Page 46 of Past Present Future

While I’m happy for her, I’m also a little surprised by how easy it is for her to move on. Granted, I’ve never had a relationship last that long, but I can only imagine a breakup like that would render me useless for at least a week. Maybe that was a sign for her that it was really over—the fact that it didn’t leave her gutted.

During the freewrite, I try to summon all those inspiration-bright feelings from Gazebo Night, which is what we’re calling it, with plans for another one next semester, once it’s warmed up a bit.

I’ve been trying not to stress myself out about this class, and yet it seems to be the thing that always keeps my creativity locked up. I don’t like the way the words look on the page when I’m struggling like this, when I can’t get any of the sentences to sound the way I want them to.

I tried writing over winter break, but I couldn’t tear myself away from Neil or my friends or my parents. And maybe that was for the best. Maybe I needed to give myself space to refill the creative well.

Today, though, I try something different. I take out the notebook Neil gave me for Hanukkah. If I’m writing by hand, maybe I won’t be as focused on getting it exactly right. No red or green squiggles in Microsoft Word, no blinking cursor. The romantic link might also untangle the parts of my brain that are still tied in knots.

It seems like such an easy hack that I’ll be both astonished and a little mad if it works, if switching to a notebook somehow unclutters my mind.

And it does.

For about five minutes.

Distraction comes in the form of a sharp sting in my abdomen, one that began over winter break and I dismissed because it was only ever a dull ribbon of pain.

This pain, though: definitely not dull.

Since I had the IUD implanted, my periods have been a little unpredictable. Lighter, too, which has been a great benefit. But now what’s happening down there doesn’t feel entirely normal.

I grit my teeth and try to focus. The pain reaches a crescendo when Professor Everett passes back an assignment we turned in before the break that earned her typical critical feedback in that kind way she’s so good at. She loved the creativity, she said, but she worried the writing was a bit rushed.

Rereading my work—a short piece giving a fictionalized history of any building on campus—I can see it’s full of clichés. I’d picked the Lion’s Den, coming up with a fake backstory about a lion tamer who fell in love with the founder of Emerson. Then I sputtered out, realized I didn’t know anything about lions, and spent an hour watching videos about them reuniting with their owners after years apart. I have a particularly emotional paragraph describing hugging a lion, but the rest of the piece doesn’t come close to the epic romance I pictured when I first sat down to write.

She had to get back on the road, for there were many more lions to tame and few of them lived in Boston.

Hmm, I guess I don’t hate that sentence.

In her honor, he made the school mascot the lion. He wouldn’t forget her. Couldn’t forget her. The mascot was a symbol of that.

Professor Everett wrote, slight repetition? And maybe a connection here between how lions remember their humans, as mentioned above? Of course—that should have been obvious.

And my final sentences, which induce the highest level of cringe, alternating between an Emerson brochure and trying too hard to sound smart.

Now the Lion’s Den is a popular spot on campus for anyone looking for a caffeine fix. Boston may be historically associated with tea, but here at the Lion’s Den, it’s all about the coffee. Students have come and gone, but the one thing that’s remained constant is the mighty lion, its den, and all the coffee consumed therein.

Therein. Thousands of words in the English language, and I couldn’t have picked a better one to end it on. And it’s all about the coffee. Just throw me into the Boston Harbor.

It’s been a slow revelation, but maybe what Professor Everett is trying to say is that her class isn’t the right place for me. That it’s better to cut my losses and try something new than make her suffer through another mediocre piece of writing.

My mind is too jumbled to analyze it now, so I shove the assignment into my JanSport and flee the room the moment she dismisses us.

I make an appointment at the campus health center that afternoon.

“I had an IUD put in over the summer,” I tell the gynecologist. “And I haven’t had any problems with it, but over the past couple weeks I’ve had some abdominal pain. Cramping.”

“Occasionally there’s some movement during the first few months, which would cause what you’re describing,” she says. “It’s rare, but it does happen. Even if you’re a little past that, we should make sure it’s where it’s supposed to be. Let’s take a look.”

I have always felt in control of my body, comfortable in my skin—my pear-shaped curves and my ability to tell my boyfriend what I like. Although apparently that’s changing, too. So it’s with a new kind of anxiety that I undress behind a curtain before draping myself with a paper gown and positioning myself in the exam chair, feet in the stirrups and legs still clamped together.

I’m still not entirely used to this, but the doctor is as gentle as she can be as she conducts the examination, letting me know that the IUD slipped and she’ll try to put it back in its proper position as quickly as she can. I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths, and then it’s over.

“It’s a good thing you came in,” she says after I get dressed. “Let us know if the cramping hasn’t gone away in a few days or if anything else seems out of the ordinary.”

Back in my dorm bed with a heating pad, I discover there aren’t enough emotional lion videos to lift my current mood. Paulina and I said a quick hello when I got back to campus and she was on her way out, but otherwise she seems just as mysterious this semester as she was the last. Suddenly I feel unmoored out here in Boston, the ground shaky beneath my feet. Everything over winter break was easy. Cozy. Now I’ve been tossed out into the unknown again, only it’s colder and less hospitable than ever.

Even though vaginal health is not a topic Neil and I have ever broached, I send him a text about it, my thumb only wavering for a moment before I hit send. Because I want this to be something we can talk about, the same way we would books or academics. Well—probably not with the same frequency, but hopefully with the same comfort level.

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