My pelvic floor is broken. The PT slides her fingers inside me and presses on a spot at the back of my vagina. A jolt of pain shoots through the inside of my ass. Not exactly my ass, it’s too far forward, but like the outside of the inside of my ass. It’s a hot spark deep inside where the tissue is tender and aching beneath the rock-hard surface of nebulous vaginal-anal space. 

“This is really tight,” she says. I stop myself from stupidly joking, that’s what he says. She’s surprised I don’t experience pain during sex. I shrug. I don’t say, What sex?  Or,  I’d rather be sleeping. I don’t tell her I do have pain during sex, my hamstrings cramping up if I bend my legs the wrong way. Or the time I tried to seductively collapse against the pillows and whacked my head so hard against the wall I thought I might pass out. 

Have you ever been depressed?  I want to ask her. My pelvic floor isn’t the only broken part of me. I’ve had breast pain and intense fatigue. There’s a good chance they’re side effects from the new antidepressant. The pain is weird, like the pressure of engorgement, the prickly sensation right before milk letdown. The fatigue is sudden and unstoppable, full-body exhaustion striking late afternoon. It makes me feel like I’ll faint if I spend another second on my feet. “It sounds like something is tricking your body into thinking it’s pregnant,” she tells me. I laugh. It’s been nearly four years of indecision about whether or not to have a second baby. So, my body has taken matters into its own hands. A psychological experiment. Each month, pain and fatigue just like a new pregnancy. Each month, a negative pregnancy test. Each month, no additional clarity. 

She wants me to get a full hormonal blood work panel. Check my Vitamin D and thyroid levels. She wants me to see a naturopath up the street who’s “a hormone expert.” She wants me to stretch daily. Try myofascial work. Lymphatic drainage. With my background in massage therapy, she could teach me the techniques to manually palpate and release my pelvic floor muscles. I don’t have that much free time. I’d prefer not to spend it sending a bolt of searing pain rocketing through my vagina. 

All I want to know is, could this be cancer? If it’s not cancer, I’ll deal with it. What’s a little intractable lower back pain? What’s a couple weeks a month of swollen, throbbing breast tissue? Maybe I’m exhausted because I’m exhausted. This year has been a deluge of increasingly terrible news. Is it possible for a vagina to experience existential dread? 

She asks me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten, ten being enough to send me to the emergency room. I would never go to the emergency room for pain. I tell her so. I decide the pain is a seven. I’ve always liked the number seven. 

I want to tell her I can’t recall a single day in my entire life when I haven’t thought for at least a moment I would be better off dead. Awake in the morning I think, Again? Do I have to?  There is so much that brings me joy, but always more that causes pain. My whole life, an undercurrent of pain flowing through me. A tide of sadness that rises up and washes over me before retracting again. In and out. Over and over. 

“This isn’t normal,” she tells me. She means the hormonal issues. The pelvic floor tension may be causing a secondary issue with my bladder. The abnormality doesn’t bother me. I have never been normal. We carry traumas in our bodies. It’s possible the birth of my son, two full days of pressure trying to get his melon head to descend through my pelvis, damaged my pelvic floor muscles. They never recovered. It’s also possible every inch of me carries the trauma of feeling emotions too intensely, of constantly stepping out of darkness into the disorienting gleam of sunlight. 

I woke up this morning and did the stretches she recommended. I left a note for my doctor in my online patient chart requesting the necessary blood work at my next follow up appointment. If I have one personality trait stronger than perpetual sorrow, it’s that I always do what I’m told. I would hate for my PT to be disappointed in me. 

We can figure this out, she assures me. We can fix this. That’s good; less pain is always preferable. There is no cure for depression. Even if there were, would I take it? If you strip the ocean of its salt, what is left to distinguish it from the river that flows into it? My psyche is a receptacle for the world’s runoff. My soul is full of silt. The tide comes in and the tide rolls out. The days turn over. I awake each morning to begin again. 

-Claire Taylor

Claire Taylor is a writer in Baltimore, MD. She serves as an In House Agent for Versification Publishing, and a reader for Capsule Stories. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications and has received nominations for Pushcart and Best American Short Stories. In addition to writing for adults, Claire is the creator of Little Thoughts, a monthly print and digital newsletter of original writing for kids. Find Claire online at clairemtaylor.com and Twitter @ClaireM_Taylor.