They

 

 

They say cracks are where the light comes in,

Forgetting that meant to see the sun, I had to first be broken,

Forgetting that the world will spin and my view will again darken

Forgetting the light I have within that only pain can dampen.

 

They say they’ll fill the cracks with gold

Claiming that gold will give me beauty, make me sparkle, make me glow

Claiming the cracks make me precious, give me value, that they refine.

Claiming they’ve given me a gift, promising that I will one day know.

 

They say so many things to deflect blame for their own comfort

Disregarding I had beauty before the cracks, no need to preen

Disregarding value I always held, these bonds of gold given for no reason

Disregarding the light that shone from me, no cracks needed to be seen.

 

They say that passing time heals all,

Ignoring the need for healing means harm first had to happen

Ignoring that memories are scars that remain when healing’s done,

Ignoring dreams and plans and hopes for life, leaving only that which I am trapped in.

 

They say that now I’m beautiful, I’m valuable, I’m strong

Saying that they didn’t break me, they just helped me see the sun

Saying that the cracks they made caused me no loss and being shattered didn’t unmake me

Saying I am complete and whole, that bonds of gold meant that I had won.

 

They say so many things to deflect blame for their own comfort

Denying parts of me were lost, since the breaking was begun

Denying that scars are often painful, keepsakes of each and every breaking

Denying from behind the cracks, who I might have been is gone

 

They say what doesn’t kill me will make me stronger,

Believing that these cracks are why I am here existing,

Believing they gave me the will to survive, the armor needed for survival and

Believing that being alive equates living.

 

They say so many things and yet I’ve never heard

Why they chose to break me so that I could see the sun

When they could have chosen instead to love me and been the sun that lit my path or

Why they chose instead to shatter, to make me break and come undone.

 

They say so many things and yet I’ve never heard

Like “I was wrong” or “I am sorry” not once have they chosen to grow

They say instead that I’m ungrateful; that I’m ugly and unknowing

They believe that they define me, when they’ve got no cards to show.

 

So I say I am beautiful, that I am valuable, that I am strong

You see, despite your willful blindness, I have been all along.

 

Written by: Darlene Cunningham 5/13/2024

Hopes

It's funny the way life seems to go all sorts of directions that you can't really predict. Every day you are a different person then the one you were before and before you know it, you look back and don't recognize the person you were before.  We are in a constant state of becoming.  I guess the question is: "What do I want to become" or rather "Who do I want to become?"  At the end of my life, I want to look back and feel that I had more moments in which I was better than I was the moment prior, than ones in which I wasn't.

Don't get me wrong; I don't for a second believe I won't slip and have a bad day, say the wrong thing, cause someone pain, or totally mess things up.  I fully believe that I am a flawed human and on my journey of becoming, there will be times I become someone I don't like.  There will be times I am tired, in pain, angry, frustrated, hurt, sad, or withdrawn and times where I will lash out and cause harm.  My hope is that with each instance, I will learn and adapt and become someone better because of those experiences.

The Pain Point

 I'm at that age where you risk injury just by sleeping or breathing or moving.  Somehow in late 2017, I injured my lower back...like my waaaaay lower back; my lower upper butt region if you will.   As a result of this injury, when I go from sitting to standing, I have to stop halfway (picture the stereotypical old lady👵 with a walker because...accurate,) pause, and then straighten into a standing position.

I am fine sitting, I am fine standing, but that halfway point causes pain sharp enough to stop my body, often against my will.  It's the pain point. It's the point where I have to stop and make a conscious choice to sit my ass back down or force my body to finish standing. Leave it to me to use my spine as a life metaphor...

I have never been someone who does something by half measures.  I am always over the top, 100% invested or 100% not invested; too loud, too much, too often, too intense, too many presents, too much singing, too many colors, too too too...and it has always either served me or served me up.

The funny thing is, that I always feel like I am not enough or the things I do or give are not enough. So I do more, give more, try to be more, begging the cool girls to like me, overplanning events/holidays, calling/emailing/texting too often, and frequently driving everyone batty.  

I mean how can we possibly decorate holiday sugar cookies if we don't have icing in EVERY shade of visible light and is six dozen cookies enough or is it too many? (Who are we kidding? There is no amount of cookies that is too much;🍪I should go buy more ingredients.🛒)

There have been times where I am so much, while believing I am not enough, that I've ruined the fun of things. Decorating the Christmas tree and yelling at the kids or going behind them and changing things up because the ornaments weren't "where they belonged;" being upset that a kid cried off their Halloween face paint after I took too long trying to make it perfect for them (or for me?)  

I just wanted it to be perfect; I wanted them to have the perfect costumes and the perfect makeup and and and they cried. They already thought they had perfect costumes, but I couldn't see it.  I could only see this fucked up vision of the future where they would look back on it and only see that I didn't get their faces painted right.  

To some degree, I know that is also just a parenting thing.  We worry.  This is not that. 

I always feel like I am not enough.  This is actually nothing to do with the kids or parenting and everything to do with me.  I don't know how to make the decision to sit my ass back down, to let myself be enough right where I am, with only 8 colors of icing for two dozen Pillsbury cookies and with a kid in her homemade werewolf costume whose tail looks rather like that of a kangaroo...

Our bodies have pain receptors to warn us that something isn't right.  The transition from sitting to standing has a pause in the middle to allow me to prepare for the pain or to alter the way I move so as to not cause it.  From that point on, I choose to feel it or avoid it or stay in it (which when doing dishes or many things that require leaning over something, leaves us no choice but to stay in it.)

I know that many people who love me will say that I am just enough, perfect as I am, and if someone thinks I am too much then they just aren't my people.  My response is, "I 100% agree, but what about when I am too much for myself?"

 As a note, I've done my own extensive longitudinal research about the comorbidity of having ADHD and being told you are too much. My finding from these studies show conclusively that the two are 100% correlational; occurring in nearly 150% of cases. 

(Oh hush, I never said I was a mathematician! or a researcher...)  The topic I am discussing is not this.  It's more internal.

Remember when I said that this has both served me and served me up?  Over-delivering on a work commitment can be good for me; being a quilter and getting those points to line up perfectly....damn that's sexy.  Constantly begging for the cool girls to like me to the point of changing my handwriting, the way I move my hair with my hands, giving my belongings away because they wanted them, chipping away at all the things that make me me because then they might like me...

There are takers and they will keep making you feel like you aren't enough so that you never stop giving/doing/hoping. I could constantly be pushing past that pain point without the pause and just worsening the damage until one day, I might not be able to straighten up. 

Who I am will never be too much and never was;  I am just the right amount of much.  I am learning that maybe the pause isn't the breath before the pain, so much as the vista I've climbed the mountain for; stopping to actually see all that I have done and realizing that I can sit my ass back down, because I don't need to push any further; I've done enough and now it's time to enjoy it. 

In art circles, there's a saying "Done is better than perfect."  In quilting it means that I can keep fussing over tiny details working and unworking a seam but never finishing because it's not good enough for me; or I can finish the quilt and give it to the person I made it for who doesn't see flaws, but only sees love and perfection.

I actually think maybe the saying in these instances should be "Done is perfect." Two dozen cookies and eight colors of icing; a kanga-werewolf-aroo costume, smudged face paint; a Christmas tree with all of the ornaments in one spot, and you know the one common denominator when the kids talk about it?  It was perfect. It was enough. I was enough. 

 I'm learning that halfway can be the whole journey and still be a perfect journey.

                        

Dear Grandma,

        

    Some days it's really hard for me to think of you without getting choked up, most days, actually.  I think that I'll call you and ask if I can freeze mushrooms, or to send me the family address list or any number of the random things I had always called you about and then I realize you aren't there anymore. 

     I still know your phone number for the house I grew up in on weekends and school holidays,  At least I'm pretty sure I do.  I programmed it into my phone about a year before you left and last Christmas, when I got my new phone, I finally deleted it.  I cried a little then.  It was like the last vestige of holding on to you.

      The last time I saw you was in 2003, I was traveling from Alaska to New Mexico with David and Jericho.  I didn't even have Aidan then.  I only got to see you for an hour or so.  I regret deeply not taking more time, not hugging you a little bit longer or helping you more, while I could.  You always had time for me, no matter when I'd call or what I needed.  You were always there.

     I find myself telling the kids stories about how I grew up and most of them include you in some form or fashion.  I smile when I tell them that you rarely let us play on the side of the park that had playground equipment.  They look at me with shock and think that you must have been mean, but what they don't realize is how our imaginations took flight climbing on the rock wall in the park off Lower River Rd or while we were climbing the hills in Gibson Park to play on the railroad tracks and venture through the tunnels that led from Gibson Park to Riverside Park.

      I used to get so upset that you wouldn't let us play on the playground at Gibson; you would only let us walk around the duck pond.  Now I realize that I saw so much more of my world because you did that.  I looked for duck eggs and chased seagulls and burned off so much energy.  I wouldn't have done those things if I could have played on the swing-set or gone down the slides.

       I'll never forget the first time I heard you say "how cool!"  It was about a duck doing something at Gibson.  I looked at you in shock, because "cool" was not a word grandmas said.  

The other day I told the kids about how you would go out in the "country" (all of Montana...:) ) and drop us off on the side of a dirt road and drive waaaaaaaaaaaay down the road and park, making us walk/run/goof around until we got to it.

 I'm sure some parents now-a-days would shit their pants with indignation, but we were outside in the sun. We were picking Black-eyed Susans, looking for grasshoppers and racing. We were being kids.  You gave us that.

      Along with just forcing us to use our imaginations and to be outdoors, you also taught me so many things.  At times the lessons seemed harsh, like when I went to you for a hug, crying, when I was 11 or 12, because Scottie had called me ugly.  You hugged me a little, but you pulled back and in your grumpy way you asked me if I was ugly.  When I said no, you said, "why cry about it if it isn't the truth?"  I have caught myself saying the same thing to my kids when they get their feelings hurt by others.  I know they don't understand now, through the haze of hurt feelings, but I hope that one day they will understand, like me.

     I will never forget the magic of your kitchen.  It wasn't that what you cooked was some epicurean delight, it was that it was where we lived.  Scott, Caleb and I all had our own place at your table and each place had it's own cutting board and we all helped cook.  We cut vegetables, measured ingredients, stirred pots, and watched in awe as you made muffins out of cornflakes, shortening, two eggs and a paperclip...wait, the paperclip was MacGuyver, but you were just as magic as he was.  You almost never measured anything and still food came out amazing.  I am not the cook you were, but because of you I am not afraid to try things with food and in life. In large part, because of you, I am not afraid to try new and unknown things.

      In the spring and summer we were always elbow deep in dirt.  We always planted the flowers at the church and maintained the beds.  We went to the cemetery and helped you lovingly plant beautiful flowers on the graves of your mom and dad.  I never saw you cry, but I know now that you must have been emotional every time you did it.  We also planted flowers on the graves of several of your friends.  Never did it occur to me how sad it must have been to be the one still here.  Not wishing for death, but having to go on without the ones you had been close to, wishing, like I do with you, that you could just pick up the phone and hear their voices.  You honored them by making their resting places beautiful.

      When I tell people now that I grew up playing in the cemetery and climbing the cannon statue in the military section and hoping with crossed fingers that the noises we heard (grasshoppers and bees) weren't snakes in the grass of the REALLY old cemetery that we'd tromp around in, they look appalled that anyone would consider the cemetery a place for kids.  But I thought the old headstones were beautiful.  I made rubbings and read the dates and you always taught us where to walk so we weren't actually walking "on" someone.  We grew respectful of those places.  They piqued our imaginations and in a way taught us that death was as normal as living and the dead were nothing to fear.

      I never did get the chance to tell you that I am sorry I called you the "mean grandma."  I don't think I ever said it in your presence, but I did say it.  There have been so many times in the past ten years that I have been grateful for your "meanness."  All those lessons, chores, and even the few spankings were well deserved and helped shape me into the person I am now, the person you will never get to meet, but I think you would be proud.  Oh the many transgressions my young self counted against you:  making me fetch food out of the deep freezer from your scary, dirt-floored basement, making me eat cooked tomatoes and squish raw hamburger into meatloaf with my bare hands, always making us do so many chores, making us clean the garbage that had blown in under the many pine trees in your front yard, even though the needles scratched at our arms and the ground smelled loamy, making us take naps and/or spend time being quiet in the afternoon;  so many horrible things you forced upon us! 

        I will never forget watching you crochet or that you taught me how.  I remember making yards of chain stitches with that giant ball of end pieces left over from your many afghans or potholders. All of my stitches were always differing sizes and tensions, but you were always so patient helping get the knots out or to learn a new stitch.  You even taught the boys, we all had a ball of yarn and a hook.  I've never gotten as good at it as you were, silently watching Trinity Broadcast Network, the occasional chuckle or "Amen!" coming from your direction and your fingers ever poised crocheting away.  Idle hands were never yours.  

      Today was a good day, Grandma.  I bought the kids a dictionary.  I bet if you were here that would make you smile.  I know that most people wouldn't understand how buying a dictionary could be such a bitter sweet event, or that it is even an event at all, but you would.  I was the child of oh-so-many questions.  why? what? where? when? and I never stopped talking.  I know now how trying that can be because I have my sweet child, Aidan, who is much the same.  And while I was an inquisitive child, you always tried to answer me or teach me to answer myself; hence the dictionary.  

       I will never forget the day you made me tapioca pudding.  (Oh my gosh how I love tapioca pudding!)  I asked you what tapioca was and you handed me a little spiral notebook and a pencil and told me to go look it up and write down the definition.  I'm sure I rolled my eyes and sighed that big indignant sigh.  It turns out that tapioca comes from the cassava root.  Once I knew that, I had to look up cassava.  I think I was 7 or 8 years old that day and in the years following that I filled up 3 or 4 of those notebooks with the words I didn't know the meanings of.   When I was a young adult, you gave me those notebooks.  I wish I knew what I had done with them in all these years of transient movement.  

       So today while shopping for a book on how to use Excel 2010 at my new job, I saw something that made me so excited.  I saw this beautiful dictionary.  No, it isn't the old beat up hardback on the bottom shelf at your house (I wonder if that dictionary is still out there somewhere.  What I would give to flip through the pages.  Would it smell like your old house?  Would I be transported back to the doorway of the guest bedroom huddled up at the end of the couch, with a little notebook and a pencil on my lap?)

It is shiny and new and has 35,000 words in it many of them with illustrations and now, when my kids ask me what a word means, I can hand them a little notebook and a pencil and say, " Go look it up and write it down," and even though they will have no memories of you (a fact that breaks my heart) they will still have a piece of your legacy.

       I know it is selfishness that makes me wish you wish you were still here with me and that you were still only a phone call away.  I think the hardest part is that after all the struggles I have had in the past five or six years, when you were always there, I am finally settled and life is so good and I wish you could see me now.  I wish you could see how happy I am and have that comfort in your heart because I know you prayed for me and hurt for me and wished mightily that life would be kind to me and that I would learn to be the strong woman that I think I now am.   I wish you could see these beautiful smart kids and that I'm actually doing a good job.  I wish I could come over and sweep your floors and haul your trash.  I'd give anything in the world to help take off your shoes or fetch you a "poppie" from the fridge and my heart hurts to know that there will be no more "pikinicks" or days spent cooking a holiday meal.  I miss my cards on every holiday with love from “Granny Grump.”

      I love you, Grandma Maida.  I hope that you went “home” and that somehow you are at peace.  I often wonder about your life and if you felt more happiness than hurt and took more satisfaction than disappointment.  Your life wasn’t easy and I know there were a lot of heartaches. I hope that you had more joy than sadness and that the love you always gave so selflessly rained down on you just as copiously.  For my part, I know you are missed and a hole has been left by your passing.

  If you are out there, seeing me, know that I am happy and rest peacefully knowing that all is well. 

  ~Darlene

The Women, they SPARKLE!!!

And no, I am not talking about vampires.  I’m talking about the women of Texas.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I actually have a fair amount of admiration for the skill involved in coordinating the vast array of sparkly accessories so as not to be gaudy but, as in many works of art, to draw the eye across the entire body. 

The women of Texas are a breed entirely separate form the women that exist anywhere else in the world.  Don’t get me wrong, every other woman on earth is capable of the things I am talking about but, for some reason, there are just more women in Texas that do. 

Interesting quirks about Texas Women:

• They don’t have to use a “bump-it.”  They seem to be born with the knowledge of how to make their hair just do that.  Maybe it’s a genetic thing?  Regardless, the perfectly coiffed “Texas Bump” is at once a masterwork and a curiosity. It makes me wonder…should my hair do that?

<<<<She is OBVIOUSLY from Texas!

They glitter.  I am not joking when I say that the women of Texas sparkle.  Sure, their personalities are great, but I am meaning this in the most literal sense.  If their clothing doesn’t sparkle, they find a way to add it.  It often starts from the ground up.  For instance,  were you aware that you can buy lotion that leaves your skin with a light sheen of glitter?  I wasn’t.  It’s applied right after you get out of the shower, no matter where you might be going after said shower!  They get glittery acrylic nails…on their TOES!!!  Their fingernails send sparkling shimmers glinting off surrounding surfaces every time a light hits them, and even though you don’t want to, you stare.  Their shoes all glitter; regardless of the age of the wearer or the intended function of the shoe.  Often, I have seen denim with a smattering of glitter or a design in rhinestones.  You may think I am representing this as a negative, and in some ways, it is a bit much (I’m sorry, the glitter on your shoes doesn’t coordinate with the glitter lotion, glitter jeans, glitter shirt, or any of your sparkly accessories.  You do, however; make a lovely accessory to any disco….FAIL.)

They wear boots with anything and everything.  There isn’t an outfit that boots don’t go with.  And what’s really sick…they always look good.  Now, Heidi Klum may not agree with the wearing of one of these outfits, but I can attest that most of the women I have seen sporting these looks are gorgeous. 

The women of Texas are ballsy.  Maybe it’s the extreme nationalistic pride….OOOPS, STATE pride.  Everyone here thinks that Texas is the best place on Earth.  Many of the religions here have converted their biblical translations to replace the word “Heaven” with “Texas.”  Seriously, how many states do you see tattooed on people??  I mean it, type “Texas tattoos” into Google Image search sometime…

The women here are powerful women.  They are typically very driven and know exactly how to get what they want.  And the funny part is, most of them are really nice about how they do it.  I have never met a set of women so successfully achieve so much.  Their confidence never seems to waver.  They are from the "greatest place on Earth," thereby they are the greatest people on Earth.  It’s compelling and also tiring to see. 

When I moved here, I openly mocked the regiment of the “glitter” people.  I mean, I just didn’t comprehend the seeming “need” that drove them to such light-reflecting lengths.  I have fought my conversion into the realms of being Texan.  I laughed when people told me that I would convert.

The thing is, these women are beautiful and they are oh, so proud.  They wake up in the morning and regardless of their mood, they put on their sparkle and go out and conquer the world.  The are fastidiously hygienic, they smell good, and they typically refresh any space they are in with their subtle hospitalities and their confident optimism that "nothing can cause them to fail because they are from Texas.” 

I envy them the ability to go from waking up to Miss Universe in twenty minutes.  I envy perfectly applied mascara and the ability to walk in 5” peep toe stilettos.  I envy the ability to look perfect in sweats and ball gowns (though I have never seen any wearing both at the same time, I bet they could set a new trend.)  I envy them going to the gym, working out hard for two hours, and still having perfectly applied make-up that hasn’t sweat itself off.

While I may never become fully a Texan, I have found myself happy to live here.  I recently caught myself telling someone that I didn’t want their snow because I wanted my Texas sunshine back.  *GASP!*  I am a Montanan, and as much as I don’t have a tattoo of my home state among my collection of tattoos, I do miss mountains and rivers, however; I don’t much miss the cold.    And I must add that I will probably never have the ability to apply a perfect coat of mascara or an even glossing of body shimmer but, I do desire to have sparkly toenails (though not acrylic.)

I will never own 5” glittery peep-toe stilettos and my girlfriend and I both agree that my lack of most cosmetics is a good thing.  And I understand that this may disqualify me, for all time, from being a Texas Woman.  I can, however; accessorize my day with the accoutrements of  Texan Woman in training….

^^Bling Cup^^

Watch out world, this girl may yet be seen applying mascara waiting at the light!

They Cut Into Your What?!?!

      Last Thursday I had a fairly major set of surgical procedures done at the Texas Tech University Medical Center.  These procedures have lovely long names that make them much easier to deal with than the actual description of what the problem was too.  The procedures were called:  Posterior Colporrhaphy , Trans-Vaginal Tape, and Perineoplasty.  As you can tell, these were all correcting problems with my girly bits.

     I am typically VERY embarrassed to talk about this kind of stuff with anyone, let alone describing it on the internet.  The thing is, all three of the issues I had corrected were incredibly common problems; just not for women my age.  I am 31.  Along with being somewhat uncommon for women as young as I am, they are problems that no one addresses because they are embarrassing. 

     No 27 year old wants to tell her OBGYN that she can't laugh without urine leakage.  It's humiliating.  But wait, it's not.  Especially if that woman has had children or some sort of trauma to her pelvic area.  OBGYNs and Urologists fix this problem every single day.  There is a fix and you don't have to live with the potential embarrassment of wetting yourself if you want to jump on a trampoline or thrash about in a mosh pit.  

     I was 21 when I had my daughter.  While I was pregnant I suffered through horrific morning sickness (24 hours a day for 3 months) and the problems I just had corrected (10 years later) began.  Every time I had to run to the toilet and vomit I also wet myself.  The force of the heaving loosened the muscles required to hold my urethra steady.  Having her proved even more traumatic.  

     Prior to giving a mother in labor an epidural (the spinal medication that makes delivery much less painful,) the care-givers are supposed to allow her to utilize a rest room or catheterize her so that the baby isn't being forced past a full bladder.  With me, they forgot that step.  So I pushed for two hours against a very full bladder before my daughter was born.  During the delivery, my perineum was allowed to tear, rather than getting an episiotomy.  This is common when the doctor decides that the tearing will be less damaging than actually cutting through tissue to make room for the baby.  These two things are the causes of problems that women don't talk about, but should.   

     I am actually really embarrassed to be writing about them, but I suffered in silence for 10 years before finally going to someone and saying something.  It shouldn't be that way.  There shouldn't be such a huge stigma associated with issues in the reproductive organs.  How else are we supposed to be health conscious people if we can't even tell our OBGYNs about these problems?

    I was experiencing two major issues with my body.  Turns out, these are VERY common issues, but I was mortified to have those issues so I didn't talk about them.  You have to understand, I don't fart in the same room as another person, let alone discuss my periods, urinary tract issues, and most especially rectal concerns.  This is not something I do.  I have on occasion started crying out of humiliation when I have passed gas unexpectedly where others could hear.  These are not things I talk about...ever!

     When I finally decided enough was enough, I went to the doctor.  I told her that I leaked urine when I laughed, coughed, danced, hit a bump in the road, or thought about doing any of those things.  I also told her about the other problem...the really embarrassing problems, the problems I didn't even  want to talk to my mom about....poop problems.

     See, the problems I was having were caused by tears in the muscles of my vaginal walls.  These tears were caused by the pressure of having kiddos.  This doesn't happen to everyone, but it is VERY common to have it happen due specifically to childbirth.  The walls weren't torn through, just the muscles  so I had what amounted to a recto-vaginal hernia and a minor uro-vaginal hernia.  The first called a rectocele the latter a cystocele.  The rectocele causes the rectum to swell into the vaginal area which when trying to have a bowel movement, can cause problems. It gives the BM two potential routes to take rather than the one.   The rectum bows out into the vaginal area and dead ends, often making it necessary for the woman to insert her fingers into her vagina and apply rear pressure  to the herniated area to actually have a successful bowel movement.  Can we talk about inconvenient and embarrassing, and without a name, just describing the problem is a devastatingly horrific affair.  This is why most women don't talk about it, even with their doctors.  The cystocele (in my situation) was incredibly minor and the operation to fix the other problems I was having will probably fix it, so they opted not to do corrective surgery on it. 

     The leakage of urine was caused by what they call hyper-mobility of the urethra.  Which basically means that my urethra moved around too much because the musculature had been fairly damaged and so it was actually the easiest and most common of my problems to repair.  It was done by making two small incisions above my pubic bone and sewing a small strip of mesh down and around my urethra in a sort of hammock in order to provide the support necessary for my body to not leak.  THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY NORMAL.  The OBGYNs didn't even blink  when I mentioned it (with my face turned down in a low low whisper.)  

     The rectocele repair is also an incredibly normal procedure.  They simply find the weak point in the recto-vaginal wall, make an incision, pull the muscles back together (given they are flexible enough,) and stitch them into place. Then, they stitch the wall back together.  If the musculature is out of place too long, it can lose its elasticity and then they simply sew a mesh to the muscles and then stitch you back up and then the mesh heals into the muscles and reinforces the weak spot.  Thus, correcting the hernia.

     With me, the problems were all caused by having my daughter, but in a round about way.  Remember I mentioned them allowing me to tear rather than cutting me?  Well I had her and the doctor stitched up the tear (ten stitches,) and then sent me on my way.  My stitches didn't take/weren't done correctly/fell out...you name it.  I had no perineum.  Not good.  Where there was supposed to be a good two inches of muscle, fat, and tissue to reinforce my rectum, bladder, and vaginal muscles, I had less than a quarter of an inch.  So my gynecological surgeon (a saint and a prince) did a procedure called a perineoplasty.  He cut away all the scar tissue where I had torn and healed incorrectly and rebuilt my perineum.    This one procedure will prevent me from having to deal with these issues again (barring immaculate conception at which time I will be scheduling a c-section.)

     I have read that 11-19% of women will undergo one of these procedures.  If you consider that in a  critical light, that's the women who talk about it or who have the resources available to address it.  In actuality, the number of women who need the procedure or are symptomatic of the issues is probably much higher.  73% of women will have children.  These problems are primarily caused by trauma to the vaginal walls during child birth.  PLEASE PLEASE, if you are having these problems, you are not alone and there are ways to fix it.  If they are minor, there are even non-surgical options.

     I am only 9 days out from surgery and I am still in considerable pain.  There were a few trip ups, including being released too early and ending up in the ER because the swelling in my vagina had made it impossible for me to urinate so I had to wear a catheter for five days.  Then I landed back in because I couldn't have a bowel movement and they admitted me overnight and I had to have a soap enema (embarrassing, yes, but there comes a point where the pain releases you from all concern of embarrassment).  

     Truly, I am shocked that I am writing this (because I am the girl who doesn't fart in the same room as others), but I had no idea how common my problems were and I allowed mine to cause me angst for 10 years.  Though I will say, I mentioned the leakage to my doctor in 2002 when I had pneumonia and was coughing constantly and of course leaking constantly and he informed me that "women who are 21 don't have those problems."  (My response, "well obviously they do...)  These are normal problems for women.  Women who have had children and women who have had any sort of abdominal trauma.  

     As I was getting wheeled into the OR, the nurse told me that I would never regret having these things fixed.  She said that she had had hers done 3 years prior and now she could run around with her kids and jump on a trampoline without concern.  Another nurse informed me that she had had hers done 10 years prior and hadn't had a single issue since.  Still another nurse told me that I should come back and let her know how mine went because hers was scheduled the following month.  This proved to me, even more, that I wasn't alone and neither are you if you are experiencing these issues.  Someone needs to talk about it.  Someone needs to say something so that the ice is broken and it paves the road for others to say something too.  Be brave.

I Don’t Care if Gays Have Rights

All over the news and all over the world people are talking about America and the fight for gay rights and equality. I hate it. I spent a fair portion of my life being married and allowed to be an out heterosexual wife. Truth be told, I was never forced into a closet. Heterosexuals never are. When I was 19, I walked with my fiancé into a courthouse and applied for a marriage license and then on Aug 2, 1999 I got married. It was beautiful, simple, and I didn’t even really think about it. I certainly wasn't met by picketers assaulting me with blind, uneducated hatred.

We started reaping the federal benefits effective the day we were married and then, after each subsequent child, we received more benefits and the sick thing is, I felt like we were entitled to those benefits.

At 19, I wasn’t even aware of what homosexuality really was. I didn't really know that people were dying/had died. People have always just been people to me. I thank a phenomenally human mother for that. I certainly didn’t think I was gay. I never considered that there were citizens of the USA that were considered less. Maybe in my sheltered, cozy Montana life, I assumed that the civil rights movement was over and that everyone was equal…I mean all different races and sexes served in the military, races intermarried, and women held high level corporate positions? Surely that meant all Americans were being treated equally? I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I was and in many ways still am a highly uninformed individual. The things I know now would have shocked that cozy housewife I had so easily become. Women make significantly less money than men, races other than white are still a largely underrepresented minority in most workplaces and those that are represented are paid statistically different wages than the white males that occupy similar positions. Only recently have homosexuals been protected under federal discrimination laws and our transgender family are not protected at all in most states. Hate crimes are rising, homosexual children are committing suicide at enormous rates (really, is it surprising that life seems unlivable when one of the elements that make you who you are is constantly under attack?) Where are our protections?

I divorced my husband in 2008. I left because I was gay and because I was miserably unhappy living the life that we had. The 19 year old who thought her life it was paradise grew into the 28 year old, lesbian who couldn’t pretend that it was what she wanted it to be anymore. Little did I know that walking out of heterosexuality and into homosexuality didn’t just involve changing the gender of my partners. It involved politics and a whole world of people who all of a sudden hated me and thought I was an abomination.

There are people picketing military funerals and saying deaths in wartime are justified because the USA has gay soldiers. There are politicians saying that the gay soldiers that serve our country can’t be out and shouldn’t even be allowed to serve. Our own federal government won’t allow us to be married….but wait…

I don’t care that gays can’t marry and be federally recognized. I don’t. It’s that simple. I. just. don’t. care.

What I care about is that ANYONE can marry and receive a financial benefit for doing something that is basic and biological. It makes me mad that any group is singled out above any other. Since when does who I love need any government involvement? Would a straight woman love her husband any less if they didn’t get to file a married federal tax return every spring? Would the commitment a man feels to his spouse of 60 years be any less without a court document stating they are married? Is my love for my girlfriend invalidated because we can’t walk into a courthouse and have Big Brother validate it for us? No.

So why does the homosexual community care? Because society cares and society impacts our day to day lives. That’s why. Society decided and gave government the right to recognize something that is solely between two people (or two people and whichever God they worship) and to give benefits to said people based on that recognition and subsequently denying them to people who aren’t recognized.  Society gave insurance rights, federal tax rights, inheritance rights, and the protections incorporated into those rights to one set of people...heterosexuals.  If all of us had the same rights, no one would be marching about rights.

My not caring does not mean I am turning my back on the gay population and siding with the Republicans and right wingers who say we don’t deserve rights and that all social programs should be shut down, quite the opposite.

I think that United We Stand, Divided We Fall is a very important phrase. I don’t think anyone should get benefits for being married or having children. I believe that everyone should have the same access to wealth, provisions, growth, healthcare, and education. In the long run this will only serve to benefit our nation to allow access to these things. We will be healthier, smarter, and richer.

Unfortunately, we have to get ourselves out of the mess we have gotten ourselves into with all this intense governance or changing will be impossible. That is where the focus of politics should be, fixing the mess that we allowed them to get us into so that one day, we can be a better stronger nation. We voted them into office, this is our fault too.

Someday, I want to marry my partner. I don't want to receive benefits for it. I actually think that the benefits cheapen it.  I want to look at her and make a spoken commitment with the people we care about around us. I don't need Big Brother to tell me I am married and give me money as a reward. I will know I am married and so will she and so will those we hold dear enough to want them to share that with us.