As much as I am this confident, happy person, deep down I am tangled mess of scared.

More often than not, I can push the scared around in there and make it hide in a little corner. While it hides, I carry on with my normal fun self.

But it doesn't want to hide right now.

I am scared. I can't even believe I am about to tell you guys this, because it is so totally embarrassing and I just want it to go away.

But I am totally freaking out, in the way that only Partygirl CAN freak out and I have to tell someone.

I've had this small lump under my armpit since Monday. It's like a swollen lymph node. And maybe it's a sympathy symptom for her her and maybe it's because I'm a little run down, but it's there and it hurts and now I think I have cancer.

Oh. God. I said it.

So this has been on my mind since Monday when I felt it and maybe it's because 23 minutes ago my friend went under the knife and right now a stranger is scraping her insides as she sleeps and they know something we don't and in a short time they will sew her up and wheel her into a bed she's never slept in and she will be missing a body part. Not an organ, that she could walk around without and no one would notice, nope, without an appendage.

And so I'm sitting here feeling my armpit and frankly, people are starting to notice. So I told the girls in my office and they assured me, that it's just a swollen lymph node. And then they lectured me. Because there's more to this story.

Oh God. I feel sick. I feel sick telling you this and I really hope that you don't lecture me when I tell you this because I just can't take the lecture right now.

I haven't been to the gynecologist in three years. Uggghhh. I hate telling you this. I hate it I hate it I hate it. But it's on my mind now. I'm thinking about it and I am remembering why and it makes me feel like I need to throw up.

Fuck. fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Deep breaths. Here goes...

I haven't been in 3 years because last time I went, my doctor...did something, ummmm, ahemmmm, yuck, yuck, yuck. Inappropriate.

FUCK.

Oh fuck. Not a lot of people know about this. I told my parents and my roommates...a couple of friends. Goddammit. She did something inappropriate and she did it more than once.

fuck.

You see, she put me on the pill. And it made me really sick. Mentally and physically, sick. So she had me come back in and change the prescription. She said she was monitoring me. At first it was "come back in six months" and then she had me come back in three months and then again in two months and then in four weeks.

Everytime I returned, I had to undergo the examination. And it's horrific enough. Oh God, just thinking about it is so fucked up. So the second to last time, I started to feel sick during the examination. Part from the pill, part from the violation.

But that last time. Jesus Christ, that last time, I stopped when I walked up the sidewalk to her office because I thought I was going to get sick in her bushes. But I told myself I was being silly and I went in that fucking building and I presented myself to that fucking doctor who took a fucking oath to look after people.

And as she did to me, what she had been doing, I started to just kind of detach my mind from what was going on and I wanted to scream outloud, but I wouldn't do that because I was raised to keep my mouth shut and have a stiff upper lip. So I told myself to be strong and I laid there, violated and as I stared at the paneled ceiling, hot tears escaped my eyes and burned down my cheeks. But I just stared at the ceiling and I stared at fluorescent lighting and I prayed that the lights would burn my cornea's so that I couldn't see what she was doing to me.

But I knew. And I said nothing. I wanted to scream and hit and fucking attack her, but instead I wiped the tears off of my cheeks before she saw them and I smiled and nodded as she told me without looking at me that she wanted to see me in 4 weeks and I smiled and waved good-bye to those nurses who never bothered to come into the room during my examination and I walked out and I totally lost any composure I had gained.

I cried and I cried as I went back to work. And my friend Jim (poor Jim) came into my office and found me standing at my desk, with my coat still on, checking my messages and crying uncontrollably. And he asked me what happened and I told him probably as cohertly as I told you and he grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the building and outside and he led me across the street with my other two co-workers for lunch. At 11AM. And they all made me laugh and said silly things and they said I would not have to go back to her.

And after lunch when I was still crying but didn't know it and with shaky hands I put cigarette after cigarette into my mouth and tried to light them, to no avail because my tears kept soaking the cigarettes and they lit it for me and gave it to me.

So I never went back. I went off the pill and I felt much better and I convinced myself that maybe the inappropriateness was a hallucination from the pill. I swore to myself I would never go back until I was pregnant.

And now here I am. Not pregnant but needing to go and so scared. Scared shitless about going. But I know I have to go, and oh god, I don't know how I will get up the courage.

And I am writing this and telling all of you, and I am embarrassed really, at having ever been so fucking stupid and naive and I can't believe that this happened to me, the strongest of all people, I really can't.

And I have an urgent call in to my mom and I am thinking, as ridiculous as this is, as absolutely silly this is, I am thinking of asking her to go with me because I can't do it alone.

And the whole time I am typing this I am crying all over again because it was just so awful and I can remember vividly what it feels like to have a stranger's hand inside of you and it chills me...truly...it chills me to the bone.

And even after all of this, all I can't tell you is that I don't want to to go.

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