What Came Up When It Came Out

I got my IUD out yesterday. 

It was way more emotional than I thought it would be. 

I’ve loved my IUD. It’s been in my body for seven and a half years. Which is crazy when I write it. I got it because at 25 years old I had an 18 year old boyfriend, and he was not responsible. At all. Two morning after pills in three days later, I decided I needed something with better insurance. Getting it in was miserable. I remember that, and also remember that I did it, and drove myself home afterwards, and within a week was fine. My periods went away which I have considered a godsend, and I stopped worrying about getting pregnant. I have felt the sexually liberated modern woman. 

I started calling around yesterday trying to find a clinic to take out my IUD. Many of the big women’s health clinics around couldn’t take a new patient for months, and that initial appointment that they were offering—three months away in August— would only be an evaluation. After the evaluation they would have to book another appointment to actually do the removal. Evaluate what?! It is my body, it has been in for almost eight years, which is the recommended maximum time to keep this particular IUD in, and I want it out. What is there to evaluate, and why is the healthcare system wasting my time, my money, and my anxiety by stretching this simple thing out? One of the clinics offered that one of the male practitioners could see me within a month. 

I shut down immediately at the thought. 

I have no trauma to justify this immediate denial. I have not been raped, or sexually abused. I am on the lucky side of the statistic that can say that every sexual experience I have had has been pretty much on my terms. I have worked hard to keep it that way; and, I have been lucky. Yet the thought of going into a clinic and spreading my legs for a man to, albeit probably clinically and unemotionally, take out my IUD reduced me to tears. It is not just the physical vulnerability, it is the emotional vulnerability as well, and I deeply feel that men can sympathize with all of the sexual ramifications and responsibilities that come with being female bodied, but they cannot empathize. And while the actual removal of my IUD was a few minutes of discomfort and ten seconds of pain, the whole process for me was emotionally layered with all of those ramifications, decisions and the lack of decisions that come with being female bodied and being sexually active. 

Surface level, this removal is a simple choice. I had the IUD in for nearly eight years, and needed to get it removed or switched out within the next six months. I am stable with access to doctors this month, which is not always true as an international sailor. My work this week is light, so I had the time. And the decision to remove it and not immediately replace it is because I have been dealing with other health concerns the last year or two, and want to give my body some time without the added hormones of the IUD possibly affecting my body in unknown ways. A reset time. Grumpily, I have considered that my periods will return, along with the stress of pregnancy. 

On a deeper level, this decision carries more weight. My periods will return, along with the stress of pregnancy.  I don’t take either of these things lightly. 

I have a boyfriend who doesn’t love to use condoms; we will both have to do better, and I will have to demand that it not always be on me. I don’t want to be the one always asking to keep myself safe; I want to be able to trust him to do that too. 

I am also thirty three. I don’t know if I want kids, but I also don’t know that I don’t. In my twenties at least I could be definitive that I didn’t want them now…the question is harder as I approach my mid-thirties. We are getting into the territory of, if not now, when? The stakes of the metaphorical question game are higher. If I do accidentally get pregnant, would I keep it? Because the biological clock is boxing me in?! What a terribly unfair thing to force a decision… 

I ended up going to a Planned Parenthood. They could take me same day as they had a cancellation, and didn’t need me to come in for a preliminary appointment for an evaluation. I had a cry, miserably wished I had a girlfriend free to come with me for the hour long car ride each direction, told my boyfriend I didn’t want him to come, and went and did it. 

I didn’t want him to come. Which hurt him, I think. He is the kind of guy who wants to help me with everything, to take care of me. Which is amazing, but I have realized recently that sometimes this makes me feel small. I have spent most of my life making sure I don’t feel small, making sure that my sense of identity is as solid and as much to my liking as I can make it. It is an ongoing process, and one that takes constant work. My body is something that I am extremely protective of, and driving myself to the clinic— the decision and the enactment of this decision which is so entirely female— felt important to do without someone who’s body is on the other side of the sexual divide. I am strong enough to make these decisions for myself, and to follow them through. (I had a different sentence written there. It read: It is a small thing, a tiny thing, but I am strong enough to make these decisions for myself and to follow them through. But it is not a small thing at all, and I should not belittle myself or anyone else with making any part of a decision regarding our bodies small.) 

The words MY BODY MY CHOICE kept ringing in my ears throughout the day yesterday. They are not small words. They are words that have been largely untrue for women throughout most of history, and words that are untrue for too many women today. It matters that I drove myself to the clinic, and it made me feel strong. It mattered to me, so it matters. It mattered every day last summer when I was driving schooners, and someone, usually an older woman, would tell me how amazing it was to have a female captain, and how proud she was. It got old, and there was always the constant underlaying sense that it shouldn’t be a big deal, I’m not a “female captain” I’m a “captain!” but the fact that they did say it means that it did matter. I run a boat now, with my boyfriend, and it matters that I am the one who drives it on and off the dock. The societal expectation is that he is the captain, and I am second to him. It matters to me that I don’t feel inferior, that he doesn’t think of me as inferior, and it matters because every time I dock the boat somebody sees, is surprised, and then sees me differently. As strong and capable, rather than as secondary. It matters for me, and it matters for all of us. 

I got my IUD out yesterday, and in the end it was a very causal few minutes of discomfort with a very nice doctor at planned parenthood. The mechanics of it turned out to be easy, for which I am thankful. I have written this, however, because I felt a lot of things yesterday, and non of them were small or deserve to be minimized.