In This Body: Red Shame
“My body holding life instead of bleeding it out a week late”
Our monthly column "In This Body" is comprised of true stories about sex, gender, the body, and love, written by Fiona George, for NAILED.
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I always bought the most expensive pregnancy test. The ones that cost just over twenty dollars, which is a lot of money when you’re fifteen. I had to be sure, even though I already was. Virgin. But there was the myth of semen on toilet seats. Teen pregnancy on TV like it was a disease, something I could catch.
Alone in the bathroom for those three minutes. Face burned red shame.
Part of me believed in immaculate conception. Don’t know how else to explain it. Maybe I just listened to too much Madonna. “Papa Don’t Preach” on my mom’s copy of The Immaculate Collection. That song, the perfect amount of time for a pregnancy test to show results.
When I say I was a virgin, that’s not entirely true. With a woman. Girl, really. We both were. She was bisexual, sexually active. Everything I wasn’t yet. Another myth: that if she had sex, unprotected, with a man, the semen could somehow end up inside me.
Seemed to make sense. At that time every other month. When my period came late, and weeks beforehand mood swings would start, over-eating. Fear and fascination. The cultural validation of the bible, immaculate conception.
This sounds crazy. But I was worried. Hands-grip-head-teary-shaky-worried. Enough to spend a full twenty dollars, then some. To confirm what I already knew. To piss on a stick and face the feeling of that.
Burn red and hide the evidence.
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I didn’t know I wanted kids. When I was fifteen, I never wanted to be a mother or wife. Those words sidled up to sacrifice. Seemed like a decision between being a full, independent human and living for others. The choice seemed obvious.
The only way I would have wound up with a child was by complete accident, I decided.
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When I was seventeen I waited for more pain. There was a little sting with the first thrust. But it wasn’t painful. I’d been waiting for this. He’d said it would hurt. He was wrong.
It was a long time of fucking without intercourse for that moment.
He wouldn’t use his cock because I was underage. I didn’t want it because I was a lesbian. Sometimes, people just need to believe things about themselves.
That a word like lesbian could keep me from a word like mother, or wife. That oral sex, finger fucking, is any different.
He was wrong about the pain. I was wrong about him, about myself. That I thought was my one exception, the only man for me. Straight out of a quirky rom-com. You know the one.
This was a lie that built a relationship, this was a lie that destroyed it. A lie I believed.
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We never used a condom. I never used birth control. I never got pregnant. Stopped taking the tests, even. The tests were a portal, kind of. Opened to a possibility, even an imaginary one. That I could be flung into the word mother, without that decision to sacrifice.
Without compromise of my strong girl, strong woman, self.
A lie I needed to believe.
For two years he pulled out. For two years that was my portal. A more real possibility.
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If I was pregnant, I would have gotten an abortion. Even in all my teenage delusion, I knew I could not care for a child. A baby. My body would do a poor job at housing another life. Couldn’t even keep myself healthy.
Smoking and drinking already, too much. Not enough water or sleep. Too much fried food, not enough veggies and vitamins.
But that’s not the image that existed in the portal. My belly large with baby. My body and all it could do. My body the support system. My body holding life instead of bleeding it out a week late.
Red shame.
Someone small in my arms, a warmth from my chest out. My tits with a purpose, to feed. Not some hungry man but a new life. Someone to teach to everything I still needed to learn.
I thought I knew everything. That I could save them from a world that just wanted to fuck with their heads. Even as it fucked with mine.
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Guilt. Without the guilt I do not need a portal. I can picture something different. A strong woman, large with baby. Strong with baby. A full, independent human, giving life to another. I can see myself writing in a notebook on top of a round stomach. Giving life to another. Giving life to characters, my imaginations, portals.
My life as a writer not sacrificed. A future with children, not a choice. This is a life I could build.
What’s changed is the women I know, the mothers. How they’ve changed what that word means, to me. Women who are redefining what that word looks like. What words look like.
Unashamed of all that a woman’s body can do. All that a woman can do.
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Header image courtesy of Bárbara Moura. To view a gallery of her illustrations, go here.