This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins

Author:Morgan Jerkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

It took me over a year, and much discussion with my mother, to decide whether I would go through with the surgery. The same thoughts kept swirling in my head: Was I a bad feminist if I went through with the surgery? What if the only reason I wanted it was because I was worried about what some man would think? What if the pain was all psychological, a direct result of my insecurity dealing with the body that God gave me? Why couldn’t I just deal with the pain? I wasn’t suffering from some chronic illness. I didn’t have cancer. I didn’t have gangrene or hepatitis B. Why couldn’t I suck it up? The pain was not impairing my life at all. My foremothers had gone through far worse, and I had the nerve to care about some extra skin between my legs. That’s not strength, I thought, that’s cowardice. Then I remembered all the times I’d had to skillfully maneuver the lower half of my body while in the midst of conversation so that no one would think that there was something wrong with me. I thought about frequent bathroom trips and the subsequent pain whenever I tried to readjust. I relived the thick of summer when I was both hot and sore, when time would pass me by as I sat with my legs splayed across the floor. I didn’t tell anyone other than the man who I was starting to date about my imminent surgery.

I did not have a chance to be afraid. For the entire duration of the car ride from my Harlem apartment to Long Island, I tried to memorize my body’s topography: every blonde hair on my arms, dry spot on my face, stretch mark on my thigh, gnawed skin on the sides of my fingers. I chose not to have my procedure in a hospital because I wanted as short a recovery as possible. In the weeks leading up to the surgery I’d had to get a handful of shots; fill a series of prescriptions for hydrocortisone cream, Vicodin, and Percocet; read through an informational packet about what I must do pre- and postoperation; and take a call with the doctor so he could elaborate on any part of the process. The packet seemed like a fair list of rules and guidelines, such as no eating before the operation and mandating that I shave my vulva before I went into the office. One page listed what might happen to me: nerve damage, sexual dysfunction, scarring, death. I swallowed a large wad of saliva as I read, figuring that this was standard practice as well. I’d had a root canal years ago, when I also could have theoretically died. The last page, however, was what almost caused me to renege on my decision altogether: it was titled “Psychological Healing.” Psychological healing? I was reducing the size of my inner left labium, not getting a hysterectomy or a mastectomy. What kind of psychological healing

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.