Smear

TW: anxiety, panic attacks, rape, sexual assault.

So, last year, I went for my very first smear test at the ripe old age of 25. For a year or so I'd been ignoring the various insistent letters from the NHS that I was way past needing to have one and decided to bite the bullet, gather my anxiety and go and get the bloody thing over with. Thousands of women have them every year, it's a simple procedure that the nurses do over and over again.  How hard could it be?

I was joining a new doctors and so had made an appointment for a full check up, a smear test and, most crucially- the first appointment with a doctor discussing how I could access medication and therapy for my anxiety, which at that time was somewhat crippling.

Anyway, to cut a rather traumatic story short, the whole thing was a complete disaster. The poor nurse as well as the doctor in my next appointment had to deal with a half naked, bleeding, sobbing girl who couldn't calm down enough to tell them that she got anxious even using tampons, or when anything vaguely scary and intrusive was near her vagina and the whole reason she'd come to the doctors was to get help for her anxiety.

When I first started writing this particular poem last year, it triggered me so badly I would start to shake and the tears would come without me even realising. Now I can read it and edit it. I remember it. It's like it happened to someone else, but I know it was me, because I remember every detail through re-reading this poem.

I still haven't had another smear test. The letters still come. But one day I will have one and there will be no problems. Maybe one day I'll even be able to use tampons!

Smear

Spectrum.

The smallest one she had.

Inserted only by an inch,

but I can't even use tampons.

Spoiled.

That clever lie.

My womb is normal and anxiety

isn't a problem for me.

Speckled.

Blood that sputters out.

The telling wet of a dropped tear,

from my screaming cervix.

Splayed.

The paper sheet snickers

at teeth and feet clenched as

I fight the hollow ride.

Spotted.

Plastic sterile rapist.

You couldn't find my cancer

but you found my gulping shame.

Spurned.

Burned, my cervix hating.

Hot tears of shame in failing

the simplest of procedures.

Spaced.

Cold empty cave.

White walls enclose white pants

hanging limply on a door hook.

Spat.

Stop, nurse, stop.

Jaw stiff and clenched, halts the words

'I have a problem'.

Spawned.

It doesn't belong to me.

This body, that obeys not my pain

but a spectrum.

Split.

'Please, it hurts.'

Fear. I won't ever have babies,

the aftermath of this empty, easy rape.

Shame.

Smeared all over me,

bloody mucus on the paper tissue

a sloppy hot redness I can't wipe off.

Snap.

That cold, biting instrument

who overzealous nurse plunged deep

into the pool of my nameless agony

Shame.

The smallest one she had.

I wish I had explained before.

I wish I had shaved.