of acknowledging my existence as it is and finally, passionately, submissively, and completely making love to myself as though the next day was not going to happen. While I know that love isn’t, and most definitely shouldn’t be about being terrified, it is ultimately about acknowledging and becoming the one thing that makes us complete, the one thing we are taught to fear: our Self. And while I also know that death is a legitimate thing to fear, no matter how tangible death seems in instances like mine where a seemingly untimely death is upon us, there is always today.

The Self does not know time. To the Self, there is no such thing as tomorrow or yesterday. The Self exists now. Even though the pain is a reminder of time, our Self, ourSelves, and ultimately each other are more importantly reminders of our agency, the possibilities, and the pleasure.

With the Maadest of Love,

Angelica A.