Prologue: Holding a Flood

HOLDING A FLOOD

Illuminated under a fluorescent strip light, the blue pleated curtains and the yellow walls fail as imitations for cornflowers, sunflowers, oceans and sand. The curtain fabric makes an abrasive scraping sound when opened and closed. Shoooooom.

I wear a scratchy paper night dress as a protective husk and swaddle my torso in stiff sheets as white coats filled with male bodies examine my ‘abnormal anatomy.’ With an off-white latex glove, the doctor enters my body with fingers and presses firmly upon the tip of the septum that divides my double uterus. The cold metal speculum1 slides inside me and expands to clamp my cervix open. I look up at the screen to see a live stream of my insides. Pink mounds of moist tissue, swollen from the sample of flesh taken. Blood seeps from the punctured wound of the cervical biopsy and clouds the camera’s vision. The men confer but I can’t hear them above the sound of my pulse pounding in my ear drums in a rhythmic du dum du dum du dum. I’m underwater.

I was fifteen when I was diagnosed with a condition called Uterus Didelphys. A congenital defect affecting 0.5-5% of the general population,2 where the müllerian ducts fail to fuse together in the embryonic stage of fetal development, resulting in the malformation of the uterus. My womb is split into two sections with a dividing wall separating each side. With this, two cervix provide openings to each uterus. One cervix is regular and the other smaller, misshapen and buried beneath folds of tissue. My diagnosis was a long drawn out process which included trips to the emergency room, internal examinations, external and internal scans, STI testing, a pregnancy test, MRI’s, a laparoscopy, a D&C (dilation and curettage), the removal of my (healthy) appendix, keyhole surgery, an allergic reaction which resulted in my admission to the ICU, many long train journeys, and lots of missed school. The medical scrutiny that my teenage body underwent brought my materiality as a ‘woman’ into sharp focus.3

The nurses’ scrubs switch from Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to pallid greens and pale blues as I am ferried from pediatrics to the gynaecology ward and back again. A small child with a fungal hair rash watches me intently as I throw up into my kidney shaped sick bowl. Women with enormous bellies, milk-filled breasts and fresh infants smile at me sympathetically as they assume my teen mother status. My spine crawls at their incorrect conclusion. I imagine the ground swallowing me. I melt through my hospital bed, slide through the cracks in the floorboards, septic sludge slowly sinking into cold, damp earth. I block out the talk surrounding my fertility; C-sections, birth canals, full term, right side, left side. The thought of conceiving, carrying a fetus or giving birth evokes intrusive images of my bones dislocating from my muscles and tendons. A dull nausea germinates in this imaginary bodily dissolution of self which is rooted in an overwhelming embarrassment of my female form.

On the back of some of my files a doctor once sketched a diagram of my reproductive system. The alien womb-head, two roving fallopian tube arms and a pair of ovarian eyes stared back at me from the page. A monster. I could feel this deformed, soft-bodied entity wriggle and writhe inside me like

a primordial mollusk.

Excruciating back and stomach pain and excessive menstrual bleeding were my main symptoms. As these are considered normal in most women, doctors’ only suggestion was to take a birth control pill to regulate my hormones. I was assured this was simply a feature of having a female body. One night the pain consumed me, possessed my body, blurred my vision and numbed my limbs and hands. I have forgotten the exact shape of that pain, but I do recall my internal monologue willing death to take me rather than live through those moments. My mother drove me to the emergency room where I was treated for an appendicitis and operated on the following day. It was a while before I would receive a conclusive diagnosis and treatment.

Months after my initial admission to hospital, a clue was discovered during an ultrasound. As the technician smeared my fluid swollen abdomen with clear, sticky gel and glided her sonogram wand over my lubricated belly, sides and lower back, she unveiled a wet grey space where my right kidney should have been. Renal Agenesis is common in UD patients I would later find out. A trade off for the extra womb and cervix.

I later had an operation to remove the tissue that partitioned my two wombs. One side was sealed up completely, meaning the lining of my uterus was breaking down each month with no exit. This fluid stagnated and finally ruptured, leaking into the rest of my body. I learned that my body was unclean, infected, deviant. Shame creeped along my skin and sat heavy on my chest, permeating my wind pipes and throat, spreading across my shoulder blades before trickling down and congealing at my ankles. A lead heavyweight anchors my body.

Present day I still have the overarching sentiment that my body is a dangerous place. I see it as possessing indeterminable threats. As if my matter could betray me at any time. The fear is that I’m not in control of my physicality. The contents of my insides may leak beyond my limits, soaking the earth beneath the feet of disgusted onlookers, revealing what I’m really made of. My edges are not hermetically sealed. I have too much body bursting at the seams. I am not water tight. Holes, pores and wounds are the potential sites of terrible seepage. I stifle blood, urine, sweat, spit, mucus, tears. I am a dam holding a flood.