Content notes: endometriosis, chronic illness, chronic pain, generational trauma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I watched \u201cHalmeoni<\/a>\u201d by Kevin Jin Kwan Kim and it was heartbreakingly beautiful. Heartbreaking in part because for some years I was that immigrant who forgot their \u201cnative\u201d language, but also because I couldn\u2019t help but wonder what it could\u2019ve been like, would\u2019ve been like, if I\u2019d felt that kind of security in love before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It struck me, in that moment where her grandmother speaks to her in English, shows that she made the effort to bridge the gap, that she doesn\u2019t think less of her for forgetting\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Forgive me this; allow me this \u2014 the linking of the desire to mother and be mothered, the need to reconnect with foremothers and forefathers, the wish for something solid to stand upon, the wanting of access to knowledge gained across generations, the gnawing demand to feel pride in at least some of the history that led to me-in-the-now\u2026to endometriosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was speaking with a beloved the other day, of how she used \u201cmessed up pelvic ontology\u201d in a fic, and how it fit because of how fraught that entire area is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s referred to as a whole, which seems ridiculous if you think of it, even as I acknowledge the need for succinct summation when speaking medically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet if you think about it. All the politics, all the trauma, all the expectations and desires that goes on around that tiny space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Endometriosis. Literally when tissue like that which lines the uterus grows outside it, moving into spaces it shouldn\u2019t, sometimes digging deep into other organs and not just content to do terrible things like \u201cadhere the vagina to the rectum\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Something meant to nurture and protect, twisted by itself and its invasion into spaces it shouldn\u2019t go into something malevolent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And forgive me the link, but I cannot help but see this physical entanglement, this encroachment, as deeply symbolic of my own references to my emotional needs as \u201ctentacles reaching out and not finding and being pushed by an aching need to keep reaching out, often into territory where they\u2019re unwanted and thus causing untold amounts of pain\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The connection feels true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked a while ago, if I really always wanted kids as I\u2019d thought for decades, or if I just wanted a way to re-do my childhood, a sort of fix-it fanfic done in juxtaposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did I really want to be a mother, or was the real craving to have a mother like the one I aspired to become?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did I want the cute soft cuddly things for my child, or did I want to experience them in the name of my potential child?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I remember when my mother told me she was so driven to keep me learning piano because she\u2019d wanted to learn piano as a child and was cruelly refused by her father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Funny how, I\u2019d been aware enough then to tell her that my learning piano was meaningless for her purposes: if she really wanted to learn it, she should go ahead and do it herself instead of using me as a stand-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Funny, because I almost perpetuated the cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As much as I could try to persuade myself that there would\u2019ve been no harm done there, no harm in wanting to be more patient, more loving, more aware, more present, more open a mother to my child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But any child of mine shouldn\u2019t be an alternate universe fanfiction attempt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I try to fix my childhood and my traumas through them \u2014 who is to say I wouldn\u2019t enact other hurts because I might assume them to be a person they weren\u2019t? Assume them to be me, essentially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note, I do not link the two in cause and effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am absolutely not saying my own inherited mommy issues in some way prompted the endometriosis. However.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having drawn the connection, I feel it would be easier for me in the future to be gentler with myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not \u201cwhy do you ruin everything; what are you doing omg this is terrible; why do you hate me\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can look at my body, at what it is doing, and even if I don\u2019t like it, I can sympathize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, I too am trying to find connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I too, try to hold on too tight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I too, tried to work out my trauma in all the wrong ways, by trying to mother people uninvited and unwanted and then resented them for not cherishing what was given without request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I too, was often inappropriate in my ways of finding connection with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I sympathize. I\u2019m sorry it\u2019s so hard. I\u2019m sorry it\u2019s all so painful. I\u2019m sorry that despite all the pain and the difficulty, you still haven\u2019t managed what you wanted. I\u2019m so sorry that we have nothing except sorrow and regret to show for our efforts, because they were directed in the wrong directions and at the inappropriate targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m so, so, sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps we can heal together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if we do not, that has to be okay too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because there is no alternative to being okay, really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has done this thing, is continuing to do this thing, and with endometriosis it really is possible to feel things getting worse in indescribable but definitely palpable ways\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n It will possibly keep doing this thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only \u201csolution\u201d Western doctors have for endometriosis is often to go in and surgically excise the tissue. Except. Up to 50% of people have things grow back within five years of surgery and they don\u2019t really suggest that you go in again after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So when it has been doing this thing and might just keep doing this thing\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is only: I\u2019m pretty sure the depression and obsessive compulsiveness and especially the anxiety doesn\u2019t serve me either, but if I have three annoying life-mates I am learning to live with, I might as well accept this fourth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Content notes: endometriosis, chronic illness, chronic pain, generational trauma. I watched \u201cHalmeoni\u201d by Kevin Jin Kwan Kim and it was heartbreakingly beautiful. Heartbreaking in part because for some years I was that immigrant who forgot their \u201cnative\u201d language, but also because I couldn\u2019t help but wonder what it could\u2019ve been like, would\u2019ve been like, if… Continue reading
I am not saying there is a lesson there, because gods, what else is more annoying than people insisting that all suffering must exist for some kind of edifying good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I really don\u2019t like the results of this thing and I don\u2019t think it serves us, but if you gotta\u2026you gotta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n