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When the pain began, I told myself it was temporary. When the bleeding wouldn’t stop, fear rushed in fast and overwhelming. The room felt suffocating. My thoughts spiraled. I remember standing in the bathroom, staring at blood that didn’t make sense, my heart pounding as my friend knocked, asking if I was okay.
The drive to the hospital felt unreal, like watching a stranger’s life through glass. Every bump in the road made me tense. My friend kept talking, trying to keep me anchored, but most of her words slipped past me.
In the emergency room, time lost all structure. Nurses moved quickly, firing questions I struggled to answer. I heard concern in their voices, and that terrified me more than anything. Concern meant this wasn’t small. It meant something was truly wrong.
A doctor eventually explained what had happened in clear, careful language. I clung to the steadiness of her voice, because focusing on my own body felt unbearable. She told me I would be okay. That word—okay—felt fragile, but I held onto it like it was solid.
The night dragged on with tests and waiting. Every time someone left the room, I feared what news they might bring back. My friend stayed beside me the entire time, brushing my hair back when sweat made it stick to my face, reminding me to breathe when my chest tightened.
When I was finally sent home, the outside world felt painfully normal. People laughed, carried coffee, scrolled on their phones. I wanted to stop them and say, don’t you know how quickly everything can fall apart?
In the days that followed, emotions surfaced that I hadn’t expected: anger, fear, grief, and a deep sadness that something intimate had been taken from me by circumstances I didn’t know how to prevent. I felt betrayed by my body, then ashamed for feeling that way at all.
