Pet Peeve: Strange Vaginal Discoveries and the Trouble with Women's Lack of Reproductive Control

Disclaimer: this post is gonna be pretty gross to some people. So, heads up before you go on...

My vagina and I have had a strange couple of weeks. Last week, in particular.

To start:

Actually before I start with that let me give some back story. I am not acquainted with my vagina innards in, almost, any way. Anything I know is based in, just, guesstimations which are based upon a third party's vaginal canal excursions, okay? The pic below is what I imagined in my mind, essentially. 

So, what I knew, before last week, is that I do have that *sometimes* elusive g-spot that some women have and some don't. Thank God for small favors because otherwise I would never let a man in there. Get on your knees to praise the Lord, you, lucky fellas, who are graced with the presence of my hairy vag. Also, while you're down there please, uh, you know. Do that thing I like... Thanks so much.

Anyway, so I get super heavy periods. Ugh. Like, super-ugh. Anyway, I use Instead Softcups which is a menstrual cup, for those who don't know. Furthermore, for those who don't know, the directions,  for those of us who haven't studied *the insides* of their vagina, are only useful when it comes to insertion and not extraction, okay? 

 I'm telling you now, I totally recommend a menstrual cup to every woman, but I am going to forewarn all the women who, maybe, just don't know what you might be getting yourself in to. I'm going to explain it. So, you squeeze the sides of your cup, push the cup up the pussy hallway, and at the end of hallway, apparently, there is a foyer, or some shit. Or maybe a canyon of possibly unknown proportions. I never knew about that concave, bowl thing back there, but that's where you will drop off your cup. The original insert (which I was actually going to post to the page) has been changed and the current one is even less informational than the last.  [I found the old insert!] The SoftCup feels like nothing, because it's in that bowl snug as a bug, for real, nothing, not the tampon promise of "can't feel a thing." I always felt a thing. That tampon thing in particular.

[There is a place that I go, in my mind, sometimes. Early on, with whatever issue I'm having, I will want the most natural thing possible. I don't want to alter myself, brain juices, nor leave anything inside of my body. Especially with my blood gathering in it because that sounds like sepsis waiting to kill me. However, as I evaluate my quality of *natural* life, I will soon start thinking, "You know, honestly, if the worst case scenario ACTUALLY happens, how mad will I be? Do I really have to stick to these guns? Why am I doing this? How does it  benefit me to suffer this way?" After all of that thinking and suffering I usually decide that I would rather be dead. This is how I came to the point of using menstrual cup...and anti-depressants...and pain pills. Really anything that keeps me from being more miserable than I already am, for any reason. ]

Extraction instructions, as per the old insert , from what I remember:

Use your pointer finger to push down on the part of the rim you can reach, hook your finger just over the rim, pull the cup out, and discard the whole kit and caboodle. If you have difficulty hooking your finger and pulling the cup out, you can do the same hook thing, but press down firmly, empty the contents of the cup, and discard the cup as you would any other biohazard waste. Let's note that I remember the "empty the contents" bit almost verbatim, I think.

 If you didn't think too hard about those words, let's do so now. It sounds a lot more unassuming than it is. Actually, I'm going to tell you flat out. Emptying the "contents" means pouring out the blood that has collected in your godsend of a menstrual cup and have it run over your hand because your finger is pressing down firmly TO empty the contents. I didn't think any of these things through. My first install and ex-stall was done RAW HANDED. Raw handed meaning protection free, glove free. That, my dear sweeties, was a muthafuckin' mistake. Don't do what I did. Learn from me. I couldn't get my cup out because that bowl is apparently a tight ass fit and I found myself with a fistful of period blood and a strong, almost overwhelming, desire to amputate said fucking hand.

So, there's that part. What happened to me Monday of last week while on my period, was one of two discoveries I made last week. I had on my gloves, thank God I didn't make the same mistake twice, and was reaching in to push my cup into it's given bowl and noticed the terrain. For some reason, I had never noticed it before and I was a little, I don't know, surprised, I guess. The terrain is quite spongy. What I imagine sea sponges feel like. For some odd reason, I thought it would be smooth like porcelain. I spent a few seconds just getting a feel of the land and felt kind of squeamish or something. I can't think of the word. I do know, I immediately thought, how do guys spend so much time with fingers in there. It feels bizarre. If I were a lesbian, or a boy, the first time I would've felt some nice lady's sea sponge I may have run away, panicked. I know it's meant to be stretchy, but why isn't it like rubber? Smooth and stretchy. So that was on Monday.

Some day after Monday (can't remember which day), I was working with my cup again and this time I noticed that my vaginal walls didn't squeeze my finger. What type of loose pussy do I have??? I become very alarmed at this discovery. I don't want a loose pussy! I haven't even had children. What is happening here? Old age is swooping in mighty fast! I could easily live 40 more years! Does the aging process have to move so swiftly? I went online to find some sort of kegel balls as soon as I left the bathroom. I gotta figure something out. I gotta get this thang right and get it tight. I spent the whole day trying to find the best set of kegel balls for the lowest price. This is my life now.

Then, on Thursday ( I think) I was getting ready for work and had just gotten out of the shower. I dried myself off with a white towel. When I was done with the towel, I noticed a piece of white lint in my, now, very scarce, pubic hair. I spent approximately 30 seconds trying to get it out. Another thought occurred to me, the cat's hair is mostly white so maybe that's what it was and because it was silky cat hair that's why I couldn't get a good grip. You guys have probably already guessed, what hadn't even occurred to me, after I spent about another minute more trying to grip the white cat hair. It was a fucking gray pubic hair. That was it. I couldn't cope alone anymore. I called my best friend. "Why is this happening so early? Why do we even need gray pubic hair? What is going on?" She googled it and apparently we have a finite amount of hair color in our system and once it runs out, that's it. Also, diet plays a part in things, as well. After you've fucked up your diet and used up your ink cartridge, guess what? White hair city forevermore. What?!?!?! Why the fuck is our hair color like some sort of low budget inkjet printer? I don't want a printer for my hair color. I need something more efficient. Gah.

I ended up telling her my week's vagina related woes. She didn't know about the sponge terrain thing. I hope this isn't something that's only me. I always worry about that. That I'm some sort of anomaly that no one has ever seen before, but they're too horrified to tell me. She did calm me about the tight vagina thing, though. She seems to think the walls shouldn't squeeze just one finger because of what the vagina is used for, in terms of expansion and retraction: birthing babies. I felt better after that, but I think I am still going to buy the kegel balls.

That brings me to this week. My gynecologist left the practice to go into neonatal medicine, or some such shit, the week before my Well-Woman exam was scheduled. I was so upset. I liked her better than the other people in the practice and I had finally convinced her to let me get a hysterectomy. Now, I have to fight all over again with this other lady who I don't 100% like. She keeps trying to talk me into ablasion. Ablasion sounds like bullshit to me. She did convince me to try out the Mirena IUD because it generally stops your period. 

I went in today to get it installed and had a couple of surprises that I had no inkling to expect nor suspect would happen. First, during the installation my uterus was not rendered numb by the basic ass 1000 mg of ibuprofen I had taken before going in, as I had been advised. I would've preferred general anesthesia as an option. It was not as painless as I was lead to believe. It hurt a bit more than I would've have liked it to have done. That much is certain. Then, when she was finished she said, "I want to see you in 4 - 6 weeks to make sure everything is okay. Don't have sex for 24 hrs and hopefully by your next appointment the bleeding will have stopped. 

You mean I'm bleeding today? Now? I was surprised to find blood on myself between my thighs. I don't know what I expected, but I didn't know I would be bleeding from this outpatient procedure. I guess, I really didn't consider how they got the appliance into the (around? behind?) the uterus. In all the depictions of the shit it just looks like open space with the IUD floating into that open space. 

However, honestly, what was I thinking? There IS no open space hanging out in the human body. It's all full of hair, blood, gore, goo, and bone! This is what I should've looked up and then it would've come back to me that most things can't be inserted into fleshy bits without some sort of outpouring.

So, ya know, this is a day in the life of my vagina and I, over the past couple of weeks. Yay!