Like It's Just So Easy
By Katie on Wednesday, March 20, 2019
If you piss me off or make me love you I’m writing a poem about it so be nice but not too nice.
I am 17
Sat dumbfounded
Unable to comprehend the words around me
My diagnosis taints the silence
My mum speaks up for me
Her voice protecting mine the way it always has
“What are our next steps, is there a cure”
The specialists chuckles and says “usually we’d suggest pregnancy-”
He is stopped in his tracks
By a look from my mum that might have killed a lesser man
“She’s 17”
I am 17
17 but already my life is set out for me
Like pregnancy is the obvious solution
Like thats my life planned out for me
Like I can have a career - as long as I fight for maternity
Like my body is less a temple and more a vessel
Like it’s so easy
Before I get to share my diagnosis
My off again on again boyfriend asks me
If I think it might be an sti
Like I deserve this
Because of all the times I sucked a dick
Like what was I expecting?
Like promiscuity is the cause and not the symptom
Like if I hadn’t let them violate my body
Maybe this wouldn’t have happened to me
Like it’s so easy
I am 22 the on again off again boyfriend is long gone
I come round from surgery number 2
My new specialist says “we saved your ovaries and your womb for your future husband”
Like I don’t own my body, am merely renting it, so I’ve got to keep it tidy
Like I don’t get to have my own autonomy
Like that’s what matters to me
Like there is only heterosexuality
And there is only monogamy
Like it’s so easy
“Don’t you want a family?”
Like family is what we’re born into not what we make it
Like family is mummy and daddy 2.4 children and a dog all alwaus insta ready
Like divorce doesn’t happen
Like me and my sister who are both adopted can’t be related even though we both drive my mum insane because we can’t admit when we’re wrong
Like the uncle who disowned me for screaming about my sexuality has a stronger right to me than friends or lovers who’ve held me when I couldn’t hold myself
Like there is a mold you need to fit into if you want to be happy
Like it’s so easy
When I hold a baby
“Don’t get any ideas”
Like you’re screaming, shitting, puking offspring
Who I’m holding so you get 5 seconds of peace
Is attractive to me
Like losing myself in the way his head smells
Means I don’t want to hold him back at the end
Like the tiredness around you is appealing
Like it’s so easy
“But you’re great with kids”
Like loving children means I have to produce one
Like my future offspring would remember the time I baked them a cake but forget the time I couldn’t leave my bed for a week and all they could hear was crying
Like I must want to bring my job home with me
Like I can handle that level of responsibility even though I once had rats who ate each other after one died and then died because he ate his brother
Like it’s so easy
“Oooh but you’d be a great mum”
Like mum is a title given not earned
Like until I’ve pushed a human head out of my vagina I am not worthy and as soon as I have pushed a human head out of my vagina I am just mummy
Like mum is inherently better than Aunty, or teacher, or nurse, or friend or even just Katie
I am 26
When I throw my hysterectomy party
I might cry like the baby I will never hold in my arms
And it’s hell deciding between pain free emotional stability and a real life my own baby
So don’t tell me this is easy