A Note from the Author: Here’s the thing: this piece is vulnerability at its most brutal. I describe abortion, suicide, and depression in poignant detail. It’s going to be difficult for those that love me to read; it’s also difficult to reveal this part of myself and my history openly. But I truly believe in the radical and transformative power of vulnerability, so I’m sharing it with you today.
When I shared this story in college — 3 years after I had originally written it — I sobbed at the podium of my creative writing class. And then someone rose and held me and whispered “me too.” And then someone else rose to join us, to hold us, to whisper “me too”. Eventually, in a matter of minutes, every single woman had joined me up front. Every single woman in that class had had a similar experience and was hurting. Every. single. one. So today I’m putting the tough stuff into words; to me, the discomfort is worth making someone else — anyone else — feel seen.
Finally, I’ll say that parts of this piece are biomythography — a literary term coined by Audre Lorde to describe a style of composition that weaves myth, history, and biography within a narrative. In short, the description of suicide is imagined. I used to replay the scene over and over and over in my head, to the point of it feeling real, but I’m grateful to say that it remained a daydream. That I made it through.
So if you are my parent, or friend, or simply a caring person — please buckle in. Or maybe don’t read this one. The choice is yours. xx
Re-Birth
My doctor had stroked two fingers gently against my forehead as I was going under.
He tended to speak without showing the tops of his teeth, something my mother and I both found to be quite uncanny, but now he said, quite definitively, “Everything will be okay from here on out,” and in a moment of magnificence, revealed the top row of his pearly whites. My mother murmured, “Oh, Isabelle,” as the medical lights reflected off of his monstrous incisors, and my eyes squinted, and then closed, against the glare. “Oh, Isabelle,” she said again, this time emotion threaded throughout each syllable and her hand clasping tightly atop of my own.
In high school, my English teacher had told me that he stopped believing in God the first time he had been put under drug-induced amnesia.
“There is nothing,” he’d said. “There is no memory, no dream-like state that one slips into; nothing.”
Waking up, encompassed in a paper gown of blue that crinkled at the waist, I hadn’t been able to argue with him. The only hints of a “something” were tiny droplets of blood that licked my inner thighs, abdominal cramps, and an unnaturally dry throat. I imagined Mr. Cashman, in front of a dry-erase board, grinning: “Ay, there’s the rub.”
In the post-anesthesia care unit, a woman to my left moaned as her head lolled in all directions, as though she was unsure of where to look to next. I closed my eyes and cradled a newly empty womb.
I bled for one month and fifteen days.
In my second to last trimester at [redacted] College, I took a class entitled “Literary Hauntings.” It was taught by Professor T., a quiet man haunted by the memories of his childhood and the refugee camps that he had been forced to call home. We read novels of loss, of tortured memories, of hope — and he and I spent many afternoons in his office, connected by an unspoken emptiness.
He would listen quietly as I told him of my dreams saturated with symbolism and, occasionally, he read me poems that he had written for his grandmother. When we read “Beloved”, he said, “You have to learn to let go of the things that are not meant for you.”
Freeing yourself [is] one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self [is] another.
Toward the end of our appointment, my doctor looks confusedly down at my chart, his fingertips slowly trailing across a handwritten note. I notice that his knuckles are grey and wrinkled and hairy. The last time that I was here, a quiet Tuesday in May, we had sat across from one another in his office to discuss birth control options. On the wall next to his desk hangs a photo of his son at his exact moment of birth, clothed in the remnants of amniotic fluid, moving from darkness to the light.
“It says here that you’ve had a termination procedure within the past year” he says, casting furrowed eyebrows from my chart to my face. The speculum is still in his hand and in a moment of sudden self-awareness, he fumbles to put it into the sink quickly; it clatters against the stainless steel. He finishes his question, “When was that? And who performed the procedure for you?”
I stand up, the paper gown crinkling in time to my movements, and my doctor takes a step back, chart still in hand.
“Do you need to use the bathroom?” he asks.
For a moment, I lose my balance; lose myself.
“You did it. You did the procedure and you don’t even remember.”
And before the sobs emerge from my throat, they march up my spine, folding me in half; my legs collapse and the cold linoleum greets me, and my fingers reach out to clasp something, anything, and meet nothing; my hands form fists, my nails imprint half-moons into my palms as I squeeze, as it wracks my entire body – the defeat, the loss, the emptiness – and I cry and I cry and I cry and I release.
The morning after you loose your mind and swallow twelve sleeping pills — the mug of water clinking against your teeth as you gulped them down, your last goodbye a half-assed haiku scrawled on a crumpled piece of notebook paper — you wake up next to vomit, a dead cellphone, and panic.
You wonder whether this is heaven — the stinging stench of leftover Chinese food, blood, and bile; sore muscles and a cramping stomach; a sweaty forehead, damp sheets, and the glaring light of the lamp you hadn’t turned off the night before.
But then you pinch yourself twice — the second time for good measure — sit up, look around, acknowledge that you are indeed alive, and begin to snake from your covers, gather your sheets into bundles, and head toward the laundry room.
You’re a bit sluggish, you have to pause a few times to catch your breath and to swallow back the vomit that storms up your throat and riots against the back of your teeth, but you make it, nonetheless.
Surprisingly, as you shove your soiled linen into the laundry, you don’t feel regret. Nor do you begin to meticulously plan on how you will do it next time — the bathtub, or the fire escape, or a gun. Rather, you feel a bit of relief. You’d asked for a sign and this was it, clear as day, wasn’t it? You are alive.
You look at your hands — shaking. You Google-search whether you will still need your stomach pumped — probably. And then you sit atop the washing machine, allowing your body to wave from side to side, your spine to vibrate, your feet to kick out, swing, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,
And you shed.
There you are, sitting atop a laundry machine, body moving, shaking, swaying,
shedding.
I am standing naked in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror. I have gained fifty pounds, my hips have rounded out, my breasts are more full, my stomach is soft and heavy. I run my hands along my thighs and squeeze, feel the excess fat escaping from between my fingers and relish in it. I look at my pubic hair; coarse and full, it signifies my womanhood. I look at myself. My self.
On Nora’s porch, in August, I told her the truth. I ran through the history, detailed how one’s breasts feel when they are pregnant, how I knew, I just knew, told her about the dreams.
How in these dreams my lips press against her cheeks — billowy clouds, summer evenings — and she shifts against me, her tiny ear pressed to my chest, her brown skin warm and glowing. I graze her eyelashes with the tip of my nose; hold her close; breathe her in. She is radiant, brilliant, joy.
And when I finish, Nora says, “Isabelle, you have nothing to apologize for.”
I exhale.
I am re-born.
I have chills. Every piece of this is captivating and so relatable. Thank you for sharing your rebirth story.
Isabelle, this was another beautiful piece of writing. Your ability to be vulnerable and share such a personal story is beyond brave. Excellent work. Thank you for sharing it with the world.