HPV & Cervical Cancer

I've been having pelvics and pap smears since I was 14. At 14 I had my first in order to get my birth control prescription. Then I began to have yearly exams at 18, and I never miss one. No matter the fact that for me they are physically painful - it's the healthy safe thing to do. I always get screened for STI's as well. Just to be safe. I've been physically intimate with 6 men and 2 women in my lifetime. I have been told this is in no way a high number (and I'm including oral in that count, though not kissing on the mouth - go read Essen' Em for some incredible thought-provoking posts on what 'sex' can be defined as).

Well, this time my pap came back abnormal. So I had another one done. That one came back showing high risk cells. So I went to get a colposcopy this morning (The CDC's website on HPV and cervical cancer is excellent if you're curious about it). It was uncomfortable, but not painful.... until she had to biopsy two sections. I handled it like a champ - my normal method of getting through medical procedures is to remember it's not their fault, stay relaxed, bite my hand and imagine being in the ocean... but I'm definitely feeling freaked now. I won't know what the real deal is for 2 more weeks, she was hesitant to say much at all to me.

Here's what I do know:

• They thought my wearing a dress and knee high socks was brilliant, since it meant I didn't have to strip for them and stayed warm. :)
• I have really low blood pressure, like usual.
• I 'should' be low risk according to the half of family medical history I know of, the fact that I've never smoked, and haven't had lots of sexual partners (though I wasn't sure wtf that meant).
• BUT - One of the areas she sampled was out of range of a Pap smear, so it coud have been there for a very long time, and the cells there worried her the most.
  
• She was concerned enough she wouldn't classify the cell types for me at this time.
• She told me when I come back it'll be to discuss the results and what they mean for our treatment options - which means I need some kind of treatment, we just don't yet know how serious these cells are.
• I am a bleeder, so now I get to hurt and bleed for a couple of days which is a constant reminder that I may not be ok but that it'll be two weeks until I know

So, I can't imagine I'm going to want to post anything sexual, I certainly don't want to today. I'm not freaking out, but I am consciously redirecting my thoughts to keep from doing so sometimes.

The Bi Problem.

Ok... so I noticed something this week that came out of those dark halls I woke up in one night late a few weeks ago. I think I realized this deep down before that... but I never consciously noticed the connection until now.

My admittance of and being bisexual has caused a lot of problems in my life. What I don't get is why in many instances, because it doesn't change how I am in my relationships. Anyway, on to the list...
1) My first boyfriend, who I thought was it for me forever, couldn't handle it at all. It was a large part of our breakup, though certainly not all of it. It sucked.
2) My desire to have 3somes and my second boyfriend's acceptance of this in words but not fact really messed up our relationship too. It emasculated him. I turned into a jealous lovelorn shrew over his and Q's relationship (she was my first woman and them wanting to be together without me involved when he and I were living together and serious about things was... painful to say the least, they eventually had sex behind my back). She will hate me forever for the stupid things I both said and did. He might too. Not that either of them is worth heartache, but still. This was the darkest personal chapter of my life so far due to how I acted.
3) I have had several men angry at me because Q and SS slept with me rather than them. In fact, I've lost friends over it. I feel like the group of friends we were all connected with believed me to be morally corrupt due to my sexual proclivities. (They sure condemned me without evidence fast enough and now I retain a whopping 2 out of 20 of them as friends - those 2 barely talk to me.)
4) When one girl discovered my sexuality here at school, the commentary on possibly sleeping with me never ended until she left 2 years later. In fact, she told her boyfriend and it got weirder than weird. He hounded me to seduce her whenever he was in town. Gross. She also turned out to be fairly open with others about MY sexuality. That led to further odd moments and weirdness with people in our department, people we would meet, and parties I attended. I have wondered what could have been different these past 2.5 years had she not caught me drooling over a gorgeous blonde one night.
5) My bisexuality caused a lot of my attitude with my department to shift to 'nothing' on the all or nothing involvement scale. Part of that was from when I overheard a condemnation of our cohort's token gay guy. I just can't approve of people speaking in their graduate office about how someone's going to hell for his preferences and then giggling about it in a group - "at least he's nice", they said. No thanks. Plus my sexuality eventually became known to most if not all of them, yeah, underline the no thanks and add an exclamation point. I don't need people like that in my life beyond a professional level.
6) With a budding friend her man found out I was bi and immediately wanted to talk to me about how to get his girl to have a 3some. I attempted to persuade him out of it. She decided to hate me anyway, because I talked to her boyfriend too much (um, he talked to me, but ok) and because I even talked about sex in a hypothetical way with him. My boyfriend also spazzed about this incident, because I talked about sex with another guy. Does no one understand I didn't bring it up, I never would have slept with him (hello - I'M IN A MONOGAMOUS RELATIONSHIP), and while I didn't mind the conversation it was purely hypothetical... I was honestly just trying to help.
7) This also influenced my 'break-up' with Officechick E, I am sure of it. She considered a 3some with her and her now-fiance, but decided she'd be too jealous. Nevermind the fact that I wouldn't have done it, she didn't even ask that question. That wasn't the big deal - but #4 & 6 were good friends of hers, and they + her boy's opinion of me after he vented about her to me = no more friendship.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm flattered when couples want to sleep with me - I choose to take it as a compliment on my attractiveness. I also am happy when someone either figures it out (that means they're open to people having alternate sexualities, yay!) and accepts it, or is told by me and does the same (hooray tolerance!). These times afford me such wonderful opportunities to tell people about it as well, if they want to know. It allows me to explain that sexuality is not a choice (which I of course firmly believe) and to talk about sexuality issues sometimes - all of which are very nice things I heartily enjoy.

Still - do you see between these stories the underlying assumption all of these people made about me? That somehow my being a bisexual means I'll sleep with anyone, just about anytime. They always seem to assume it's their decision whether I will sleep with them or not, even when the decision is about them and their partner. All I have to say to that is: WHAT THE FUCK? Since when did my sexual orientation mean I don't have morals? Values? Standards? Rules for myself?? Seriously. When I am in a committed monogamous relationship it means the exact same thing as when any of them are. I just don't get it.

So the real question is: Is it them making these assumptions? Or me projecting something? Does my commitmentphobia make me come across in a way I don't mean to?

I wish that's what it was, but I doubt it.

To Teach or Not To Teach: That is the Question!

I got a huge warm fuzzy from my 310 class this past week. I took over a portion of the lab my TA professor normally teaches while he attended another function - and when I came in the following week before he arrived - they all told me as a group how nice my portion of the lab was and that they'd heard such good things from the other lab section that I teach exclusively. Isn't that wonderful? :)

So here's the issues at hand in this decision....
- If I want to teach that's great but you don't really get paid to teach when you're a professor. You get paid to do research and for other things, not the teaching and advising. Those are just expected duties that you do as part of the job, but don't really get rewarded for.
- I love teaching, I hate bad teachers and know I make a good one.... but I am not sure I am capable enough at good research to achieve tenure as a professor. You WANT tenure, it's the ultimate goal of being a professor.
- It's less money salary-wise both at the outset and over time... but it's much more flexibility in every other area of your life. Choice in projects, classes, school you work at, wardrobe, schedule, etc. That's a definite trade-off. Plus I love learning, and staying in a school = getting paid to learn the rest of my life.
-

My Sexmap!

http://www.humansexmap.com/showmap.php?mapid=map4987af8fdbbd07.32397802"> src="http://www.humansexmap.com/sexmapsmall.jpg" alt="" height="169" width="175" border="0"> Find out where I've journeyed on the http://www.humansexmap.com/showmap.php?mapid=map4987af8fdbbd07.32397802">Map of Human Sexuality! Or http://www.humansexmap.com/">get your own here!

Today's a day of cute little posts like this, hehe. I'll post with substance soon!

Wordle

I love words. Here's a wordle for January's posts in retrospect, :).

Waking up.

I wrote this on january 24th... and didn't post it because I wanted to find a better headspace about this.... and I may have, finally. I wanted to post it now to get it out and to work through it further, and so my rebuttal to these feelings will stand out in appropriate contrast once I get it nailed down.

Sometimes I wake up feeling lost in the realms I walked the night before, as if they're superimposed over the real world. For me those dark halls between wakings last night were places of pain, of darkness, of regret... places from a time past. I still seek resolution from unfinished business. Dealing with one of my friendships (Frances) that has spanned that time and this newer time in my life is part of what has brought it all back to the forefront. So has Facebook, oh good old Facebook. Knowing that one of my remaining friends is taking a trip to Providence - and that trip that I took 4 years or so ago to Providence was ... well... providential. Not in a good way though. My first serious boyfriend (7 years) is now married. My first female experience (who I was so infatuated with it didn't even make sense) is also now married. It's odd how you find these things out, and how they feel like they shouldn't matter, and yet the knowledge seems to play peek-a-boo at the most random moments.

I mean... everyone goes through their own private hells. I thought when I was younger that it must have been my childhood which would always stand out as my hell. My father's drug addiction and brother's death left an initial stain, my mother's rages, the repeated abandonment and betrayal and verbal/emotional abuse from all parental figures in my life, the almost sexual abuse from within my church and the subsequent dismissal of it by my pastor leading to my subsequent break with Christianity -which had previously been my lifeline-, deaths of friends, my own self-imposed isolation due to trust issues, but.... no.

What ended up being my own true hell was when I had to learn who I had been denying I was for years. When I recognized my sexuality for what it was and realized who I assumed would be the love of my life couldn't accept that part of me was the first hint of the brokenness to come. I shattered us. Walked away. That was the easy part.

Before that the only real thing I regret is saying something horribly unfeeling to my family after a member of it passed away in a horrible accident. I learned then that while I may choose to laugh to relieve pain, others don't always want to do that and it's not the right thing to share sometimes.

Then I had my first sexual fling with a guy, my first experience with a woman, and fell for someone new. After that is where I really have my first deep regrets.

After that though... there's a list. A painful list I don't think I can ever atone for. A list I never saw myself having. It's funny that I woke up this morning feeling those old, deep wounds aching as if they were just inflicted last week. So I came here...to my reader and then to my blog. And in my reader I found some wisdom.

I.. I can't say sorry... Because I know sorry isn't enough...
But I can say thank you.
Thank you for showing me who I really am.
Thank you for showing me that light in my life.
I'm ready to change now. For the better.
Thank you.
- Paraphrased from Sunny on So How Was Your Day?

That's all there is from those times for me to do, and I have. I have changed so much since then. I know things now about myself and know what to watch out for to make sure I never become that insane, unhappy, jealous person I remember (with horror) being. Sure, circumstances helped to push me to be that way, but I can't believe I didn't find some other alternative to the things I did and ways I acted. It's not like I want those friendships or my old relationship back, because I don't believe they were good for me at all, or that I was good for them... but I also don't want to be a stain on anyone's life. I don't want to be that ugly memory, and if I am for me I can't even imagine what I am for others. My biggest hope is that by now, years later, I just don't matter at all anymore. That time will wear my memory away for them, but not for me. Not for me. I have to remember to make sure I am NEVER like that again.

There are still things I could work on... but I don't always know how. What I console myself with is that I try, and for now I guess that has to be enough.

Out of the ashes.

I totally just bought myself this shirt (last week), because, somehow I'm doing it again. Being born again out of ashes whose origin remain unclear to me. (This post is going to follow the life update themes of several of my favorite bloggers that have been out there this week! Great minds think alike and all that jazz.)

Sometimes you just read the right words... or something. Recently, when I re-read the entire Dark Tower series by Stephen King this little snowball of ambition with a spark of desire began to form within me. If you don't know those novels, they're very different from his other books: epic and more of a life story about love (family, friends, etc.) and choosing the right path 'come hell or high water' (as we would say in Texas). Yes, it's still a fantasy in a lot of ways, but it's also a Western and a little medieval. All in all, it's beautiful. It's life lessons rolled into this incredible opus about faith, love, and fulfilling your destiny/goals.

For the past year, I've been struggling. HARD. I've had the required good grades, enough money (which isn't a lot, but hey it's just barely enough and that's what matters), but the sanity..... not so much. You've seen it in my posts. You saw it break recently, and since then I've been almost afraid to talk about how good I'm feeling.... because I found it again! I found my confidence in what I do, my passion for my research and my teaching, and all in all my DRIVE has just returned. I can't say where it's been, but I have talked to other grad students and it's not abnormal for this to happen around the 2 year mark. I just haven't been in the mood for what I've needed to do to reach my life goals... for a year. Somewhere in the last month, it just... came back.

I've done some things to help it come back, and the best part is that it's snowballing. As that grain with a spark rolls around in my mind it's growing. What started as a trickle of motivation and success and achievement and drive has just grown and grown. The last two days have been so incredibly productive for me I can finally envision meeting my long-term goals in my future (I haven't been able to do that since I got to grad school I think). Some evidence of this:

1. My thesis is going well! Proposal countdown will begin in a few weeks.
   
2. I've applied to any and all internships and jobs I can find. I've also had some incredible familial support about the summer concerns, and I am so thankful for that. I am no longer afraid of what's going to happen, just prepared to make things work. I'll be re-searching every Friday and applying for anything else I find. I've also forwarded resumes and been as proactive as possible with contacts who might be able to help me out.
   
3. I'm working on Spring Break plans too, weee! I might get to come to TX (if the Mom can sponsor the flights, haha), or go to FL, or ATL. I may work in 2 of those options, time will tell. Either way I've stopped being passive about providing myself with the release of a vacation which I know I'll need.
   
4. I'm totally on top of my classwork so far, my TA work, and have volunteered for some small commitment things that would be neat (I might be judging a LEGO championship for 9-14 year old robot builders, seriously awesome.)
5. I'm on top of my extra grad school commitments, and just finished my huge semester project. I've been getting to flex some of my art muscles by doing all of our department event flyers and ads etc. too, which is a nice outlet. Art energizes me.
   
6. I read something recently about those activities that renew you, those that leave you feeling no more energized or less, and those that drain you. It basically said to balance those and that's the key to a healthy, happier, motivated life. So far I've been doing pretty well with that and am trying to be careful not to overextend myself and to schedule time to just be social, which often renews me a bit. (Weekly bowling and happy hour stuff, not to mention dinner with the Boyfriend twice a week, daily chats with the Best Friend, etc.)
   
7. I've been on top of my eating - super healthy and getting all my water, fiber, protein, and vitamins. All in all I've been proactive and on top of my health in general - dealing with making appointments I've been putting off, and everything else.
   
8. I'm not on top of my exercise yet, but I wanted to add that once I had all this other stuff under control! (Thesis first, other stuff second.) I have been exercising just not quite enough, not quite hard enough, or on a schedule.
9. I've been pushing for what I want/need from my relationship - including rougher and more frequent sex. Yum. It's been pretty decent, if I do say so myself. :D As my reward for all this awesome, I'm taking my laptop to my lonely bed tonight, hehehehehe.
   

So.. yeah! Things are very good! And if you need a takeaway from this for yourself... Just remember to try to turn negatives into a positive - it helps turn an energy sucking task into something less painful (like my TA is a bit frustrating but I've found ways to handle it and decided that it will at least hone my on-the-fly presentation skills which are invaluable in corporate america). Vent first, look for silver lining second, re-evaluate if need be. And balance, try to find your balance, always. It's a never-ending task, but oh so rewarding. Chasing happiness has been proven to make it more elusive, but achieving your goals tends to lead to it down a much faster and straighter path! :D

Ok, we'll soon get back to our regularly scheduled programming after this gush of hope.
PPS - My cats are so freakin' adorable. I don't understand why everyone doesn't have one. They're my little furry mental health warriors.