becoming a woman

Date: 6/1/2016

I am watching myself third person. I am twenty-three now, but I was watching myself age in rural Virginia. I watched as my eager, childish self followed in the excitement of dark shadows (adults) around me. I couldn't see anyone's faces but my own. I saw myself not as I was when I was younger, but as some other ten year old girl I did not recognize, but I knew her to be me. It skipped around relentlessly. It felt like years I watched myself grow, being told by the dark shadows that I was getting closer and closer to becoming a woman, and once I was a woman, I would be respected and otherwise not uninteresting anymore. Skip to me watching myself on the back porch of someone else's house. It was high up in the trees. There were at least a dozen kids celebrating with me in the middle, blowing out candles for my twelfth birthday. Everyone was cheering then changing my name. I overheard dark shadows conversing: "Can you believe she is becoming a woman tomorrow?" "Finally, we can be proud of her." "She's going to love being a woman, I just know it." "Her father is so proud now...he'll be so excited to meet her when she is perfect." Skip to the next day, when I'm watching from the floor corner of a perfectly square white room. The floor is bright, sticky blue. There is a hospital bed adjacent to my viewpoint and my twelve-year-old self is lying on it, a blanket folded snugly up to my waist. I'm wearing a pattern hospital gown, lying perfectly still. I was as two white clothed doctors meander around me, seeming to be prepping me for something. In my mind, I start getting on edge and a little eager with anticipation. I remember clearly thinking, "I'm finally going to understand what becoming a woman is!" Suddenly, the doctors dispersed and left my childlike self alone. There was one light directly overhead of me. I heard the whirring of what sounded like old machinery starting up. The lights flickered and down from the ceiling a huge mechanical device slowly edged closer to me. A tiny gear at the end of this brown, rusty old mechanism with sharp grooves like that of a table saw came down toward my body. Fear struck me in this moment. The blade came down towards my head, but instead, ripped through my throat. Blood was soaking the walls and my face. I watched as my child self reacted as if I felt no feeling but I was awake. Once it had made the gash vertically on my throat, the machinery dropped a tiny gray triangle in the fresh wound directly in the middle. Later, I saw the dark shadowy adults necks had giant vertical scars. This was it? Becoming a woman? I don't know what the triangle was. But it was an awful dark feeling.