In Route for the Colonies

Last Year.

There's a reason I went radio silent more often than not.  Let's just say six + rounds of prednisone, numerous ER ventures, a case of fucking elephant face, a damned surgery that makes me a matter for the colonies . . .

I give you this.

When the revolution comes, I’ll find myself in the colonies.* This assertion I am certain—as if being a college professor, a writer, or a divorcee wasn’t enough— the loss of an ovary certainly sealed my fate in the metaphorical stone. As to how I’d survive those colonies, I am uncertain, but as I wander through my life, I find myself accessing the carnage and the pain left in the proverbial wake I stop and stare.

The pain of my ovaries began when I was young, and as the story goes, it has marched on with the beat of a drummer outplaying his companions, always calling out the show and demanding attention. Within the picture, 25 years ago (when I was 16 and young and fresh with plenty of dreams still unformed) I woke up with Lupus in my lipstick case. These factors, and the markers of being a woman, have left me fighting for my voice, standing on the proverbial edge of reason and desire, and never being the winner. Even when I won the battle and found surgeons who knew I was worth the scalpel and the hospital bill I still lost in a way as surgical procedures are no win in the grander karma of life. They serve as medical markers of recovery and, perhaps, hope. In my case, they stand as markers and reminders of what was lost and forgotten along the way.

I never had a choice but to stand in the face of fear and stare it down.  I’m told that I’m brave and awe-inspiring, yet I don’t feel that way at all. Never have. Instead, I wake up on the other side of 40 knowing that I’m still alone, have no children, yet live a financially precarious life as a freelancer, and I sigh. I sigh from my feet hitting the floor in another wave of pain and joints so stiff tears well in my eyes. I sigh because my inability to connect is astounding and probably worthy of scientific study. I sigh because the knowledge of the man who claims to love me, calls me honey, and professes to miss me but is married and has never acted on what I have to wonder is a pedantic game of “pacify the woman in front of me” haunts me. We maneuver the labyrinth of this city, and like so many things in life, I’m left looking on as dreams work out for someone besides me.  I sigh knowing I won’t have children of my own, even though I did want them... life seemed to not want them for me.

Instead, I plowed ahead carving a life that feels like a constant fight. It’s a fight to maintain the health and stay upright, and then it’s a fight to remember that there is always someone worse off than me. It’s a fight that changes by the day. Some days I’m fighting for myself in doctor’s offices seeking relief to the chronic pain and inability to function as a magazine dream, and some days it’s a fight as I walk a college student to the women’s clinic when she’s got telltale bruises on her arms and is afraid as she’s missed another period.  Some days it’s a fight as I hold my breath on the overfilled subway wondering how we all haven’t fainted from oxygen loss. And some days as I fight to maintain a sense of self and understanding for a life, and world, that is never playing by the plan a student I’ve long forgotten about sends a note saying I am the reason he walks the path he does now.  Perhaps, then, that is the path and the relationship at hand.

The parallel road, the one not expected, is the one that ended up being mine.  Twenty years ago I would have balked at someone saying I'd be looking at life through this lens now.  Yet, as Gen Xers like me grow and evolve and look at the upcoming Millennials and Gen Zers the proverbial lessons still shock, serve, and shake.  Instead of a standard relationship, I guess I can say that mine is metaphorical, one that helps to teach and show, rather than fit within the confines of pages in a storybook.  Reckoning is the key then to realize where we have come from and where we are moving to, even if it means that in a parallel world we will find ourselves wondering if we would be bound for the colonies. 

*The colonies were where the so-called undesirable, rebels, and medically unfit women were sent in A Handmaid’s Tale.

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