I’m still writing the same essay. Women/Food, Women/Body Image, Women/Love. Sometimes writing an essay is like wrestling an octopus, but this one is more controlled and compact, more like adding a little at a time and making one of those big rubber band balls. The more you add, the tighter the bands get, the more it takes shape. The more it becomes itself. And the more I become myself.
And now. Back to work.
__________
Apologies to my male readers, but here’s a new one for “what’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened to you at the OBGYN?” A friend shares: I was going through menopause, and I had a question about hormones and lack of elasticity. The doctor said, “Think of it this way: if you were going to do the splits a month from now, you’d start stretching everyday to prepare yourself, wouldn’t you? So try that.”
My friend — the PHARMACIST — was too stunned to ask, exactly, what in the hell he had in mind. Any thoughts?
Teri Carter's Library 
The going deep nerves shaking it up the way they do when we are writing close to the bone. Can’t wait to read your finished essay.
Yes yes and yes. I knew I needed to yank off the bandaid and do it, because they could help. But jesusmaryandjoseph it was painful. Worth it. But tough.
Great job on the reading. It sounds like it was totally worth it. I really wanted to respond to your bolded paragraph below the actual post….
I SO get this. I’ve been mesmerized by those “Osphena” commercials. To use your phrase, jesusmaryandjoseph, it’s fucking PAINFUL. (what a pun that is) I mean, who the hell knew??? I’ve been in mp now for about five years. And let me tell you, that phrase, going through the change is right. BIG change. That response…should we really be surprised? I mean considering what we’ve shared already?
This is exactly how I felt reading at the BH. Terrified and trying to power through. Sometimes I think we don’t appreciate the depth of our feelings about what we’ve written until we try to say the words aloud to another person.
That doctor? A fiction writer with very little imagination.
Was the pharmacist’s response, “No, I don’t want more elasticity – I want less…doing the splits will only work against my goal.”