Like the Underwear, the Lady parts are not mine.

My Lady Parts are not my own. If they were they would never become filthy or smelly, uncomfortably moist, sweaty, itchy or infected. If my lady bits were my own they would stay fresh and clean all the time. They would stay healthy and disease free. But alas, no matter how many times I shower, all it takes is a few hours before my lady parts become stinky again. No matter how much care I take to keep them healthy, a yeast infection or PH imbalance or bacterial overgrowth can pop-up at any time.

My lady parts are not mine, if they were they would be under my control. In fact my lady parts regularly control me: I have had to halt vacations in foreign countries, travel hundreds of miles out of my way, to find English speaking doctors, or quality hospitals to address my vaginal pain. I have been reluctant to do activities I enjoy — worried in Israel that my vaginal issues would get in the way of the camping trip I was so excited for, worried my incontinence would interrupt my going on dhamma  retreat. I have been forced to alter my clothing choices (no white jeans on period days) or find “solutions” that let me proceed with normal everyday life despite fluids leaking from my lady parts. I have had to be quick to change out of wet swimsuits or gym clothes to avoid yeast infections. And, no matter how unpleasant, I have been forced to schedule pelvic exams so doctors can poke and prod at my cervix and ovaries, causing me discomfort and bleeding every time.

If my vagina were truly my own, it wouldn’t embarrass me: It wouldn’t smell so bad during workouts that it made me self conscious. It wouldn’t threaten the horror of bloody pants during a class. It wouldn’t have forced me out of bed with lovers because of pressure, urgency or blood. Its liquids wouldn’t soak through silk pants at work events and force me to carefully sit stiffly and cross legged the whole time.

If my lady parts were truly mine — even if I had to accept that they were going to inconvenience, embarrass and pain me — I could at least trust they would not kill me. But precancerous changes on my cervix, leading to surgery, made it clear that my lady parts can in fact make me ill. And my last visit to the gyn, where they found a weird growth and needed to biopsy it, was yet further evidence that lurking up in my lady parts, just slightly beyond my vision, insidious changes that can silently grow and spread could be the death of this body at any time.

No matter what I think the vagina’s job is, no matter that I count on it to stay functional and clean and safe, no matter that I am desperate for it to just  work as I need it to and not interrupt my everyday life, no matter that I wash it, medicate it when needed, and go for my annual exams, my vagina does not heed my desires and expectations.

This is because the fluids that are released by my vagina, precisely so that it can function for sex and childbirth, also make it wet and smelly. Bacteria and yeast that naturally grows in the warm, dark, moist environment –bacteria and yeast that in the right proportions can help keep the vagina healthy — can easily overgrow and cause disease with slight changes to the PH from medicines or douches or excess moisture from wet clothes. The skin and epithelial cells that line and protect the vagina can easily become itchy and irritated due to excess friction from clothes or solid objects placed in the vagina. Cells on the cervix can become cancerous in the presence of viruses (introduced into the environment through the normal use of sex). Cancer is simply a mutation in cells, and cells in the body regularly change in order to allow for the protection, regrowth, renewal and adaptation. Cancer can easily spread because lymphatic fluids, that help clear the body of debris and toxins, can also carry mutated cells and allow cancer to metastasize. In other words, the very nature of my body, the very qualities that enable it to function, are also the reason that it is able to assume/shift into forms I do not like, forms that embarrass, inconvenience or endanger me.

Is the vagina constant or inconstant? Clearly inconstant — it goes through states of wet and dry. The smell changes not just throughout the day but has changed over the years of my life as well. It goes through states of bleeding and states where there is no blood. States of PH balance and health and states where a changed PH causes pain and disease. The cells can change and new polyps or cancer can appear.

Is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful? Obviously it is stressful. It is stressful to be embarrassed by my vagina’s smell or leaking. It is stressful for it to itch or hurt. It is stressful to have to plan around its cycles or afflictions. Most of all though,  it is stressful when I worry it might kill me. When it forces me to endure surgery or biopsies. Stressful when I have to wait for the results and worry about cancer. It is stressful precisely because it changes when I want it to stay the same.

And is it fitting to regard something that is inconstant, stressful and subject to change as” this is mine”, “this is myself” or “this is who I am”?

Still working on getting to a true heartfelt no, but here is what I have:

My vagina is a body part that frequently disgusts and embarrasses me, I surely don’t want to claim those moments and aspects as my own. But at the same time, I accept them because a vagina is essential to my womanhood, and being a woman is something I deeply regard as myself, who I am. But that means, in essence, that I depend on an utterly undependable item, a body part, to claim/establish who I am.

I depend on an item that causes me physical pain and discomfort just to establish an identity. I tolerate behaviors that are filthy and super inconvenient, like bleeding and itching, so I can claim a female form. I have an object that I need to make accommodations for in my daily life, that forces me into situations I hate, and deters me from ones that I desire, and this is the thing I want to use to build an identity and life around? How is it “myself” if it involves doing things and making accommodations I don’t want to have to do?

Probably most significantly, I build an identity on an object that can literally force me to abandon the alana identity I so carefully crafted and nourished over the years. I want to be a woman, but the very thing my mind uses to make that identity credible, has the power to end it. The alana identity and life I have worked so hard for, invested so much time in, endured so much suffering for, can be brought to a swift end by these lady parts.  The alana identity and life I have worked so hard for, invested so much time in, endured so much suffering for, will definitely be brought to an end by this body.  What business do I have saying this body is myself, who I am, when it will die and, like a tidal wave, wipe out my entire sense of myself as Alana along with it.

What is more is I want my body to reflect me, who I believe myself to be. Of course, on one end, the lady parts do this, making my claim of womaness credible. But in another, they do the opposite, even in their “normal”, healthy state, being bloody and moist and smelly and frequently disgusting. If I want to claim the lady parts represent or reflect me, I need to claim all aspects and all states. I can’t simply keep it under wraps, try to tame it with undies and creams and soaps and medications and dysplasia removal surgeries and say “because of/ and yet in spite of/ these lady parts I am the me I want to be –a badass, on top, beautiful, sensual, good woman with a body and life all buttoned up and  in control”.

Just 2 weeks ago I am in the GYN’s office for my annual exam when my new GY looks up at me with concern plain on her face to tell me I have “an unusual growth on my cervix”. Second doctor ushered in for a second opinion, me freaking out, GY struggling to remove the growth, cramping and bleeding and terror. I go home, with a week to doomscroll and preparing for the worst, as I wait for the biopsy results to come back. All along, I am just wondering how I could possibly have cervical cancer so advanced it is visible to the naked eye, when I have been beyond diligent getting regular exams.  The doc calls 6 days later — benign polyp. Relief.

A few days later, every detail of that exam still seared in my brain, and I got to wondering — how on earth can this body be the foundation for the fairytale future my imagination has cooked up? It is a foundation so flimsy a single doctor’s appointment, the tiniest of cellular changes on the tiniest of body parts, could shake and tear down at any moment. What business do I have calling this body ‘me’ or ‘mine’ or ‘who I am’ if it isn’t going to give me the future I want, the story I was born to tell, but instead guarantees death and disease, the future I do everything to avoid.

These lady parts are changing, they are aging, and decaying — the lab results, the smells, the altered texture and blood flow are proof. I use it, as long as I can, and while I use it I must care for it and accept its downsides –its nature. But its nature is to go the way of this entire body, shifting states/form until it can no longer be used at all. So how exactly can I prove to myself that these lady parts, this body, is ‘who I am’ when all evidence points to the contrary?