Today is my daughter's second birthday. And my body is acting up.
A couple of days ago, I had a crisis — one of those humongous waves. I felt defeated, and absolutely irrelevant, except for my kids. Suddenly, I couldn't stop crying.
Two years ago, around this same time, I was bleeding. I lost a lot of blood after I delivered her — and then, exactly a week later, it started again. I don't think I understood how close it had been until I saw my doctor's face. She looked genuinely concerned.
I don't know why, but it feels like all the trauma my body went through got bottled up — and decided that this was the week to let it out.
As if the body keeps its own calendar. As if it remembers.
~ the capacitor ~
My pain scale is broken.
Instead of telling me when a pain is small, or medium, or big, it works like a capacitor. (If you don't know what that is: a capacitor is an electrical component that quietly stores energy. It charges and charges, holding it all, and only once it's completely full does it release it — all at once. The blinkers in your car work that way.) My pain is like that. I don't notice the small hurts. They pile up, one on top of the other, until I burst — into tears, my body screaming, slowing down only because it has no choice.
And then I'm overwhelmed, because I've let my body get into such a state that I don't even know which doctor I need.
This time, the wave didn't come alone. First it was me. Then my kids got sick. Then my husband. And I kept going — the way I always do. When I finally collapsed — the second time — I found out I'd been carrying a UTI and Covid the whole time. No wonder I broke down.
~ where it comes from ~
I think I learned this young.
For me, getting better always included pain. If my stomach hurt, my mom would get a trapito mojado frío — a cold little wet cloth — and press it onto my belly. When it got warm, she'd make it cold again, and press again. Once, twice, as many times as it took. And honestly? In the end, it worked. Don't get me wrong. But the way to get there was even worse than the original ache.
That's how I grew up. A trapito mojado for the stomach, for the throat, for whatever hurt — some small, almost medieval remedy that did help, eventually, but made you suffer to get there. So this is what I learned, deep down: recovery includes pain. You endure.
So when it was time to deliver my babies, this was already ingrained in me. I was terrified of the epidural. And I thought that getting through it without help would make me a warrior. No matter the cost to my body. To my spirit.
And — don't get me wrong — I would do it again.
Because coming through all of this is how I'm finally seeing the way I deal with pain. And for the first time, I'm asking:
~ asking for help ~
Today, once again, my capacitor is full. My eyes are full of tears. My body is screaming. And this time, I did something I'm not used to: I turned to my husband, and I asked for help.
I don't know if it was shame, or something else — but letting him see me like that, on the edge, did not come easily.
My husband has been so loving, and so patient. He has become part of my healing — gently showing me that pain and sickness can be met another way, from another place. And at the same time, he has respected my choices and walked beside me in them, even when accompanying someone you love through their pain is its own kind of hard. He was there for both of my births. When the contractions were so strong that my legs gave out beneath me, he literally held me up.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that, most of the time, I'm not even aware of the pain. And how sad is that? How disconnected from your own body do you have to be, not to notice? Because when you notice, you pause. You take care. You hold it, you soothe it, you make it better. Instead, I just — aprieto y sigo adelante.
So here I am, trying to find a different way. It isn't easy. This has been in my DNA forever. But I've come to realize there are other ways — and I want to walk this one differently. For me. For my husband. But mostly, for my kids.