At first I didn’t want to write about this. COVID-19. It seems the obvious choice in a class on embodiment. Write about the thing going on in the world right now terrorizing bodies, shaming bodies, changing bodies. It somehow seems cliche to write about COVID-19. How can it be overwritten when it seems as though COVID-19 still has so many words to say. I didn’t want to write on it because I wanted to take its power somehow. But I have learned that the power it holds is larger than we see, and recognizing this is how we may take the power back.

This weekend my house had a COVID scare. We have had scares before, whether it was from working in our “essential” service jobs, or taking a cough as a sign of doom. I’m sure most of us have had them. This one was different. This time my roommate shared a cigarette with a girl who tested positive. This time after that cigarette me and my roomate shared a straw. This time after that straw I kissed my partner. This time after that kiss I saw my family. The CDC told us not to. But it was Thanksgiving. I can make a lot of excuses for my choice but the truth is I just missed my family. 

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is when we found out. “She tested positive for COVID”, “How direct was the contact”, “Direct”, “What does the timeline look like”, “Well I shared the cigarette with her over the weekend and she tested positive sometime early in the week like Tuesday”. 

TW: Discussion of OCD, face picking and scarring, and mental disability

I have always heard that. In different versions in different voices. Sometimes even in my own head. But when I look at my face now, I see the remnants of the damaged body I live in, evidence of an uncontrollable mind, and a reminder of a complicated relationship between them and the world around me. 

3 weeks ago, I found out I have something called “Pure O” OCD. In clinical terms it is the experience of obsessive unwanted thoughts without visible compulsions or rituals. I won’t delve into what my specific obsessions are. What I will say is that I have lived my life believing I am a bad person. That the thoughts were the sum of my life and they allude to the evil I for so long considered to be me.  

https://www.madeofmillions.com/articles/pure-o-an-exploration-into-a-lesser-known-form-of-ocd

I was 21 when I learned my uterus isn’t fully mine to control. No this isn’t about abortion, it’s not a political stance, nor is it here to suggest you should feel one way or another. It’s an epiphany about the medical control of bodies, and how this control of bodies is affecting lives.  

When I was 21 one of my close friends wanted to have her uterus removed. She had lived 24 years of her life with awfully painful periods, constant cists, and always with the knowledge that she never wanted to have kids. Sometimes I wonder if she could have taken sick days, instead of puking in the bathroom of our restaurant from the pain, if it would have affected her decision. But our society does not see periods the way she experienced them unfortunately, and she was ready for this. She wanted her uterus out, she had her reasons, and she was prepared to live with her decision. And then she went to her doctor.  

Her gynecologist told her she would not remove it, nor refer her to someone who would. The excuses ranged from a variety of things like, “you’re too young you’ll want kids eventually” to “you have a healthy uterus it would be unethical to remove”. I remember when she told me this, she said something along the lines of “what does a healthy uterus even mean”. 

A throw away comment stemming from disappointment. But the one that stuck. What does it mean? And why does a doctor get to determine it? Surely after years of pain she knew the status of her own uterus. Surely after chronic cists she could determine its health. But in one appointment a doctor who she trusted determined their decision over her body’s health was the law.  

This isn’t about whether it is right for a 24-year-old person to remove their uterus. This is about the medicalization and invalidation that she experienced that day, that most bodies have. As people with uteruses we get told there is more to the story. That our uterus is a being of its own and that our conceptions of our body do not outweigh the science. She was in pain, she felt unhealthy, she wanted something for her body, but the medical world invalidated her pain told her she was healthy and sent her home with an effective slap on the wrist for trying.  

I’m 23 now. She is 26, with a uterus still. And I wonder how she feels about it. Sometimes I still wonder how I feel about it. How far would the unhealth have to go, why does it have to go anywhere? How old is old enough? Why was this decision not hers to make but a doctors to dictate.  

Her doctor made the argument that she had the ideal uterus because of medicalization of body parts. I sometimes wonder if that came from an idealization of her body with a uterus. Was it not the uterus that was ideal, but the idea that as a female the ideal is having a uterus?  

I can’t answer these questions. I won’t even try. But I will use it as a reminder that maybe medicalization isn’t always made for the people in the bodies, but the bodies themselves. A reminder that the ideal medical body is not always the one we have, and sometimes not the one we want.