Past, Present, and Doctors Appointments: Why I Am The Person I Am Today

Tons of fun—had an appointment with my OB-GYN this morning to get my IUD swapped out. Most people get one for birth control, which lasts up to eight years. But, lucky me, if you're using it to regulate an irregular cycle—like I am—they only last five.

Problem is, I haven’t been in for my annual since 2020 (USH at Michigan covers students’ medical care), so I had to get that done first and now have to come back for the actual IUD change. Honestly, not the worst thing—at least I’m not spending the rest of the day in pain. Because let me tell you, getting that thing changed is the most uncomfortable feeling ever.

I started noticing something was off a few months ago—awful back cramps, my RA flaring up in my knees, and just feeling generally uncomfortable from the waist down around the time I think my period should be happening. I’m pretty sure it’s all tied to my cycle trying to creep back in, now that the hormones from the IUD are probably starting to wear off and my levels are shifting back to whatever “normal” looks like for me.

My periods have always been irregular—probably from the anorexia and bulimia—but when I got the IUD, they actually became regular for about two years before stopping completely. And honestly? I didn’t hate it. It was kind of nice knowing exactly when it would show up instead of just... guessing and going three to six months without one.

Not only is being a girl a pain sometimes, but some of the stuff we have to do for healthcare just straight-up sucks. While I was at my appointment, I was cracking up talking about those reels I’ve seen where women reenact going to the OB-GYN with an Amazon bag and a pair of tongs—like, they’ve got their phone on the other side of the bag filming it, just to give people an idea of how ridiculously uncomfortable the whole thing is. The medical assistant started laughing and said she’d seen them too. It made someone poking around at your insides—a little more bearable.

And back to the whole “being a girl is a pain” thing—between the healthcare, the constant maintenance, and everything we have to keep up with just to feel physically okay, it honestly feels like a full-time job. From appointments like this to managing pain, hormones, and everything in between, it’s a lot. And yet, we move on like it’s no big deal—because it’s just something we have to deal with. If we don’t, everything else starts to fall apart.

Looking back, had I known the anorexia and bulimia could impact my health as much as they have, maybe I wouldn’t have resorted to them. But also, I’m thankful that it didn’t get so bad that it caused permanent damage to my organs or led to something worse. Hopefully, I didn’t cause any issues with infertility, but until I find that person I want to have kids with, I won’t know. For now, I don’t believe there are any issues, and for that, I am grateful.

As a kid, you don’t really think about the long-term impact of some of the things you do. I just wanted a way to cope with things I didn’t know how to deal with and was too embarrassed to talk to anyone about. I wish I’d felt more comfortable being open and discussing what I was going through, without the shame or embarrassment I felt at that age.

But at the time, instead of talking about how cruel kids could be and how much that hurt, I found a way to seem like a well-adjusted, normal kid so nobody had to feel bad or know what was going on with me. I never thought about the long-term impact, I only focused on how I felt in that moment. I didn’t want to feel the way I was feeling, and I thought if I could just lose weight, no matter how, it would change things. So, I started following strict rules about what I ate, running at the track with saran wrap around my stomach, sleeping with it on, taking my mom and aunt’s diet pills, throwing up anything I ate if I felt I ate too much, and working out way more than I needed to. I thought if I did all this, people wouldn’t feel the way they did or say the things they said about me.

I just wanted to feel comfortable and didn’t want anyone to know what was going on because I was embarrassed. I thought if I could change the things people said, it would make that happen. I still wanted the people I cared about to see me as a happy, well-adjusted kid, and talking about how other kids were mean made that difficult to believe. Turning to anorexia and bulimia allowed me to cut out the need for anyone to know what was really going on.

Now here we are—almost 19 years after this all started—and I’m still dealing with the aftermath. Hormone issues, cycle problems, all of it. It’s crazy how something that started as a way to feel better in the moment can still have lasting effects almost two decades later.

But here’s to living and learning. I don’t internalize other people’s opinions as fact anymore—but years of doing that leaves damage you really have to work hard to undo. It’s funny how people can say a hundred good things about you, and still, the ones that stick—the ones you can’t shake—are always the negative ones.

That’s where I’m at now: learning that the negative things people say usually say more about them than they do about me. Most of the time, it’s just deflection. I know who I am. I know my worth. And I’m working on genuinely believing all the good things people have said about me—believing them for myself. I’ve come a long way, and these days, the moments where I truly believe those things for myself happen more often than not.

That’s how my day today, at 33 years old, can still be tied back to everything I went through as a kid. It’s wild how much your past can shape your present, even when you’ve done so much healing. It’s also an explanation for why I am the way I am as a person—the way I handle things, the way I view myself, and the way I move through the world.