dreaminghope | Womb gazing

tick - tick - tick - tick

That's not my biological clock you hear; that's my ticking time bomb that may or may not ever go off.

If it can be said, in a broad, unfairly generalizing way, that a man thinks with his penis, I theorize that a woman thinks about her uterus.

Remember the junior high conversations: "I think she's had it", "Has she had it?", "Have you had it?". Always wondering when it is going to happen to your body.

Reach the age of fertility, and start worrying about the doctor's visit: spread and scrape. Done to you, for your own good.

Heterosexual sex usually means one of two questions: "Am I pregnant?" or "Am I pregnant yet?" Watching the body as if from a distance, as if it isn't your own. Observing, watching for symptoms. Nausea in the morning: too much Thai food last night, or morning sickness? Bloating: not enough water, PMS, or pregnancy? Looking for the signs; hopeful or fearful.

If trying to conceive, measure and time the body. Watch the belly expand as a baby grows. It makes sense to be focused around the uterus, doing what it is designed to do. But the in-between, the time when the body is doing something other than reproducing...

I have fairly minor pre-menstrual symptoms, but they are similar to the early symptoms of pregnancy, so every month I worry and watch and hope I'm not and fear that I might be and wonder what would happen if I am.

I never am.

So far.

tick - tick - tick - tick

After fertility comes perimenopause, and the uterus becomes a focus in its decline, generating new symptoms, and are hormone treatments the answer? Menopause means the uterus is finally irrelevant again, for better or worse, for the first time since "When will I get it?". No more cycles of wondering and observing and analyzing. Sounds like freedom to me today.