Really? Fucking pull it together, brain! Creating psychosomatic symptoms

Not sure when this happened but the day after the abortion I woke up with a really nasty giant bruise on my upper thigh.

No idea how it got there.

Then two nights ago, I dreamt that I was lying on my back and I felt an awful pain all through my thigh.

I lowered my pants and found the whole inside of my fleshy thigh was DARK, DARK black and blue with splotches of neon (pink, green, yellow). It almost looked like gangrene. It went from my knee all the way to my bikini line. It looked like some one had smacked me with a piece of fly wood. And it looked infected.

I pressed on it and it was an extremely tender pain. Not sharp like a wound, but like a fresh, deep bruise. It made my heart freeze. I woke up.

I keep thinking about the visual and I my thigh keeps cramping and throbbing. Of course NOTHING is wrong with my physically. I’m just having a particularly heavy period and I have to use a pad (nothing goes in the vag for two weeks!). A pad just emphasizes how overtly menstrual you are.

The dream is obvious. I have anxiety about doing unseen damage to my body or other physical reprucussions.

I am feeling terrific. I have energy, and appetite, and my baby chub is going away. But everytime that visual flashes I feel my chest constrict and my thigh pulse with pain.

I’m disapointed in myself. I so desperately just wanted to just walk it off. Make a joke and show every one that “hey it wasn’t that big of deal!!” I think its because of the heaviness of my period and the fact that I have to take big anti-biotic pills everyday, that I haven’t had all the anxiety wash away yet.

I almost didn’t want to write this because I want all the readers to see me as strong. See a woman go through this without sending off some sappy anonymous postcard to post-secret. But I decided I should share it because I think it sheds more light on why women who are conflicted about an abortion can suffer so greatly after they go through one. There’s just too much mystique around this procedure and I think I would have almost not thought twice about it if wasn’t such a cultural lightining rod.

My heart breaks for women who go through this with the added burden of mourning or grieving. And I am angry at people who fight to make this whole process harder than it needs to be. Fuck you guys, y’all motherfuckers are making me burn through my ambien.