(cw: disordered eating; pejorative language re: mental health)
I.
Hysteria was basically the medical explanation for ‘everything that men found mysterious or unmanageable in women’, a conclusion only supported by men’s (historic and continuing) dominance over medicine, and hysteria’s continued use as a synonym for “over-emotional” or “deranged.”
– Ada McVean “The History of Hysteria“
II.
III.
Born too late to have a doctor apply the Konami cheat code to my pelvic floor in order to cure what ailed me, I starved myself as an exorcism, whittling myself down to the bone to carve away my ‘crazy.’
IV.
I was sane until I started bleeding, or so I was led to believe. From that point on, my every mood was suspect. Every twinge of discontent evidence of hormonally-induced irrationality.
“Must be her time of the month.”
[Insert cis male laughter here.]
The guys at school I could brush off. The ones at home, not so much.
If I could just go back. Stop bleeding. That would fix it.
I would be sane again.
They would respect me again.
My thoughts. My feelings. My moods.
I would respect myself again.
No longer pulled under the tide by the grip of the moon.
V.
“O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon; that monthly changes in her circled orb”
-Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet).
VI.
Though the cover shouted “Get the Fat Out!” in bold white letters, the non-cover story of my dad’s running magazine warned that young women who trained too hard were at risk of amenorrhea, due to having too little body fat to maintain regular menstrual function.
So I started running.
And running.
And when that didn’t work, I starved myself to make the bleeding stop.
And then I kept going.
VII.
Until one day, I stopped.
And when I came around to nourishing myself again, the nourishment ran through me like the first meals of a prisoner-of-war finally set free.
Until it didn’t.
(Once I started bleeding again, my parents let me get second piercings in my earlobes as a reward.)
VIII.
The fall after I started eating and bleeding again I had to write my own version of the Declaration of Independence for English class. I wrote some melodramatic thing about breaking free from the tyranny of the compulsion to stop taking up so much damn space in the world—the compulsion to have control where I had none, (or where I perceived that I had none)—though I didn’t put it that way then, because I still didn’t know what its real name was.
IX.
Have you and your body come to a truce?
If so, what are the terms?
X.
In my mid-30s, after years of wrestling with the ways my uterine lining asserted itself and my ovaries followed suit (and vice versa), my body and I came to a quiet understanding.
I embraced myself and the fullness of my body just long enough to have a me to miss when I undid the embracing.
XI.
I was just shy of 40 when he asked me, as we climbed into bed,
“Are you going to turn crazy when you hit menopause?”
“Most of the women I know turned crazy when they hit menopause.”
I didn’t know what to do with that question.
How to respond to that assertion.
Could I promise I wouldn’t?
What did “crazy” even mean?
For the rest of the marriage, I tied myself in knots trying to prove to him my sanity.
XII.
XIII.
Almost halfway through my forties and still stubbornly bleeding, I finally have a answer for him, though he’ll never hear it:
When they finally call it,
When I’ve stopped bleeding for good,
I’ll gather the others under the full moon,
(The uterus-havers—
the men
& the women
& the everyone in-between—
& those who let theirs go
a long time ago,
willingly, or no)
And they’ll wrap wreaths of flowers around my head,
And string bells across my bare hips.
I’ll let the hairs grow around my nipples,
(And make friends with the stubborn one on my chin),
My breasts will stay out all night,
longing to swing like pendulums,
And our dance will be a dowsing,
calling forth streams of freedom.
Postscript.
More likely, I’ll dance in front of my window, fully-clothed (with all my lights on), and not care if the neighbors see as they go past.
kfw 2021
Undusted Corners 