What We Make Room For

There’s something growing inside of me. I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that literally—and it isn’t another life.

I’ve had inklings. Moments when I’ve thought, Something looks like it’s inside of me. Over the last year, I’ve watched my body change, my belly expand, things look different. There have been mornings when I’ve looked at myself and genuinely thought, Whose body is that?

I thought a lot of it was perimenopause.

I’ve had cyclical vomiting before, probably 10 or 11 years ago, so when I started throwing up again, often around my cycle whether I bled or not, I had an explanation for it. People who know me know that I throw up. I’ve written about throwing up.

But over the last few months, something changed. I live with persistent nausea and stomach upset. I’m distended all the time. When I eat, I feel like an overstuffed sausage. I’m uncomfortable in my own body.

I thought there was something inside of me.

It turns out there is.

When I went to a longevity clinic in Mexico a few weeks back, I knew I was going to have top-to-bottom diagnostics and blood work. I knew that looking under the hood might actually reveal something. I was hoping to find answers. Looking at my body as I do every morning and wondering, How is she going to look today? How is she going to feel today? I had the thought: Oh my God. What if I find out I have cancer?

I’m not scared to die. I want to be really clear about that. When it’s my time, I would like to believe that I will go out gracefully and grateful.

But I’m digressing.

The imaging found a mass on my left ovary, nearly seven and a half centimeters, with cysts inside of it.

I weigh a little over one-hundred pounds. When I see how large this thing is in comparison to the rest of me, it’s insane to me how much my body has accommodated it.

But when I take myself out of the situation for a minute and almost look down at myself from above, I’m also amazed by my body. I really am. I’m incredibly grateful for her.

This thing is huge. I’m tiny. I don’t know exactly how long it has been growing inside of me, although I know my body has been changing for at least the last year. Somehow, my body adapted. It made room. It continued functioning around something that had no business taking up that much space. Thank God it didn’t rupture. Until recently, there was very little from the outside to suggest what was happening inside.

My body accommodated it, adapted, and kept me going.

Then it occurred to me that emotionally, I do the same thing.

That ability has served me incredibly well. I can look at a situation that isn’t working and figure out how to function inside of it. There are times in my life when I’m sure that ability helped me survive.

I think I’ve become an alchemist for the same reason. I’m very good at making something out of nothing, but that wasn’t really a skill I set out to develop. A lot of it came from circumstance. I haven’t had a huge support system underneath me. I’ve spent much of my life relatively untethered, figuring things out on my own because there wasn’t another option.

I got really good at it.

Give me very little, and I’ll make something. I’ll do the work. I’ll create something from whatever is available to me.

I’m grateful for that part of myself. But I’m tired of having to make something out of nothing.

I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of pushing through. I’m tired of proving how resourceful I can be when there aren’t enough resources. I’ve mastered that skill.

I know I can make something from scarcity. I’d really like to see what I can make from abundance.

Survival doesn’t mean something deserves a place in your life. Being able to adapt to something doesn’t mean you have to keep adapting to it.

That is the part I’m only beginning to understand.

There’s something else this mass has made impossible for me not to see: anything we accommodate takes up room.

This thing is literally taking up room inside of me. I feel it when I eat. I see it when I look at my body. I feel it in the nausea, the distension, and the persistent discomfort. My body found a way to make room for it, but that doesn’t mean there was no cost.

Something doesn’t have to destroy you before you’re allowed to acknowledge what staying in it is costing you. It doesn’t have to become unbearable before you decide that you no longer want to rearrange yourself around it.

That’s a difficult realization for someone who has become very good at adapting.

I also have a habit of arguing with my own gut. I know something, and then I have an internal conversation about whether I’m being unfair, whether I should give something more time or another chance. I can know perfectly well that something isn’t right and still try to talk myself out of knowing it.

I don’t want to do that anymore.

There’s something else this experience has changed. I don’t push through my body in quite the same way anymore. When I’m nauseous, uncomfortable, or in pain, I slow down. Knowing what is actually there has made it harder to dismiss what my body is telling me.

With hindsight, that feels significant. I knew something was inside of me. I said it. I just didn’t take that knowing seriously enough. Moving forward, I will.

I turn 51 in a week. I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this planet. None of us do. Again, I’m not afraid of dying when my time comes. But I don’t have time to stick around in things I already know aren’t right for me.

I don’t want to keep rearranging myself around things that no longer belong in my life simply because I know how. Something can have served its purpose, or once been right for me, and still no longer deserve the space it occupies.

I can simply remove myself.

When this thing finally comes out of me, I know it’s going to be a turning point. Not only physically. This mass has come to symbolize how extraordinarily good I am at rearranging myself around something and continuing to function.

My body has shown me just how much I am capable of stretching and adapting, and I am profoundly grateful for everything she has carried me through.

There will quite literally be room where something that didn’t belong has been.

I don’t feel any urgency to fill it. I know how much I can accommodate.

That doesn’t mean I have to.

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