But still, like dust, I’ll rise…
Tattoo by Nikki at FoxDen Tattoo in Wallingford May 2021
So this tattoo was done when Nikki was finishing my ear tattoos but I felt that this tattoo needed its own blog.
Something so simple, a diamond, a shape made up of dots that turn into lines that turn into a shape that turns into a symbol. Sometimes I wish I could let little tattoos like this just be “fun” like how people get certain tattoos because they look cool or they feel like it. But that’s just not me, I’m too emotional, too vulnerable and nostalgic and I think that’s ok at this point in my life.
Having a hysterectomy opened up so many things for me. I no longer fear the dreaded ER visits fraught with intense pain, long waits, fear mongering, cancer screening, drug seeking accusations and ultimately total denial of my pain. I no longer feel this deep seeded hatred for how “womanly” a uterus made me feel, and the constant barrage about “becoming a mother” or my identity being defined by an internal organ. I went to sleep under anesthesia and woke up with the deepest sense of relief I have ever felt.
The the surgeon gave me a gift I didn’t know I needed. She said my left ovary was so scarred it was now physically evident that I had face medical neglect, often due to fatphobia and misogyny. There was this deeply held belief that I had done something wrong and yet there it was, now in a medical record. I had done nothing, my body had never been wrong, the system had been wrong. I’ve gone through this both as a “not out cis-presenting woman” and a non-binary human and the results were always the same except with the latter I was often misgendered and questioned.
When I woke up the following day two things repeated in my mind, my favorite Pixies song and my favorite Maya Angelou poem. Her poetry and story have been such a deeply profound part of my life and post-op when my therapist asked how I was feeling I kept thinking of the lines,
“You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?”
And I knew in that moment a perfectly adorable little diamond on my thigh, a reminder of this journey, was so needed and felt so perfect.
