i don't want the world, i just want your half.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

I was in pain. I was mad. I wrote the majority of this on my phone as a 2nd person assignment for my writing class.

You try to understand, you really do. But your penis is keeping you from it.

She asks you to go to the grocery store and get tampons for her, and like a good boyfriend, you oblige because you love her so much.

When you get back, she calls your name from the bathroom and you walk in and there she is in the water with pieces of bodily tissue that you don't even want to think about where it came from floating around her in the tub and says she hurts and that the pain pills aren't helping. You ask if she has tried taking Naproxen. She starts crying and swears her gynecologist won't acknowledge that she has endometriosis. You ask what endometriosis is and she cries even more.

You're afraid she'll pass out from the pain like she did last time. Her mother found her on the bedroom floor sprawled out on a towel with her eyes closed and didn't know whether to get the heating pad or a protein bar because periods and hypoglycemia are both pretty terrible.

You've heard that sex helps, but since you're saving yourself for marriage and she's celibate, that's not gonna work today. You'd ask your dad how to make her better because he studied pre-med and surely knows these things, but you don't want to embarrass her, and asking your mom would only embarrass yourself.

You wish you had a guy friend to commiserate with but the only guys you know with girlfriends are your brother and cousin, and anyway, they're married now and asking about their wives could get awkward. Earlier you tried to get her an icepack and she threatened to punch you. You would like to leave, but you know this will only make things worse.

You don’t understand me, she moans.

She’s right. You don’t. And you don’t really want to.

For a moment you remember when you were younger and were going through your mom’s purse to try to find some Big Red and instead found a tampon. You hold it up between your index fingers, turning it around and around like a hot bullet, just dropped from its mold, looking for any indication of what it might be. Your lips silently formed the letters “O” and “B.”

What’s this? you asked your mom.

It’s cotton, she said. In case I get a nosebleed.

You don’t get nosebleeds, you said, but you let her get away with calling it that. It’s not like you had a better explanation.

Now you wish you didn’t know.

Labels: awkward, boys, coogs, girls, horrible, pain, periods, pms, tampons, UH, university of houston, writing class

12:06 AM