#Not just this one but what happened with SCOTUS makes me so angry and sad too | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cookinguptales · 4 years

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Today, SCOTUS is hearing arguments about whether businesses should have to cover birth control for their employees in their health insurance plans and I just. It’s hard to read.

I was going to make up this big informational persuasive post about the situation. But I’m just. I’m just so sad and angry and tired. So I figured I’d make an emotional one instead.

Let me tell you about my hormonal birth control journey.

(Rest under a cut for length and content. cw: mental illness, graphic discussion of medical issues, injuries, & menstruation, discussions of suicide & self-harm, discussion of opioids, alcohol, & recreational drug use.)

I started taking hormonal birth control late in high school to help regulate “painful periods”. It wasn’t for actual birth control at that point and I hadn’t been diagnosed with any disease, not even POTS yet. I just had “painful periods”.

Things were okay for a little while, but when I got to college, things started to fall apart. The double whammy of undiagnosed mental illness and a barely-diagnosed chronic illness (POTS was relatively unknown at the time and my doctors gave me information which I now know is incorrect) really caused me to spiral during my first year of college. I didn’t know it yet, but I react very poorly to some forms of hormonal birth control. Put succinctly, they drive me batshit insane. On one pill, I literally did not leave my apartment for over a month. I became very literally agoraphobic. Bouncing off the walls, irritable, angry, high suicidal ideation. As bad as side effects can be.

But I didn’t know that yet. I just stopped taking BC as part of the whirlwind of medicines and doctors that my life became for about two years while I was on my (first) medical leave from college.

My ribs were coming out back then. I didn’t know that yet, either. I knew that when I was around 16, I started getting severe back pains. The first time it happened, I had to go to the ER because I couldn’t breathe and my teachers thought I was having a heart attack. I got a narcotic shot in my butt. It did nothing to dull the pain. That’s how much it hurt. But it went away on its own eventually and I over the years I started medicating reoccurrences with a lot of different things. Physical therapy. Muscle relaxers. (Medically prescribed) opiates that made me puke. Prescription strength Advil. Wine.

I didn’t see that it was all connected yet. Not yet. I didn’t realize, with my periods as irregular as they were, that the back pains were coming around the same time in my cycle each time.

My “painful periods” got worse. I talked to an OBGYN, with my mother in the room. I told her that I was scared of something like childbirth. I knew that my blood flow was dangerously bad. What if the fetus didn’t get enough blood? Oh, my doctor laughed, that wasn’t a problem. The fetus would always get enough blood. The risk was that I wouldn’t. That it, like the tiny vampire it was, would take it all until I simply died. If I got pregnant, I would likely die. I asked about permanent sterilization. My mother cried. My doctor said no. I didn’t ask again.

I went back on birth control.

It was odd. I didn’t want children before that visit, not really. I was so tired all the time. I knew I’d never be able to manage to raise a child — and honestly, I didn’t care to try. I was so depressed. I was so sick. It sounded like so much work. I still don’t want to have kids. But it still feels… weird, knowing that I can’t. And knowing that I could die if I get knocked up.

I’m bisexual, but I have zero sexual contact with men (because I don’t love them, despite being somewhat sexually attracted to them) and zero sexual contact with people with penises (because they could literally kill me and it would be no one’s fault). But I’ve been followed home by men before. I’ve had cabbies lock me in and ask me for a date. I’ve had men who won’t take no for an answer. And my god, it terrifies me that I might have to deal with both sexual assault and a slowly creeping murder all at once.

(It’s laughable to think he’d be tried for both.)

I ended up getting sick off birth control a few times. I went on and off it periodically during my college career. I now in retrospect see that a lot of my “meltdowns” were a combination of discrimination-based stress, physical breakdowns, and hormonal whirlwinds. At my worst times, I was on birth control. The wrong ones.

My periods, over time, got worse. My back would hurt. The cramps were unbelievable. I couldn’t feel my legs. I could feel them too much. I couldn’t keep food down. I’d be so angry, so sad, so everything.

I went to the doctor again. I was diagnosed with both endometriosis and PMDD. PMDD, or premenstrual dysphoria disorder, is like PMS on steroids. I remember telling my doctor, in halting tones, that I wasn’t well before my periods. That I always had depression, always had anxiety, but I wasn’t well before periods. At her prodding, I confessed that sometimes I would just lie there for hours, for days, in the fetal position. That I’d clutch at my own arms, mooring myself, because I knew that those white knuckles were the only thing between me and killing myself. That my brain, always somewhat malevolent, became an inescapable mantra of death. That I’d just lie there and sob because it took everything I had not to hurt myself. That I’d find claw marks, bruises, on my arms later, and all I could do was get some ice.

It was better than the alternative.

I told my doctor about how painful my periods had always been. How I’d heard a story once about, y’know, that Spartan boy? The one who hid a fox kit under his shirt during an examination and stayed perfectly silent even as it clawed at him so he wouldn’t be caught with it? How it tore at his stomach until he fell down dead, still silent? I told her how I felt like I was holding a fox kit every damn month and sometimes I couldn’t stand the pain of it. Sometimes I considered ending that pain, one way or another.

She put me back on birth control.

A little less than a year later, or in layman’s terms, about a year ago, my mental health was so bad again that I was almost committed. Literally committed. I had to go stay with my parents for a few months while I transitioned to new medications because it wasn’t safe for me to be alone. I learned that the birth control I was on could create those symptoms — but they didn’t start until months after you’d started taking it. So you didn’t realize it was the medicine. You just assumed you were crazy and unlikable and so, so angry. At the world, at your loved ones, but mostly at yourself.

I learned, around that time, that I also had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. That the pain I felt every month right before my period wasn’t just cramps. It was my bones coming undone from their sockets. It was my hips dislocating. It was my ribs popping out of my spine. I realized that that lump my parents could feel in my back wasn’t a hard knot of tense muscles. It was my fucking rib poking out of my back. I learned that there is a period right before menstruation that mimics a period during pregnancy where your joints loosen — your body thinks it is preparing you for birth, for loosening your pelvic cavity so an entire head can pass through. For someone with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, that period of joint looseness was enough to wreak absolute havoc on a system of already-weakened joints.

I learned how to put my own ribs back in with a foam roller. I started drinking marijuana tea for the pain. I went on a different birth control. I stopped taking the placebo pills. I had to fully eradicate that entire portion of my cycle. Goodbye PMDD and ribs constantly popping out. I don’t miss you!

I am still on that pill, y’know. Every day I take it and wonder if I’m one step closer to the day when it inevitably destroys me. The last one took about a year. Tick tock.

Or maybe I finally found the one that works… I really just don’t know.

The fact of the matter is that I have a full handful of maladies that require birth control so I can function. PMDD, endometriosis, dangerous pregnancy, EDS. I need hormonal birth control. I would probably be dead by now without it. The PMDD especially was that bad. My internal organs are likely a scarred-up mess. But the birth control itself almost killed me, too. God, it was close.

Simply put, birth control is heaven and hell all wrapped up in a pill. It treats illnesses and it prevents pregnancy. In other words, it provides you with both freedom and peace of mind. It is absolutely essential. But it’s also monstrous. The sheer number of sometimes-deadly side effects that come with hormonal treatments is staggering. Which is why you need to be under a doctor’s careful eye when you’re on it. You need to be free to choose whichever brand you need. You need to be free to switch kinds at a moment’s notice. None of these things are possible in a system where these pills are not fully covered by insurance.

(And yes, I know, this is a stupidly American problem in so many ways. Obviously the ideal thing here would be single-payer for all medical procedures. But that’s not up for debate here and insurance for BC is. Because for some reason we let some people’s religious convictions determine others’ health care. But I digress.)

Please don’t worry too much for me. I have a good employer who has told me in no uncertain terms that I don’t need to worry about my healthcare coverage. But there are so many people just like me. Who may not have diagnoses yet. Who may have “problem bodies”. Who only know that they need to do something and that they might have to go through several pills to find it. Whose employers either have the strong religious belief that hormonal birth control is a sin or the strong religious belief that they want to pay as little as possible for their workers’ health care. (Call me cynical.)

Those are the people I worry about. Those are the people I feel absolutely sick over as I watch the SCOTUS argue whether we should be allowed to have life-saving medicine. The people who I know will fall through the cracks the second that the cracks are widened enough for them to do so. The people who will die.

It’s a tense time right now. It’s a tense time for very obvious reasons. But this morning I find myself to be even tenser, and my stomach hurts thinking about it. It feels like all I can do is stare at a pill packet and remember every horrible reason I need it and every horrible thing it’s done to me and I just.

It’s a lot.

#long post #just me #handsoffmybc #birth control #feelin some kind of way this morning #please mind the cws #PMDD is one of those illnesses that I wish was more discussed #I feel like one day I'll make an entire post about how dangerous PMDD is #and how our cultural dismissal of PMS is dangerous #and unfair for that matter

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mayphoenix · 8 years

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Why I Need Johnlock to Happen

This is long and personal and I need to get it off my chest so I can get on with my life. Please bear with me. In mid-December, I received word that my ex-wife, a woman with whom I shared 23 years of my life and to whom I was legally married in 2005 (but separated in 2010), had been diagnosed with brain tumors. In April of 2016, one month after we divorced (it wasn’t recognized in our state until the SCOTUS ruling; once that passed, I filed), I was told she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. She had undergone chemo and in September tested clear. But it came back three months later, and on January 4, 2017, she passed. When I found out she was dying, I tried to make contact. I wanted to clear the air, make peace, and most of all, forgive her before she left this world. You see, ours was not a healthy relationship. It never is when your partner turns out to be a narcissistic sociopath who gaslights you on a daily basis and occasionally abuses you physically. She was twenty years older but age never mattered to me. I loved her. And yes, just as John has a thing for dangerous people, as a survivor of child abuse, I always seemed to find myself drawn to people who hurt me. Which is perhaps why I will spend the rest of my days alone, singular; aside from being damaged goods (something nobody wants), I now have serious trust issues. Things got so bad at one point that I suffered a mental breakdown. It was then that I began seeing a therapist. I was diagnosed with PTSD, severe chronic depression, and anxiety disorder. As soon as I began to receive treatment, I began to see the problems in my life for what they were. I could have escaped but instead, I believed I could fix it. That whole “love conquers all” thing. Well, I tried to get my partner to work with me, to meet me halfway, but the thing about narcissists is that they never change. She walked out on me. I begged her to stay and just be friends and roommates, but if she couldn’t control me I guess she didn’t want anything to do with me. Attempts to be civil and friendly after that failed, too. She continued to act one way with me and a different way with other people, and she had everyone fooled...the way she had me fooled...but I’m the one who was left scarred for life. I had been closer to her than anyone else in this lifetime. She was my soulmate, for better or worse, and once upon a time I thought we would be together to the end of our days.

Death changes things. I’ve long held the saying “Life is Too Short” as a personal mantra and even have a tattoo on my hand to commemorate someone who was taken too soon, to remind me of this fact. So despite everything that happened, all the water under the proverbial bridge, I reached out to my ex as soon as I knew she was dying. Sadly, I was denied a last chance to see her by her caretakers, her friends who were also the executors of her estate. Come to find out, they all hate me; in their eyes, I am the villain. They don’t know what she did to me. Why would they? They only know what she told them about me. These were once mutual friends but after the breakup they chose sides. Her side, to be exact. Thank goodness not everyone was fooled: there are others who got to see a glimpse -- people who knew her before we met, people who came to visit for a few days and got to see the way she talked down to me, pushed my buttons, etc. Many of them apologized to me after the fact, saying “I saw what she was doing to you but I didn’t do anything” or “I knew what she was like and I should have warned you.” And you know what? I don’t blame them. Even police officers hate answering domestic abuse calls. When put on the spot, very few people really know what to do or say. If I blame anyone, it is myself, because I had been too trusting, and not strong enough to fight back or stand up or walk away. And for that, I need to learn to forgive myself.

And while I couldn’t say it to her in person, I did forgive my ex for what she did to me. I’ve said this many times over in the past month. When I left that courthouse last March, I cried, “I’m free!” Because I was. Up until that point, there had still been a legal tie to her (again, even if it was not recognized in our state). I did not realize the emotional ties would still be there. I had no idea she was going to be dead eight months later, or that her death would have such a powerful impact on me. I say this all the time: I would never wish cancer on anyone, even my worst enemy. And she wasn’t my enemy. I didn’t hate her. I hated what she did to me but in the end I held no ill will against her. I also know from years of being with her that she never wanted to be kept alive with treatments if she was terminal, she would always tell me “Put a gun in my hand, I’ll take care of it myself.” I was told she wasn’t able to make any decisions for herself toward the end. Others made those choices for her, her friends/caregivers. They put her through painful, unnecesssary treatments. If we had still been together, I never would have allowed her to suffer. She never wanted that and I’m sorry she had to go through it.

I was doing dishes, listening to Spotify, and “Since the Last Goodbye” by The Alan Parsons Project started to play. That was one of our favorite groups, and the song is about two people who thought they’d always be together, whose lives were entwined, but all they had left were memories. When I returned to my computer an hour later, I saw the news: my ex had passed. I will always believe that song came on my shuffle as her final farewell to me; after all, there are no such thing as coincidences.

I began to grieve. I sobbed and I wailed. I was depressed and angry and sad all day and late into the night. Thankfully, I have friends who let me call them and cry on their shoulders long-distance. They encouraged me to focus on the good times -- because we did have good times -- and that my grief was normal because I had spent 23 years with this person (the greater part of my life, at the time of separation). You don’t share every waking moment of your life with another human being, see them at their best and their worst, and not feel something. Even if they hurt you. You still grieve.

A few days after her death, one of her friends -- one of the people I had contacted in my attempt to see her one last time -- posted a public statement about how I was deceitful and only reached out so I could get something (admittedly, I saw they had started a Gofundme for her funeral and the cost to clean out her apartment, and I wondered if they meant to throw everything away but I did not ask for anything; I did, however, want to know what would happen to her cat, which had been one of ours and she took with her when she left). This person, whom I had always adored, said my ex had spoken of me with compassion (which I find hard to believe, going by things she’d said to other friends about me following the breakup); she went on to say that she had only tolerated me for my ex (they were friends five years before we got together). I was warned to stay away (so I can’t even attend the funeral), that I should expect nothing, and if I tried to contact anyone...well, let’s just say it came across as a threat.

I was gutted all over again. I felt despondent, in a state of shock and disbelief. This is the salt in the wound, being painted as the bad guy, as some kind of monster. Some of them think I was the one who left the relationship but the truth is she walked out on me. She made that choice. She even told me I would not survive a year without her and yet here I am, now seven years on my own. I have survived -- barely -- but even so I swore to myself I would ever go back to the way things were before, not after having my eyes opened.

So. With all that said, the reason I need Johnlock to happen is because I need a Happily Ever After. I need John and Sherlock, two damaged souls (like me), to have the happy ending I never got. At the end of TLD, we saw the glimmer of hope that they could come back from everything they had been through, that their relationship has a chance to not only survive but also evolve and become something greater and stronger. Because they are soulmates. They are meant to be together, against all odds. They are supposed to forgive each other and change for each other, adapt to one another and fulfill what each other needs most. Because that, my friends, is LOVE. They have both suffered and they deserve some happiness. I want them to have the happiness I will never have, that I always wanted and needed. It breaks my heart to see them hurting.

Yes, I know they’re fictional characters. But here’s the thing: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were my first example of Perfect, Unconditional Love when I was a child of eight years old and reading Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s stories. With the innocence of a child who was abused by her father, whose parents went through a nasty divorce, and who sought love and acceptance wherever she could find it, I saw in those pages a companionship that went beyond that of friends. I knew these men loved each other, and even if the language was different -- 19th century Victorian vs. 1970s American -- I took it at face value and in the simplest of terms: Holmes and Watson loved each other and would always be together. They were and are two halves that made a whole. I aspired to have what they had. I had thought I’d found it, too. But I was wrong, and because of that experience (and a few other brief and equally unsatisfying attempts at relationships -- like I said, I tend to be drawn to the wrong people) I am jaded...but only for myself. Just because same-sex marriage didn’t work for me doesn’t mean I’m against it for everyone. I want to see other people have what I couldn’t have. I want them to be happy. I need it, because seeing it is the only thing that gives me hope anymore. I have many friends who are same-sex couples and happily, legally married, and I’m so glad they have each other and it’s working for them.

But I just need to see John and Sherlock have that, too. Just once, just one incarnation, and this has to be The One. In my lifetime, I need this. I need to believe in Johnlock because I need to believe in love again. That there is redemption for the broken misfits like me, the weary soldiers who have survived personal battles, the misunderstood freaks and social outcasts who think all they deserve is to be alone.

Please, let this happen.

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