I first cried about having herpes before I'd seen a doctor, and before I had any test results back. I was on a farm, a little ways outside of Dublin, Ireland, laying with my partner on our bed. I'd be uncomfortable the last couple of days, and it was a different kind of uncomfortable than I'd previously experienced with vulvovaginal distress. My clitoris hurt, and it hurt to pee, and I had painful, sort of itchy spots on my outer left labia. I hadn't looked in a mirror, because I hadn't brought one on the trip. I probably could have found one, but I'm not sure I wanted to look in a mirror.
I was scared, because it hurt differently. I was scared, because I was fed up and tired of having this part of my body be in such grief all the time. I was scared that my partner would think I'd broken the boundaries of our relationship, or even more, that I'd think he'd broken the boundaries of our relationship. I was scared because I thought I might have an STD.
We lay in bed, and he asked, in lieu of a mirror, if I'd like him to look.
This is something I have incredible difficulty with, even in the best of times. Want to touch me? Great. Oral? Awesome, let's dim the lights. Want to blind fold me and put me in a spreader bar? Sweet, I can deal with that (because clearly, this is something I don't have control over - one of my personal advantages in power play, among many). But actually looking, per my request, at my vulva/vagina? Why would you do that? Why would I ever ask you to do that?
But I nodded, because as always, I felt very safe with him. I was still horrified and nervous and full of shame about it, but how safe I felt with him let me do this anyway. I opened my legs, and he looked around. His hands were very tender, pressed very gently, because he knew it hurt. He came back up to me, and looked me in the face.
"It looks like a bump." He said. And I started to cry. He explained that it could be anything, and he was right; it could have been any number of things. We flew back to the states, and I could barely look at him. He had seen that part of me, sore and red and angry and in full light. He held my hand the whole way.
I shook a lot when I went to the doctor. I was hot, and we didn't have a car, so I walked a couple of miles to the nearest Zoomcare, which with your first herpes outbreak in full swing, let me tell you, is no picnic. I was flushed and trying to hold back tears. We waited for test results for a few days, and when they came back, I really fell apart.
I saw an e-mail from Zoomcare on my phone, and stopped mid-sentence talking to my roommate to go to computer and read it. I sat on my bed. My partner sat on the bed next to me. It was the slowest an e-mail has ever loaded in my life, and then is was loaded, and then I was reading, and then there it was, positive. A big fat positive. I closed the computer. It took everything for me not to throw it across the room. I sobbed, and told him, choking on my own crying, that he needed to leave, that we were finished, that he needed to forget about me and go.
No, he didn't, and no, that wasn't the most mature reaction I've ever had to bad news. But he knew that, and he held me, like he always does. He held me while I pushed against him (this is a thing we do sometimes - it's negotiated, and we both like it, just to be clear). He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and I pushed and pushed against his chest. We ended up half on the bed, none of my words making sense, him holding on, and rocking me like a child.
It got slowly, slowly better from there. And I write all this not to be dramatic, and not (I hope) for my own creative indulgence. I write all this to say to whoever reads this (and I'm not sure it's anyone, but): I've come a long, long way. I was convinced, at the outset, that I was a dirty, infected, horrible person. That there was no way I could maintain the confidence or self-worth needed to be in a relationship, let alone ask anyone to be in that relationship with me. I was convinced my current relationship would buckle under the pressure of me dealing with herpes, and that after that, I'd never have sex again, because I wouldn't ever be able to ask anyone to do that. If my relationship survived, I was convinced any kind of poly lifestyle was totally closed to me, and I was convinced that I would never be able to have sex with my partner without thinking about herpes, my herpes, the sores or potential sores on my genitals, the virus that was going to live, always, at the base of my spine.
I was also convinced that I would always feel that way. That there was no light at the end of the herpes tunnel.
If this blog post, the previous, or the next, are any indication, I think I was wrong.
Next up: How I feel currently about herpes, and stupid slut-shaming doctors. Damn the Man! Save the Empire!
Happily bruised as always,
The Good Girl
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