Dear Uterus,
It’s almost time for surgery. Dr. Machado is going to cut
you out of me, and I won’t lie to you, it’s a separation that I’ve been looking
forward to a long time now. I don’t want you to think that I don’t love you, or
am eager to see you go. Truly, how could I hate you, when you’ve been a part of
me since birth? And I don’t hate anything about myself. The truth, however, is
that there are definitely things about myself that hinder my development as a
person, and right now, you’re my number one offender. It’s not your fault, at
all. Truly, I think this inability to function properly in, essentially, a
small way is what is required for me to reach my higher spiritual self. You
see, love, you’re a living embodiment of the female ego. Part of what women
have used as leverage against men in patriarchial societies is that WE have the
ability to bear children, and WE can endure labor, and WE are therefore worthy
of respect. While I’ve never felt those sentiments too strongly, in weaker
ways, it’s been thrust upon me since I was old enough to conceive. I would go
to a doctor’s office and they would ask me if I’d ever been pregnant and how
many children I had, stunned into speechlessness when I said no to both. You,
uterus, have been an unspoken expectation placed upon me by society; that even
if I was unmarried, I would bear fruit in the form of a child from you, and
would take my place among the ranks of single mothers, like my own, struggling
perpetually to build something better solely for said child’s benefit.
This, love, is the truth of it. I have never felt the
fundamental urge at the core of myself to be a biological parent. For awhile I
wanted to be a surrogate for a nice gay couple, because I thought (and still
do) that pregnancy is such an absolute miracle. When I was told I couldn’t have
children, I mourned for a short time, naturally. It’s good to acknowledge the
end of a possibility. But truly, I have always known that I am meant to parent
other people’s children, to try and mend what others have tried to break, to
love what others have thrown away. I always wondered: could I do those things
with my own children to care for? Truly? Could I emotionally commit at the same
level to kids I may not have in my home longer than a year as I could to my
own? And the answer, always, was no. I knew, whenever that situation was posed,
that it was more important for me to foster than make more children for an
already overpopulated planet. Not having a partner, doing so was just an effort
of self-absorbed vanity, wanting a baby that was half my genetic makeup to show
off to strangers and family. I wanted no part.
Uterus, this is why that this extraction has no blame and is
definitely not your fault. It was the powers that be cementing what was already
known in my innermost cells, that I wasn’t meant to carry children. You are
freeing me from the societal ties of convention that bind, hinder, chafe
against my life as it has been lived and will forge onward, away from their
beaten paths. You’re helping weed out potentially hundreds of unfit partners,
that couldn’t imagine life with someone who couldn’t bear their offspring or
wanted to parent other people’s children. You’re enabling the removal of three
likely cancer sites that could have ended this glorious life I intend to live
much too soon. Most of all, taking you out is the only permanent solution to
the pain that you’re causing me on a daily basis, that has at times taken away
my will to live and endure, and has sapped all of my strength, financial
solvency, and creative drive. You, without malice, have held me back, and it’s
time to let you go.
I’m 28. I’ll be on hormone supplements for the rest of my
life. I’m thankful that you allowed me the time to come to these realizations
on my own before you gave out completely, so that I wouldn’t feel deprived of a
future not meant for me. A woman’s value, in our society, is still closely tied
to the number of children you have, how you financially support them, and how
you parent them, and now those criteria will no longer be applied to be. Not
only do I feel like I’m looking forward to a future with significantly less
pain, I feel like I’m looking at unlimited possibilities, freed from the
constructed paradigms of mother-culture that keep up tethered so tightly.
I’ll see adieu. And that I love you, have mourned you, and
will flourish for your sacrifice.
Truly,
Erin.
