Thursday, December 30  

Pain

Women understand pain. They have conversed with it, canoodled with it, accepted it into their family. They are more familiar with it than men. This is, of course, a generalization. It doesn't take into account those men Vic has known who suffer through life with various diseases, congenital defects or dead mothers.

pain noun 1. An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder. 2. Suffering or distress. 3. A source of annoyance; a nuisance.

Despite what she wrote in her highschool journal the day after she'd had sex for the first time (dear diary, I am a woman now) Vic knows that she did not truly join the ranks of women until she experienced absolute pain.

Birthing was like passage into a secret society. She bought her way in with stifled screams and sweat. Her body split itself open like an overripe peach and in that moment she knew finally what it really means to be a woman.

Does it matter that Vic is not brave in the face of pain? No matter how familiar, she is still scared of it and when it comes, whimpers like a child, clutching her ouch and searching concerned faces for the one who can kiss it better.

Vic wakes at 4am with what feels like a knife twisting in her lower abdomen. She turns over, sits, stands, tries to find a less painful place. When she can't, she panics and kneels on the floor. Jon comes over and strokes her hair, whispers Feel better, baby.

Later, after telling the story of her recent pain over and over to nurses, doctors and ultrasound technicians, she realizes that the pain has gone. They tell her there's nothing wrong. Suddenly, that feels true. Vic goes back home feeling sheepish but, like all women, still entitled to her pain.