Jan 14
Endometritis and Mental Health
“Never Trust Anything That Bleeds for 2 Weeks and Doesn’t Die, They’re Supernatural.” Funny, Until You Understand The Trade Off
When I was growing up I was petrified of my vagina, sure at sixteen I learned it can bring a lot of pleasure but at twelve? It brought nothing but haunting nightmares.
People used to call me crazy because when I would get my period I would be forced to stay home for days at a time, because of the amount of pain I was in. They didn’t believe that anyone my age in the 1990s had what we now know as Endometritis,
Endometritis is inflammation of the uterine lining. It can affect all layers of the uterus. The uterus is typically aseptic. However, the travel of microbes from the cervix and vagina can lead to inflammation and infection. This condition usually occurs as a result of the rupture of membranes during childbirth
So basically, yeah, I’ve had it since I was fucking born, but no one told me this you see, and so I didn’t know and I, therefore, wasn’t prepared when that bitch hit me in the gut and ripped out my spine.
I spent a full twelve hours at home, screaming at the top of my lungs because mom was at work. I prayed to Christ, to Mary and at one point I’m pretty sure to the devil to make the pain stop, but nothing worked until my mom found me passed out in the bathroom from exhaustion when she got home.
From then on, she put me on Tylenol 3, which was brand new at the time and much stronger than it is now, which was the only thing that could make a dent in the period pain. For weeks and days at a time, I would be completely traumatized by my own vagina because no one knew how to explain sexual education to young girls back then.
Our sex education was more about the various ways girls would be going to Hell while men would be going to Heaven, then it was about how to take care of ourselves during our menstrual time of the month.
Years after I got my period, four to be exact, I became a victim of a really twisted sex cult (as if there’s any other kind of sex cult) that sold me to men for rape and various other forms of torture.
It lasted far longer than it should have and took me twenty years to talk about, and throughout it all, I never once thought about how I felt about my vagina until today.
Fuck you. That is what I really want to say, and not just to my vagina, but to my uterus too, because who the fuck decided that girls were going to spend their entire lives living in unimaginable kinds of pain while guys just get to skip through without problems? Oh, right God, fuck that guy too.
I heard one of those famous celebrities on some reality show once declare that she hated her vagina, and resented it, because for so long that’s all people saw her as. A walking vagina, there for sex and little else, and I felt that to my core.
Abuse convinced me to my core, that I didn’t deserve to be more than that, than a walking vagina designed to be a place for men to park their dicks, whether I wanted them or not.
There are very few men that I chose to be with, and of that number only two that I still respect to this day.
This has been a very hard journey, but the invention of Naproxen changed my life. This small pill, one a day during my period starting at eighteen, allowed me the gentle reminder that I was a woman, without the mind-numbing soul-crushing pain that reminded me I was a woman.
It can be really scary to get your period for the first time, and I implore all women who do get periods, to remember that when a young girl in their life starts getting hers. Remember how scary it was for you because you may not have understood how your body worked yet, and be gentle with how they react now that it is their turn.
I’d also like to remind you that just because not all girls get their periods, doesn’t mean they are any less a girl. (Duh!)
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl
If you would like to read more from Devon J Hall, check them out in the following publications. If you’d like to help keep Devon’s content free forever, you can help out by donating or sharing at this link.
