Diary entry 4💋

Stirrups submitted by Emilie Dawson @emilionar3

I was 20 and in love, busy with college, working part time at a cafe on campus when I felt an undeniable pain between my legs. I biked to work every day so my first thought was to dismiss the pain as friction. Then there was an unfamiliar tender pain when I wiped, like the insides of me were exposed. I finally made an appointment at the campus health center.

I’d had a handful of women’s health appointments in my life. There was one where my mom cried because I asked her to leave the room. I was 17 and sexually active with the boy I’d met at the Christian summer camp where my parents had sent me as a last ditch effort to keep me the pure virginal girl they were trying to raise. I was already on birth control as a way to manage my intensely painful periods, what I now know is PMDD, but my religious parents were terrified the medicine would encourage me engage in premarital sex. Asking my mom to leave the appointment to talk privately with my doctor was all the confirmation she needed. 

Either in that car ride home or another, I admitted to her that I was having sex. I remember her asking me, “Do you think you have morals?”. I said I thought I did because I tried to be good to everyone I met, I tried to take care of the world around me. I had been caught drinking and smoking weed prior to this conversation, now sex? While our car crossed the bridge over Ontario Bay, the wider world just visible over the guardrails and median, she said, “How can you say that if you have no morals left?”. It was damning and freeing to know that I’d already done such irreparable damage with my life. What more could I do right? What more could I do wrong?

The gynecologist at my college health center had Wonder Woman socks over the stirrups of her exam table. I settled my feet over the socks and opened my legs to her. 

Her conversational tone shifted to something more careful. “Hmm.” 

“What do you see?” I asked.

“Well, we still have to get it tested, but it looks to me like herpes.”

Oh. 

Health class slideshows and youth group lessons and SNL punch lines crashed over me in building waves of shame. 

“Would you like to see?”

She held up a mirror and pulled down the paper tented over my knees to give me a line of sight. I think this may have been the first time I looked at that part of my body full on. I trusted it to perform its daily and monthly duties, to provide me pleasure when I touched it in the dark, to be a channel of intimacy in my relationships. I took it for granted, and now I was looking at what I had done to it. I felt like I’d ruined myself. Every reductive metaphor of my “flower”, and how it would wither if I gave it away to someone outside of marriage echoed from the halls of my christian middle school.  

“Are you seeing anyone?”

I told her about my boyfriend, The Soldier, how we used protection for the first month we were together, but I was on birth control and we weren’t seeing anyone else - so we stopped wasting money on condoms. I didn’t get tested because I had no symptoms. He was in the military and had been tested before his last deployment. 

“He may not react well to this when you tell him…” She gently posited. 

“He’s not like that.” I hoped. 

“I know it seems like a burden, a sexual death sentence. It’s not. There are some silver linings to this.” 

There was a strange pressure around my head, a cool breeze from the air conditioner on my most intimate places, a dull roar in my ears. 

“How’s that?” I asked.

“When you disclose to people before getting intimate, how they handle it will be very revealing. It can save you a lot of time and heartache.” She gently swabbed the sores and apologized when I winced at the pain. She applied numbing gel and prescribed antibiotics. She told me about how it was so common that 1 in 5 people have herpes, and some will never have a breakout and therefore never know. She gave me informational pamphlets that I shoved into the bottom of my bag. 

I biked to a park near my house, careful in the saddle until the lidocaine started working. I called The Farmer, a coworker I had slept with before I met my boyfriend, and told him what happened. He got an STD test since we were together and everything came back negative. He was older than me, goofy and charming, he wrote “juggling” under special skills on his application at the cafe. He said all kinds of gentle and supportive things I can’t remember. Thank you, wherever you are now. 

The Soldier was in special training in a city an hour away. We hadn’t planned to see each other until the weekend. When he finally called me back I told him about the appointment, her diagnosis, my delicate heart teetered on a cliff’s edge waiting for his response. I don’t remember what was said, but he was at my house within the hour. He spent the night, holding me, answering all my questions, commiserating. In the morning I felt better. I seemed like myself enough that he joked that he was only a little scared I would kill him in his sleep. 

We traced it back: when he returned from deployment he slept with an ex. He did the hopeful trusting thing where he assumed she was safe because she was familiar. He got herpes from her, never had any symptoms, and gave it to me. It was as simple as that. The breakout eventually receded. Our relationship lasted a few more years, ultimately coming to an end because I wanted to see the world and he wanted to move back to where he was born. I don’t know if he felt as radioactive as I did rejoining the dating pool with this new knowledge of my body, of this possible danger to other people. He’s living back in his hometown, he had a little baby last time I saw him online. 

My doctor was right. Talking about my herpes status with people revealed a lot. I’ve learned to not bring it up in the throes of passion, it rarely discourages someone once the blood is thundering to the sex organs. Fear and arousal can be indistinguishable, but they’ll have an opinion about it after. 

The first person I told was The Joker. He used it against me. “I could never date you because you have herpes”. But he actually couldn’t date me because he was still dating his ex, and I saw enough of his self conduct to understand he wasn’t prone to logical conclusions, so I shook that off. 

The second person I told was The Engineer. I was leaving town to start a new job and he was staying, so we both understood that whatever relationship we had wouldn’t last long. He thanked me for sharing and said he wanted to do his own research before we rounded any more bases. His research brought him to the conclusion that we would be safe if I took my antivirals and he used protection. He even shared the packet of research that he compiled for me to share with future partners. We reconnect on social media every now and then. I’ll always appreciate his kindness in response to my vulnerability, and his patience in explaining the intricate web of characters on Game of Thrones despite all my best efforts to interrupt. 

It’s been 11 years since my revelation in Wonder Woman stirrups. I’ve never had another breakout, so really the only tangible way this has changed my life is that I take a blue pill among my others in the morning. I’m a talker, a sharer, and I was raised in a household where the idea that withholding pertinent information was the same as lying, so I tell the people close to me nearly every detail of my life. SO many of my female friends have shared that they’re herpes positive. Some of them tell their partners, some of them don’t. I don’t judge their choices either way. Anyone who has a stigmatized truth understands the relief of hearing someone they admire say “me too”. 

The people who judged me often did so out of ignorance. While 1 in 5 people have herpes, I saw 5 out 5 people face the struggle of disclosure and integrity when Coronavirus was on the rise. Anyone who spent time around people unmasked because they “didn’t seem sick” or “appeared safe” is the same as the guy who tells you he doesn’t need to wear a condom because he’s never been tested, but he “knows he’s clean”. 

In my late 20s I did the thing that so many of us do: I dated someone who was so obviously a disaster that I could focus on taking care of them instead of figuring out the mess of my own life. Enter, The Addict. At the start of our relationship I shared that I was herpes positive. I thought it didn’t change anything, we were intimate, I took my meds, life went on. The night before I started a new job he came home late and blackout drunk. When I confronted him about how his behavior impacted me he told me that the reason he was drunk was that his doctor had just told him he was herpes positive, that I was the one who gave it to him. 

I didn’t know a lot about addiction then. I didn’t know a lot of things. He was 13 years older than me, so he might have known, but denial is jet fuel to addiction, and he wanted to use. We eventually broke up and he got sober. He contacted me on step 8 of the 12 Steps: making amends. He listed the ways he’d wronged me years ago, things I knew and had forgotten about or forgiven. It was a pleasant conversation until he delivered the important part - he already had herpes before we met. 

It wasn’t like the movies. I didn’t slap him across the face in a fit of righteous anger. The revelation that I was angry came slowly, over conversations with close friends who had listened to me cry over him for the years we were together. There was also grief. I believed for years that I had changed his life for the worse and it leeched into every relationship after, the proof of the damage I could do. Like that car ride over the bay years before, I was released. I unburdened myself from someone else’s shame.

I’ve had periods where I felt like I couldn’t be with someone for fear of permanently altering their life. I’ve had bouts of positivity and advocacy, like writing this out, or interrupting someone when they make a lame punch down joke at a party. The more I learn about myself, the more I understand how shame was built into my life. That mess I was avoiding by dating the wrong person in my 20s was the acceptance of my sexuality and having to deconstruct all the beliefs I internalized in church pews and christian classrooms. 

Shame is used to educate women from the very start of our lives. Maybe that’s why I’ve never had any man reply to my herpes disclosure with their own positive status, or even a story about how they’d had this conversation before. Men aren’t motivated by shame like we are, they avoid getting STD tests until something orange comes out of their urethra, or they compartmentalize so successfully that their positive herpes status doesn’t change their desirability, or what they have to offer. 

I’ve arrived at a place of peace. I’ve done my research and I know that it’s very unlikely I could transmit to anyone now because the virus sheds and regenerates less over time. Statistically women spread it less than men. There are only a few studies on the effects between same sex partners, but transmission between two female partners is low. 

Some scientists describe herpes as the perfect virus, it does everything to adapt to the host so that the body can’t eradicate it. It upholds the big patriarchal idea that women’s bodies are irrevocably changed through sex with a man. Ugly sores are the proof of this, pain is the price we pay for allowing the wrong thing into our body, for seeking pleasure instead of remaining pure. Shame works in the same insidious way. I might spend the rest of my life finding cracks where it took root at an early age, pulling at the weedy growth to find out what I really believe. But what an interesting life it will be to turn ideas over in my hand, to shed new light on them, to be open to change, to fight for convictions of my own. 

a message from pillowtalk xx

If you are living with or suspect you may have a sexually transmitted infection (STI), please know that there is nothing to be ashamed of. STIs are a common part of human health, and getting tested, treated, and informed is a smart and responsible step. You deserve care, support, and accurate information. If you're unsure where to start, talk to a trusted healthcare provider or someone you feel safe with. Taking care of your sexual health is an important act of self-care, and you're not alone!!xx

Resources for more information about STIs:

NHS Website

World Health Organization

Cleveland Clinic

 

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