My first gynecological exam

wasn't nearly as weird/scary/uncomfortable as I thought it would be. I found it somewhat patronizing to have her sit there and explain the virtues of condom usage and how various STDs can be spread, but that is information that a lot of people do need, so I won't complain too hard about it. She talked to me about the HPV vaccine and it sounds like something I should look into in the future (if my insurance covers it), so that was helpful. I didn't have a problem talking about my sex life--this is something I do regularly--but it was weird having all of the actual clinical terms injected into that conversation. 

Actual conversational excerpts:

Her: You're currently sexually active?
Me: Yes. I'm not in a relationship, but I'm sexually active.
Her: Okay. When was the most recent time you had intercourse?
Me (with zero hesitation): The 13th.
Her: Wow, you knew that right away.
Me: Well...I was celebrating having turned my thesis in...

(later)

Her: The penises that have been inside you are way bigger than my speculum.


So as she pulled the curtain for me to get undressed, I distinctly recall thinking that as a person who has streaked a semi-public place twice, I really didn't need this privacy to get naked, lol. She taught me how to do a breast exam and that it's important to start now so I get to know "my normal" and anything that recognizes multiple normalities is cool with me. We talked about methods of hair removal, and it was nice to talk about those things with an actual doctor. The stirrups had a fabric covering, so they weren't cold, and the speculum was plastic so it was also around room temperature--no "Nazi steel stirrups" and/or "cold metal ducklips" as The Vagina Monologues had me worried about. (Yay progress?) I actually found most of the experience of the exam itself to be vaguely pleasant, if anything. The pap smear swab tickled--I wanted to laugh. She's not the first person to open it up and look at it, either, which might have also contributed to how not weird it was--I've had that experience (again a la VagMos) with a guy before. Everything was fine and kind of nice except the part where she had to push on my stomach to feel my ovaries. That kind of hurt, but it was still kind of cool that she could feel them being physically present in my body. I like it when things I can barely conceptualize become more concrete and extant in the world.


The part I'm most disappointed/annoyed by is that my insurance company is being stupid and I have to go drop my pap smear results off at this lab like two miles from campus, which means bumming an awkward ride or calling a cab or riding my friend's bike, none of which sounds like fun. Sigh.

Anyway, to anyone else like me who has been avoiding it because people say it hurts or it's awkward/uncomfortable: I felt silly having avoided it for so long because none of the actual exam was a big deal at all. It took a matter of minutes. So go forth and be safe.

Save the titties. Get checked regularly. (And fuck Susan G. Komen)

This reminds me that I promised myself I would make a doctor's appointment over break. For something unrelated--what's the recommended age to start getting mammograms (or, I read somewhere that they're doing ultrasounds on breasts now)--but this is reminding me not to keep putting off health-related things, even if they're going to be awkward and uncomfortable.

This is also why the Susan G. Komen for the Cure can go to a Hell I don't believe in for withdrawing funding from Planned Parenthood, which lots of women (and especially lots of women of color, who are more likely to be uninsured) relied on as a step towards breast health as part of their total health. 

"Every girl learns to hate her body by watching other women hate theirs or hate on each other’s." -- Lisa Bloom

 Ladies, look in the mirror and repeat after me, "Girl, you are gorgeous."

Stephen Colbert is winning so hard

in the game of my affections right now. 

I wanted to blog about these ads last week, but didn't know how to type STEREOTYPICAL, RACIST, and CULTURALLY INSENSITIVE in large enough letters. Or how to convey that I'm fucking sick and tired of women being told that their bodies aren't good enough at every damn turn. SUMMER'S EVE, YOU ARE CREATING A PROBLEM HERE TO INCREASE YOUR REVENUE (and exacerbating lots of other problems in the process). So much shaking my goddamn head here. 

But that's just me whining. Colbert did something so much better than whine. He launched a counter-attack [though I must say that the fact that simply making a very similar ad tailored to men reveals the ridiculous nature of the situation just goes to show how accustomed we've become to women's bodies being problematized in the media...]: 

The Colbert Report
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Confessions:

Small font because I'm whispering this:the hardest part about not hating him is that I have no reason not to still like him.

There. I said it. I know I'm not supposed to. I know this isn't a positive step forward in the healing process. I [think I] know it's a waste of my time. I know all my hardcore feminist friends are shaking their fists and lamenting my lack of pride right now. But silly hearts, they don't listen to heads very well. And my silly heart keeps wondering exactly how wrong it is to continue to be lovers if you aren't in love. K says married people do it all the time. Idk which option is sadder.

But then I remember that everyone deserves relationships that are equal partnerships, in which each partner is getting as much as s/he is giving and visa versa. Everyone deserves equal rankings in the priorities hierarchy. So even though right now I almost feel like if we had just a) listened to each other and b) been straightforward with each other from the beginning, we might have been on the same page the whole time, you can't go from trying to reach grown-person concepts like love and devotion to just trying to have fun and enjoy each other's company. #Lifedoesn'tworklikethat #That'sjustnothealthy

But [insert womp-womps here] #Knowingthatdoesn'tchangehowIfeel  

More songs because music makes the world go round:

 #WhatI'mtryingtobeabletomeanwhenIsayit

(I just mean the goodbye part. He's kind of intense.)

#ExceptmaybeIshouldbesayingthis

#AndwhatIactuallymeanisthis

Even smaller font because I don't even like admitting this to myself: It was easy to say that even if I knew then what I know now, I would do this again. That's still true. It's a lot harder to say that knowing what I know about everything that happened here, I'd still rather not let this go. But, silly little heart, you a) have to stop being selfish, and b) can't always get what you want. 

Continuing the confessions that are really hard to make: I'd never been treated so well in my whole life. That will be the hardest thing to let go of, I think. 

Something Incredible Happened Saturday Night...

Nearly 8 years ago, my mother and stepfather got divorced. [Insert chorus of HALLELUJAHS! here] Lots of wonderful things resulted from this, along with something terrible. As soon as the divorce was final, my stepbrother's mother decided that he was no longer to have any contact with his "other family". She wouldn't let him talk when we called, and when we kept calling, she changed their phone number. My brother, the one who is the same age as me, with whom I bathed and slept and played and grew and loved during all the earliest years of my life, was suddenly gone forevermore. 


I've missed him to varying degrees throughout the rest of my life, more and more since Greg reminded me what family is supposed to feel like. I don't really give a shit that we're not technically related anymore; that is my brother and I won't really tolerate anyone saying anything different. When he turned 18, my mom and I really started trying to get back in touch with him, because his mom couldn't stop us anymore. First we called his father, but [don't get me started on] that man hadn't spoken to his firstborn son in years and was disturbingly disinterested in our desire for reconnection. Fuck him. So then I started periodically searching Facebook in an attempt to find him, but he has both and very common first name and a very common last name, and I didn't know where he lived or where he was going to school or anything that could help me narrow the search. I have two friends at school who live in the area he lived in when were growing up, and I asked them if they knew someone by his name, and one of them did! But it wasn't him. 


To make a long story short, we were very discouraged. Short of hiring a private detective, there seemed to be no way to put our little family back together, and that fact was generally a small piece of sadness inside me all the time. (I am so sick and tired of people ruining MY family with THEIR issues. You no longer wanting to call someone "boyfriend," "husband," or even "son," does NOT automatically entail that I no longer want to call him "mine" in some form. There are some bonds I can never imagine breaking, no matter how hard they are strained.)


I can't really even express in words, then, how I felt when I checked my phone after watching a movie and saw that I'd missed a bunch of texts, two of which were as follows: One from my little sister saying B**** had friended her on Facebook, and one from Facebook saying those impossible little words: B**** J****** has requested to add you as a friend on Facebook. I was just talking the other day about how fragile life is, how it can just turn upside down and inside out in the blink of an eye. Sometimes upside down is a wonderful wonderful way to be. Life has this funny way of scaring and blessing you at the same time. My dad is so sick, just laying in bed because sitting down hurts, waiting for a call that he can come back to the hospital, and I am so worried about him. But my long-lost brother just walked back into my life and has missed me as much as I have missed him. He wants to see me as soon as possible and I just want to hold him for hours. I just want to look at him so I remember his face again. I have his number and I can't wait to hear his voice.

Confession: Everything I ever say about family and how mine isn't that big a deal to me is total and complete BULLSHIT. I think I just tell myself that to avoid remembering how much it hurts to have lost such important parts of it. But I don't have a word for how deliriously ecstatic Facebook-chatting with my brother the night before last made me feel, or for how terrified I am about my dad's health right now. My friends are my family, but my family is my family too, and my heart is feeling so much at one time right now. Daddy, I love you. BJ, I love you too. There are some bonds that can never be broken.