On motherhood and other things I don’t want

The December Newsletter

photography by Cara Fuqua

Oftentimes, I find myself having to justify the things that I want, don’t want, or that I am, or am not.It’s become so routine that I don’t even bat an eye at it anymore. From the way that I sit to my views on motherhood, everything seems to require an explanation. Honestly, I’m tired of having to justify what I do and don’t want for myself. In writing this I’ve realized that everything that I find myself having to justify relates to my body. At this point acquaintances and strangers seem to have the most thoughts on that topic.

Once, while sitting at a bar waiting for my friend, I had my legs crossed “like a man.” That’s to say that my legs were crossed but with my ankle resting on the other leg. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the older man sitting next to me kept looking over at me. Eventually he asked me if everything was okay. I told him that I was, and tossed it up to him seeing me sitting there a lone reading or writing while I waited. The man kept looking at me and then asked if I was sure and looked down at the way that I was sitting. In that moment I realized that the way that I was sitting was making him uncomfortable. He became flustered and turned his stool to face away from me. The shape my body was making seemed to unnerve him.

A couple of years ago I had my worst run with doctors. My first doctor run in was with the male doctor who switched out my IUD. During the procedure the doctor gave me a numbing shot even though I had said that I didn’t want it. His response was only, “well it’ll help with the pain,” only, if he had had a conversation with me, he would have learned that most numbing shots don’t work on me. He decided that he knew my body better than I did. My body, a body that I’ve been at odds with since the day I realized that I had a body. Growing up I understood that to be a woman you needed to have curves, you should be certain height, look a certain way, and dress a certain way. I’m a petite person, I didn’t inherit so many of the things that I believed make a woman a “woman.” I’ve been at odds with my body for not holding clothes the way that I think it should, or being concerned that my lack of curves make me look like a child. Which on that, once at my yearly doctor’s appointment, I complained about the fatigue that I’ve been experiencing for years, the doctor basically accused me of having an eating disorder and said that eating would make that go away. That doctor never addressed the issue, but rather made an assumption about my body.