The pain we call womanhood

THE PAIN WE CALL WOMANHOOD It didn’t start when I was eighteen years old, it started way before that ,but at that time all I was left with was a question that had no answer. Last year I was diagnosed with a ruptured appendix and was immediately scheduled for an emergency surgery in a wheelchair,that was the first time I have ever felt so helpless. My mother rushed me to the emergency unit to be operated on, upon getting there I realized that even though it was called an emergency unit only the patients were in an emergency the staff not so much. The waiting chairs by the hallway were filled with sick or injured people who were either really quiet or screaming their lungs out in pain. I was a mix of both of them. One minute I was crying and the other I was quiet. The queue at the front desk didn’t seem to move fast enough. A deposit had to be made before a patient could be attended to. That was their policy and I wonder how many lives have been lost due to this policy. My mother rushed to join the queue leaving me at a desk close to two doctors who were chatting away.I was only a few feet from them so I could hear everything they were saying. They spoke in English to each other obviously gossiping about the patients that were all around them. One spoke about how much she hated being in this hospital and having to attend to poor and illiterate patients. She also said she hated having to explain everything to them again in their local dialect. But what did she expect? They both laughed and my stomach turned, increasing the pain I was already feeling inside. The other doctor noticed my discomfort and for a second I could swear what I saw in his eyes was pity but then the moment his colleague touched his arm he blinked and that look was gone. I tried to sleep but sleep didn’t come it never comes in situations like this I could only sit there and watch and occasionally cry in agony A few minutes later my mother was back and I was soon laying in a ward waiting for what’s to come next. A different doctor arrived and informed us that the nurses were going on strike and so all surgeries had been suspended until the strike was over. Does that mean everyone’s emergencies were suspended too ? How can they suspend work when other people’s lives are at stake? But I guess that is typical of a federal hospital. But should it be this way? Why are people’s lives not taken seriously? How can the medical profession play with life and death? I was transferred to a private hospital two hours after midnight. By this time my father had joined my mother in the hospital, Never in my entire lifetime had I ever seen my father in tears. That was more than enough to break me,I made a promise to him then and there to try my hardest to be fine and recover better than ever. It was the least I could do after all. They paid another deposit and it was arranged that the surgery will be done tomorrow morning. That night I couldn’t sleep and it just so happened to be a long night,I tossed and turned till eventually the sun came up. I was in the theater room by nine am and out at eleven. The surgery lasted two hours. That's two hours of my life I will never get back and I don’t even know what happened during that time. I had tubes everywhere from my nose to my stomach and even one in between my legs. I remember my sister saying I was walking like a penguin,it was the first I smiled in a few days and the last for a while. The day it happened was two days after the surgery,my parents were called in to the doctor’s office to discuss something. I was alone for a while before a nurse came in to put a new drip in. She greeted me but I didn’t reply, I was in too much pain. The painkillers did nothing but put several holes in my body. I was crying and so desperately in need of seeing my mother again. The nurse did what she had to do and ignored me the whole time but when she was about to leave she stopped and turned to me again and said. And I quote, “why are you just laying here crying like you are in any serious pain? Don't you know that childbirth hurts a hundred times more than this,you’re just wasting your tears now the real pain lies ahead”. And that was it, I had always imagined how painful childbirth truly is but right now I am laying in a hospital bed experiencing the worst pain I have ever felt but I am given a reminder that this is nothing compared to what I may experience in the future. How does one prepare to feel pain? The simple truth is I have always been scared of pregnancy or childbirth to the point that I convinced myself I was never going to have kids,because I lost someone very close to me to it. Up until now the reason had always been that I was scared of dying but it was something deeper than that. I am not scared of death itself. Inevitably no one can escape it. What I was really scared of is that I have to feel pain to prove I am woman enough that if I never have kids I become less of a woman. It doesn't matter if I am barren. That made me question a lot of things, for one when a man is weak or not man enough, he is compared to a woman. But does that rule apply to women too? If a woman isn’t woman enough or is less of a woman would she be compared to a woman too? I think not. And that bothers me a lot because even when women go through the worst pain on earth they don’t receive sympathy for it . Some may even complain it wasn’t done the natural way. On top of it all, another thing that doesn’t quite sit well with me is when women lose their identity to their children. Where I come from when a woman gives birth her name stops being her name or even used she starts being addressed by the name of her child. Her name becomes the mother of whatever the child’s name is. For my mother that name changed six times. At first her name was maman Fatima then it became maman Fareedah to which it later changed to maman Fahad then to maman Fadila then to maman Firdausai and finally maman Abdul. That seems exhausting. I sometimes wonder if my mother still remembers her name, how beautiful it is and if she sometimes misses being called by that. I hope one day I find the courage to ask if she truly loves being a mother or does she feel her entire existence is tied to her children. Does she still think about all her dreams or has she forgotten them all? I know her womb once bore a tombstone for her dreams before it became a home for my siblings and I. Hopefully one day I am not too much of a coward to ask her But if she stays silent after my question I will know my answer. And even if she does answer and tries to lie to me about it I would still know. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself if my mother feels less of a woman if she had never had me. Would it be selfish if I say I never want to experience that amount of pain just to prove my femininity? And isn’t it more selfish to have kids for that reason and one day they ask the same question I am now?. I