Friday 24 February 2012

Put your feet in the stirrups

Between Walrus' nagging and the advice of the painful sex book, I finally went to the doctor.  I've been putting it off.  Talking about my girly bits is one thing, telling the doctor I was a 30 year old virgin is another.
"What brings you here today?"
"Well, it's embarassing.  I have pain during intercourse"
"When did that start?  Is it new?"
"Well.  Ummmmm....intercourse is new."

Then she asked if it hurt at the beginning or all throughout and I started turning purple and mumbled something about muscles.  She said it was very common.  At least she was professional.  I was given a cup to pee into.
Then someone else came in with a form to sign and told me I was going to have a pelvic exam, which I thought was going to happen at a later date, that I was being referred to a gynecologist.  But then she gave me a gown 'for my lower half' and left the room.  I wasn't sure if I was supposed to undress and I sat there for a while.  Then I undressed and sat there with a piece of paper over my lap.  The doctor came back and put my feet in the stirrups and umm looked at things and put some kind of viewing device up there.  It hurt hurt HURT!  I had to keep breathing the whole time and apparently my muscles relaxed more and more and she could get the thingy in further but it didn't stop hurting.  

She said everything looked fine and that my 'torture session' was over.  
She asked if I had gotten married.  I said no.  Awkward silence.  She asked how long I'd been with my boyfriend and I said since the summer.  I died a little inside.  I think those questions were unnecessary.

After I got dressed she came back for a little chat and talked to me about foreplay and fingers and penetration and it was all embarrassing.  Then she told me to practice and have fun.

So that was miserable.

I was an adult virgin.  He had a stroke.  We have enough shit to deal with.  Why are my girly bits causing so much trouble?  

Side note:  I still think of myself as a virgin since sex has been such a dismal failure so far.
Really really didn't want to have to tell my doctor but I didn't see any way around it.  




Saturday 18 February 2012

Miscellaneous Little Things

#1
Valentine's Day was a non-event.  The first time I actually had a sweetheart on Valentine's and I didn't even get to see him.  He bought me a present early and since it was quite large, it had been kept at my house for weeks.
I made him cookies the night before.  I hate cut flowers- don't get me started on the environmental impact of fresh flowers- but just once in my life I want to receive a bouquet of peach roses.  I was hoping he'd get me chocolate or take me out to dinner or something but he said the holiday was over-commercialized and makes people feel bad.  And I agree completely, but still.....
Anyways, I was going to cook him dinner after work but this week at work we had a major five-day special event, and  I was pooped when I got off work.  Then I got home and my baby nephew was there.  His parents were sick with some gruesome stomach bug and they called my mother to take the baby away since they couldn't even get out of bed.  Then that night my mom got sick as well.  So, no Valentine's for me.

I opened the present the next day.  It was a vintage movie poster from the 30's.

#2
When I talk about work, I really mean my unpaid internship.  I'd been there about a month and I was sent to one of the studio rooms I'd never spent much time in.  I sat down to work and looked up and saw a poster for an art opening, and on the poster was the face of my former best friend.  She had been hired to mentor teens for a special art project.  After an initial panic, I discovered it was from last year.  At first I thought we'd have to work in the same building.

Everytime I'm in that studio I have to resist the urge to draw a big mustache on her stupid face.

Today was the last day of this big special event and as I was cleaning up at the end I saw her through a window of another room.  She must have been hired to teach an art workshop, which is what I was doing in another part of the building.  I don't think she saw me.  I went absolutely shaky.  I kept cleaning up and seeing her from afar but she never seemed to notice me.
If I hadn't taken a late lunch I would have met her in the break room, which would have been awkward.

Part of me wishes there had been a confrontation.  Stupid cow.

I'm starting a new career, and almost a new life, largely because of her, and I want this place I'm doing my internship to be mine, to be a place for me to grow.  Then I find out she got there first and has a relationship with the place- a year before I was there.  What are the chances?

Tuesday 7 February 2012

I need to learn...

"We had seen in each other what we could not bear, and we had no idea that people do see that, and go on, and hate and fight and try to kill each other, various ways, then love some more."
-Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women, 1971

Monday 6 February 2012

Just Keep Swimming

I'm sick in bed.
This has been a tiring month.

Walrus has moved to a new group home.  It is a thousand times better.  The other residents aren't vegetables, the staff aren't incompetent and there is a strong program in place to help him regain his independence.  He'll have to take part in household chores and cook a meal at least once a week.  Eventually he'll be in charge of his own medications and schedule.  When he graduates from the program they set him up in an apartment building where they have staff on site.
I've been feeling like a social director since every night after work I've been trying to come up with stuff for the two of us to do together.  He missed seeing me during the day when I started this internship, and he hated being in the old group home.  Hopefully he won't mind just hanging out in this new place when I'm busy.
The new place has a no drinking policy.  If he comes home under the influence, he could be sent to detox and lose his place in the group home.  I am so terrified.  We have yet to talk about it because he only moved last week and he's exhausted from all the excitement and changes.  
He's been good lately.  There was an incident two weeks ago where two friends, silly girls from the sounds of it, took him out drinking and sent him home drunk on the bus.  It was only 10:30pm, but the bus changed its route and he got confused and I had to come get him.  I was so mad.  Stupid girls!  I am seriously contemplating writing to his friends through facebook and tell them he can't go drinking anymore.  That would be meddling, and I don't want to do it, but he needs the support of his friends or he needs new friends.  
His mother writes to me long emails about his progress.  I was over at his folks' for a family dinner and Walrus snuck out to have a smoke (grrrr!) and his mom talked to me about his drinking.  So that was awkward, but a bit of a relief.  I wasn't sure how much she knew.
His parents fuss about him, but they're not actually around that much.  When they do decide to be involved, they come on strong and tire him out.  His mother came the day after the move and tried to rearrange his furniture and organize his stuff- for six hours!  He should do that himself- it's good for him and it's his stuff, his room, his life.  She didn't even let him take his afternoon nap.  
And then on top of that, his old girlfriend, the one he was engaged to until she broke up with him while he was in the hospital, emailed him and his parents that she was tired of paying to keep his stuff in a storage locker.  She's the one who put his stuff in storage and has the key.  Then she posted on facebook that she needed to move on with her life and suggested his new girlfriend could pay to store his stuff.  Cow!  She still has the engagement ring.  Sounds like a really classy type.
Oh, and it turns out she's not a doctor.  She just likes to put "Dr." as her title on her caller ID.
Hmmm.  What else?
My best friend is moving to the great frozen north to be with a fat man she met on a train in Europe.

I am not making any of this stuff up.

Still no progress on the make-sex-stop-hurting front.  Very frustrated.  
So much stuff going on.  Neglecting stuff I need to do to take care of myself.