ENOUGH is a Rumpus series devoted to creating a dedicated space for essays, poetry, fiction, comics, and artwork by women, trans, and nonbinary people who engage with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
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I got my first IUD when I thought I wanted to have sex with men. I was an ultra-environmentalist then and read that fish’s reproductive organs were being impacted by increased level of hormones in wastewater from birth control pills.
The first one was made of copper. It cramped every part of me to the point that I had to take off work and lay in my twin XL bed in a stuffy dorm room with a heating pad and almost nothing else on me in the dead of summer. That one lasted for a while, gave me heavier flows and a sense of safety, but eventually I found myself at the kitchen sink, idly rubbing my lower belly at the ghost of a cramp. It acted up like this between periods, I realized, counting back the days and the times I had experienced the pain. I thought it was still in place, its little strings reaching the tips of my fingers when I searched for it.
The IUD showed up in an ultrasound, though, crooked and stuck into me, discovered in a dark room with a disinterested technician performing a service for which I would not be able to pay for a year. That one came out in a hurry, an emergency visit, and when they asked if I wanted another one, they seemed so stunned that I said no. It had caused me so much pain, yet here they were, surprised that I did not want to subject myself to that again.
The sex with men caused me pain, too, in a way that could not be diagnosed with an ultrasound. That was pain in a dissociative, trying-to-fit-in sort of way.
IUDs are all the rage. After I got the first one out, it was suggested to me at the doctor’s office more than once that I should consider another. They are for young people who don’t need to make up their minds about having children yet. They offer safety from surprises and forgetfulness, “mistake-proof.” They are tiny, unobtrusive.
IUD stands for intrauterine device. Intra, meaning inside. Uterine, meaning of the uterus. Device, meaning a tool. IUD, meaning this is a tool inside my uterus that someone made for a specific purpose.
It is a feminist icon. Freedom.
I have read that IUDs can be forced upon people with uteruses, sometimes children who are too young to say no, sometimes entire communities, sometimes celebrities who are under conservatorship.
I had my second IUD put in because my country elected a madman. It was the longest-lasting option I could find, and it would cost me $0, and I expected this man I would never meet would try to strip away my rights as quickly as he could. By then, I cared less about the fish and more about arming myself against lawmakers who think other people’s bodies are up for debate. I got the hormonal IUD with the pretty name, the one that a friend bragged had eliminated her period.
On the morning the second one was put in, I was hungover and unrested, my body already sick. It did not want to go in. It knew that we were not a good match, knew that it was a compromise and an insurance policy and a lifeline. It waited for me on that tiny metal tray, and I for it on the fake bed with stirrups, and we sat there in a room together so alone and cold before it happened. It startled the medical staff with its unwillingness to go into my body, the IUD that’s inside me now. They apologized profusely. It found its resting place as I curled into a ball and sweat on the flimsy paper, and it knew still that we were not the right match. All I knew was that I had to keep going.
The IUD worried me, and when I went to get it checked out, they inserted a speculum. It did not like that, the speculum, and neither did I. We agreed on that. But it was still in the right place, where it should be.
It still worried me, though.
The IUD makes itself known sometimes when I am completely still. It does not cause me pain, but it is there; I can feel it. It sits in my center, it takes up space. Last summer, it created a new thing inside me, surprised me. It grew me a cyst, which grew and grew until it burst, and once it burst, its fluids gave me shivering cramps that moved around my groin and sent me back to sweating in bed with a heating pad, languishing. The cyst left without a trace, yet another ultrasound with nothing to show but an assurance that everything I described sounded like a cyst and that this was likely because these devices often cause cysts.
Sometimes the IUD hurts in ways the doctors did not warn me about. It hurts to check to make sure it’s still in place, it hurts to not know if it is, it hurts to wonder if it will ever one day dislodge and start to carve out space in my body, the walls of a womb I never plan to use.
This IUD was a compromise I made with myself after I was raped by my then-partner. It is the result of what he would call an accident. After it happened, I said, I am mad at you because you just did something to my body without my consent, and he did not register that doing this to my body without my consent is another way of saying rape. He went to sleep.
I thought the IUD would make me feel safe. I thought it would be a sentinel protecting me from future violations, arms always out in a T-shape, ready to guard against attack. It was illogical, but it was what I clung to.
More logically, I knew it would protect me from a baby I did not want. I grew up in a family of young mothers, teenage or barely-not-teenage pregnancies, and I needed to know I could control, at least, whether my body could create another human being.
The IUD could not shout loud enough to tell me that if I had to compromise in this way to be with this person, perhaps I would have been better off without him.
The IUD may feel like I am being dramatic about its existence and the meaning I am ascribing to it. It may want to remind me that it is a work of scientific genius, that it gives people choice. It has, at the very least, made my life mostly cramp- and period-free for years in a way that has admittedly been easier. The IUD may want to remind me it’s not all bad; but every time I go to the doctor, I find out the amount of time I can have it in my body has lengthened, and my heart drops. I am trying to run out the clock, but the clock is working against me.
The IUD is so many things, for something so tiny. It is a specter, a reminder, a safety net, a small piece of plastic, a cyst-producer, a T-shape, an implant, an alien, a tiny thing that served me for years, but it was never the shield I needed it to be.
Sometimes when I lay in bed next to the woman of my dreams and stare into her eyes and I feel the IUD’s ghostly reminder in the bottom of my abdomen, I wonder if it is really safe to get rid of it or if that is presuming too much good of the world, to assume my body could be mine. It is a question mark, now, this tiny thing inside me.
It has to go, I decide.
It is a boring day, the day they take it out. They ask why I want it removed, and I pause.
Because I don’t want to have to squat down and reach up and check the strings and worry that I’m going to have more fluid-filled, shivering cysts.
Because the madman is out of office, for now, and I am trying to move on.
Because when I think about my IUD, I think about rape.
I do not say any of that. I say, Because I’m dating a woman now.
They joke, No dicks to worry about!
The nurse almost forgets to tell me what comes next, the day the IUD is removed. They give a slight chuckle when I ask, like IUDs are so commonplace for them, they forgot not everyone knows everything about them.
I want to ask Can I have it? but I think they will do a mental health screening on me if I do, so I don’t.
It still does not like the speculum, and we still agree on that.
After the doctor and nurse have taken it out and they leave the room and I am laying alone on the bed, I am not sure how to feel. I stare at the medical waste trash can.
It is in there now.
I go to the trash can and look for it. I think it would be illegal to take it, but it was part of me for so long, and I start to panic about leaving it behind. I stare into the trash can and I cannot see it. It really was very tiny.
I get dressed and let them escort me out. I get a latte down the street. I wonder what it will be like to get my period again. I wonder if I will get any more cysts.
I wonder if it will ever really be gone.
