On Wednesday morning, I went in for surgery for my
misbehaving hoo-ha. They were going to take pictures inside my uterus, clear
out some tissue and send it for biopsy, and put in an IUD to hopefully regulate
(Or even stop!) the rogue periods.
Pre-op was deep vulnerability practice. First, they
have you take off all your clothes and get in your hospital gown, the classic
butt-revealer. Mine was an off-sky-blue with an emotionally neutral geometric
pattern that definitely did not stay in my brain. And then, I was chilly, and a
nurse who called everyone “love” asked if I would like a heated blanket. Of
course I would!
She put one heated blanket underneath my head and
another over me. The tenderness, the warmth, and the kindness got me all undone,
a pure Miranda July movie moment if there ever was one. The nurse dimmed the
light above my head and I stared up at the bright rectangle of the light in
front of the dimmed one. Relaxed by the warmth and care I guess, my spirit
shifted to my first walk along the river with The Shy One, that moment of
innocence and uncertainty, before we’d had the chance to break each other’s hearts
twice. “We’re on your time,” he’d said, and I took his hand and turned us
toward home.
I guess the heated blankets (I accidentally typed “hearted.”)
got through all my layers of grief and hurt and loss-of-face and loss-of-hope
and let me inhabit that moment more fully than I’ve inhabited any of our
so-beautiful-I-don’t-know-what to-do-with-them memories. Fat drippy tears
overflowed and I sniffed discreetly so no one in the pre-op room would worry.
These tears were different from all the other ones I’ve
cried this past month-they weren’t the bottomless, howling, laying-on-the-floor grief of the first
days post breakup or the let’s-listen-to-the-song-and-get-some-sorrow-out of
the calmer next few weeks. These good, tender tears were a glimpse of what was
real and good and blessedly, healthfully over.
The wait was long and the blankets cooled. My teary
release turned to anxious boredom. I woke up from anesthesia to navigate a once-again
bloody crotch, this time maybe productively so. My hands were covered in blood
for the millionth time in these messy months, and I was glad I’d caught the
nurse’s name so I could call out for a fresh pad. Someday, no more pads. Maybe
soon.
As I recovered from surgery, more waves of emotion
came in, darker and angrier and harder to write about. Trauma, drugs wearing
off, new hormones, ongoing loneliness and hurt made me prickly and harsh for a
few days, until the next wave of grace came, but that’s another story.