Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Monday, February 22, 2010

You Sure It Isn't Psychosomatic?

Suggesting that vulvar pain is due to sexual issues is like saying back pain is due to moral issues.

Your back hurts? Must be because you're not an upstanding citizen. Maybe it's the red light you ran, the tax return you fudged, the friend you left lying there all dusty in your closet who's become a sting in your spine.

An organ's main function needn't be its dysfunction. No organ's main function is to grow cancer. Celiac intestines aren't suicidal about having to digest.

So why is it that a pained vulva means a woman has a problem with sex?

Way too many men have suggested so to me -- and I'm sure at least some of them said it because they thought I might have a revelation and suddenly be willing to screw them. Or because I might try that age-old vulvodynia cure of having more sex. You know, the one that doctors mention right off the bat and write about like crazy in medical journals.

Not a single woman has suggested to me that my pain is due to sexual issues. And there's the empathy schism. Another woman may not be able to imagine chronic vulvar pain, but she doesn't have a problem believing it's possible, and that it's possible free of psychosomatic root.

Why do guys think we're afraid of the dong?

Why can't we be into the dong but not into THEIRS?

A guy at work asked me if I won't date him because he's black. I told him of course not. His response: "What's the problem, then?"

YOU.

The guys who have called my pain psychosomatic are (almost) all complete lame-o's compared to me sexually and would be the ones in pain if sex pain actually worked that way. Lack of confidence, compensation, body issues, fear of intimacy, fear of love, general hey-how-big-is-my-penis obsessions...

We all have our issues, yes. I have some, though I'm not always sure of what they are. The key thing is that I have always believed myself to be a sex goddess. I don't have an explanation for that belief, and I don't really have evidence besides whatever sings in my hips. I've always liked sex and always felt comfortable with it. Some friends and I have based our entire inside-joke repertoire around sex, including the friend with whom I'm planning a tropical island swarming with naked men and centered on a penis visible from space...

I like sex so much that vulvodynia has made atheist me wonder whether there really is a god -- that vengeful Christian god whose morals I must've offended with my pagan celebration. I masturbated too much! Someone's interpretation of the Bible was right!

To suggest that my pain is due to my psychology and not my biology -- at first it bothered me, and then I realized what a fabulous private world I have that these guys can never touch. That some may never approach in all their earthly years. It's a painting versus art: some never learn the difference.

One already knew it.

We've slept apart three nights since our first date two weeks ago. I'm not a dater, dudes. I'd say I don't know what's going on, but I do.

How I Like My Men...

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Hello from the Toilet

What do you do when you're in such bad pain that nothing will help, not even ice because ice requires touching something to your cooch and you're pretty sure that's your trigger for becoming a fire-breathing dragon?

I sit on my toilet.

My toilet, the one that makes me not want to be a renter anymore. As I sit here all typey-typey trying not to scream, my porcelain friend is dripping into the apartment below me.

It's not the toilet that makes me not want to be a renter. It's the fact that I don't own this toilet and am not in charge of its maintenance. The last time my toilet decided to be a metaphor and leak, the guys replaced only the bolt that was leaking. Like toilet Pollyannas or something. That other one's the same age but surely it's good as new even though the one that's the SAME AGE THAT WE JUST REPLACED was leaking! Never fear, dear -- air your ass all you desire! Our reliable handiwork can't possibly let you down!

One of those guys is my downstairs neighbor. Can't say I feel bad leaking down on him, though he's a really nice guy. Maintenance has a karma. I think it scared his cigarette-smoking tween, though, who, home alone with his tiny tween buds, banged on my door yesterday evening to tell me about the leak.

If I lean back I hear drip...drip...drip... So I'm all thrust forward in my winter coat in my freezing bathroom telling you about my failing plumbing.

I think this flare is from my period, but it's so bad I'm wondering (note: not worried...I give up) if I have a UTI. How would I know that, in so much pain already and bleeding anyway? That's where this gets tricky. But I'm pretty sure I'm just being tortured by a mystery demon no one has been able to name (like Beetlejuice!) and not by mere bacteria.

If I do have a UTI, it's because of a...guy....

It's my day off, but I woke up at waitress time to pee and set myself on fire. We both sweat under the blankets but use them anyway, and when we turn our backs we hold feet. I wanted to stay until he got dispatched, but I was feeling like an emergency only my toilet could solve. My leaky toilet, leaky life, I don't think he quite knows what to think of it. I'm listening for my neighbor's car to return so I know when I have to get off the pot.