The person who posted this picture tagged all the fellow endo sufferers she knew (presumably so that we could all see it). I’m always a little anxious when I am tagged in a photo (what if I have two chins? or food in my teeth? or just look fugly?), and I clicked on the tag apprehensively and was brought to this. I immediately had the wind knocked out of me. I was mesmerized. I am a girl who uses my words, and I would have never thought that a photo could so completely encapsulate my thoughts about this disease, but it did.
How is it that one photo could portray the shame, pain, humiliation, suffocation, helplessness, and fear produced by endometriosis? How is it that one image could so effectively define something that would take me a million words to even come near?
Now, for my readers who don’t have endo or suffer from infertility (because in so many ways I do think the feelings produced by both are one and the same, and I often have a hard time seperating my feelings about my endo from my feelings about my abrupt and unexpected infertility since the one caused the other), please bare with me today. If I had seen this image 2 years ago, my first thought would have been “Way to be overdramatic!” I don’t want to be seen as one of those girls who clings to this label, and I refuse to let this disease define me, but…
This is how it feels.
Is it just me? Do you see it too?
