Trigger Warning: Discussions of abuse, trauma, mental illness, health issues and sexual assault.
The Story Of My Birth
I was born 8 years after the sibling closest to my age and I almost killed my mother in the process of being born. In fact, and I might be misremembering this, my mother once disclosed that she was so sick prior to giving birth to me that she was advised to have an abortion (which I completely support –> I don’t deserve to be born at the expense of someone’s life). But, she didn’t have an abortion and she didn’t die giving birth to me.
I’ve Always Wanted To Be A Mum
The first dream of my childhood was to become a mother. I loved kids. But I’ve never wanted to give birth or become pregnant. I always knew about the circumstances of my birth and I didn’t want to go through the same pain that I’d seen countless women go through. I also didn’t want to risk dying.
When I was 8 years old: I was groomed, molested and sexually assaulted. This, unbeknownst to me, traumatised me. Since then, I have been terrified of men and when I started high school (age 12), this terror transformed into anger. I remember numerous conversations from when I was 12 where I expressed a desire to hurt men. I didn’t know why then and I also didn’t understand why people reacted so badly when I made jokes about gouging men’s eyes out. It also didn’t help that, unbeknownst to everyone, I was being abused at home.
When I was 13, I expressed erratic thoughts and behaviours. I was put in therapy and I’ve been going since. It wasn’t until I was 15 that I even realised I had been sexually violated. This revelation came after an accidental conversation with my first boyfriend (a relationship that did not last). This sent me spiralling. I had a breakdown and was soon after diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder.
My Grades
Before this incident, I was top of my year. I had ranked first out of my entire year at the end of year 7 and at the end of year 8. I ranked 2nd out of my entire year at the end of year 9 and 3rd at the end of year 10. I was a straight A, 90% average student. In fact, I considered anything above 80% and below 90% to be an average grade and anything above 70% and below 80% a bad mark. I hadn’t failed in years at this point.
This changed rapidly once I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. Thankfully, at the beginning of year 11, I started seeing a therapist outside of school. A change that produced rapid results. By the end of the year, I had healed enough that I was able to come out about being sexually violated to my closest friends. Before this point, even talking about the assault with my therapist could reduce me to tears.
Therapy healed me enough that my grades started climbing back up. But, unfortunately, sexual assault wasn’t the only trauma I had to overcome.
My Family Abused Me Until I Moved Out Ran Away At 18
I have been a victim of domestic violence since I was born. But for most of my childhood, the abuse had been bearable. Yes, it caused me great turmoil but it had never made me want to self-harm or kill myself. After my diagnosis and subsequent dropping of grades, the abuse I faced at home ramped up. Even though I was still scraping by with 70s, 80s and even some 90s, it wasn’t enough for my family who had complained about my grades back when I had ranked 1st out of my entire year. Who had refused to attend my awards ceremony when I’d ranked 2nd (yes, my family is Asian … south Asian but the same rules apply).
At home, I was isolated, emotionally and physically abused, intimidated and spiritually abused. This meant that even after recovering from the trauma of my sexual assault, I was still very much mentally ill. I was stuck with a family who treated me horribly and I had no way of escape.
This sent me down a rabbit hole of self-harm, suicidal ideations and religious guilt over the fact that I was self-harming. By the time I was 17, I stopped believing in God. My family had ruined my faith for me and based on how easily they manipulated me with religion, I decided that I was never going to let myself fall prey to religion again. I still respect people who believe in God and are religious but I personally see it as (mostly) a tool to manipulate people with.
After multiple breakdowns and my grades dropping even further, I decided that I was going to have to run away. So I contacted some organisations and eventually made a plan. At 18, on the last day of school, I ran away from home and went no contact with my entire family.
The Ramifications Of Cutting Contact With My Abusive Family
As it turns out, removing oneself from a traumatic situation does not erase the trauma. After I moved out, I had insomnia for six months and was diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) –> fancy way of saying I had PTSD but from domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse rather than from natural disaster or death.
As I was only 18 at the time, no doctor was willing to give me sleeping medication. I eventually resorted to over the counter sleeping pills. Unfortunately, those made me super drowsy and only worked for about 10 days. I eventually found a doctor who was willing to prescribe me melatonin. After six months of not being able to sleep properly and being sleep deprived out of my mind, I was finally able to sleep peacefully.
Despite this brief reprieve, I was still suffering the consequences of having major depressive disorder and CPTSD and it showed through my university grades. In some assignments, I achieved 80s and 90s while in some, I achieved failing grades (assignments from the same unit). I was getting top grades one week and failing grades the next depending on my mental state. Thankfully, my high marks averaged out the low ones and I managed to pass my units.
This worsened as time passed on. The more mentally unwell I became, the more physically ill I became. By the end of my first year, during exam season, my insomnia was so bad that I was sleeping every other day. I was prescribed melatonin. While this forced my body to sleep, it did not help me focus. My sleeping was so disordered that during the day, I could not study or focus for longer than 30 minutes without falling asleep.
After exams were over, I did a sleep study and discovered that I have mild obstructive sleep apnea. This means I randomly stop breathing during the night while I sleep. This explained why I always felt so sick after waking up. And since my diagnosis, I have seen numerous specialists for different health issues with no results.
My extreme symptoms simply do not match up with the state of my physical body. Which means that it’s highly likely that some of my physical symptoms are due to my mental illness. Which means that specialists can do nothing about it. The only thing that’ll help is if I’m able to heal from the abuse I suffered at my family’s hands.
But I don’t know if I’ll ever fully recover.
My Semi-Functional Uterus (The Cherry On Top)
On top of my mental illness, sleep apnea and numerous physical ailments (cracked teeth from grinding my teeth at night –> either related to sleep apnea or stress, messed up hearing that cannot be explained by the audiologist or the ENT, back pain from bad posture), my reproductive system is also a mess.
My period hasn’t been regular since I got it at age 11. But it became particularly bad after a few years. I didn’t have a period for six months and then when I finally did have a period it lasted for upwards of 15 days. I don’t know how many days my longest period was as I stopped counting after 17 days. This resulted in excruciatingly painful cramps, bleeding so much that I couldn’t walk without shaking and had to be sent home and numerous other uncomfortable side affects.
I was eventually prescribed Yasmin for three months. This gave me horrible symptoms: disordered eating, rapid weight gain, severe cramps and headaches. My prescription was switched to Levlen Ed. This was significantly better but made me much more sensitive. The first few months of being on Levlen Ed had me constantly fighting headaches. It certainly didn’t help that at this time, I was organising my semi-terrifying plan to run away.
And now I’ve come to rely on birth control to regulate my uterus. Even with that, I have some months where I become a raging bitch due to hormones and excessive pain. Oh and in case I forgot to mention, I have cysts in my ovaries. Cysts that every now and again decide to burst which proceeds to mess with my reproductive system.
How Does This Relate To Wanting To Get Sterilised?
Simply put, I have so many mental and physical issues that I don’t know if my body could handle being pregnant. And while I haven’t dated or had sex since 2020, my sexual trauma has taught me that I may not always be in control of whether or not I fall pregnant.
And yes, I want to have kids. But having biological kids has never been a priority for me. I want to adopt and foster. I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about having kids that are biologically related to me. Kids are kids and they need parents to look after them.
Simply put, I don’t want to have to deal with pregnancy. Birthing me nearly killed my mum. And my reproductive system is in a worse state than my mum’s had been. Not to mention that there are countless horrible side effects that come from even the healthiest of pregnancies. Many women take years to recover from their pregnancy.
And on top of this, I have trauma related to sex and severe mental illness. And I live in an incredibly misogynistic and patriarchal society. A society that is constantly making laws and “suggestions” for women to follow that reduce us to mere incubators. I can’t go two seconds without seeing pro-life propaganda where a woman sacrificing herself for the unborn is romanticised. Where our right to bodily autonomy is still questioned. A society that doesn’t fully understand what consent even is.
In fact, even in the best of circumstances, pregnant women and mothers have to deal with strangers touching their body, unsolicited advice and the expectation that they’ll complete all domestic tasks while recovering from growing a human being inside them.
The Mistreatment Of Women In Today’s “Progressive” Society
The more I think about this, the more I become convinced that sterilization is the right choice for me. In the society we live in, pregnancy has become a tool to manipulate women. I know so many women who, on top of working full time, are expected to shoulder all child-caring and domestic responsibilities.
While their husbands and male partners come home to relax after a long day at work, many women work the exact same hours and yet, are expected to come home and cook, clean, do grocery shopping, look after kids and the million other responsibilities that should be shouldered by both partners. Unless the male partner is the sole income earner, he’s equally responsible for domestic work.
And yet, men are treated like children. They’re praised for doing the bare minimum and a father taking care of his child is now labelled as “babysitting”. Men are perfectly capable of doing domestic work and taking care of children. Any man who claims he can’t do these things is incompetent and should stay with his parents as he’s clearly a child.
Feminism has brought us a long way. Women can now vote and work but we’re still being held back by regressive beliefs. The idea of the woman as the maintainer of the home comes from a time when women did not have to work. In most families nowadays, both partners work and therefore both partners are equally responsible domestic work and childcare.
Men are not stupid or incompetent. Let’s stop treating them like they are. This mentality only validates lazy men. And yes, expecting your female partner to contribute to 50% of the bills while refusing to do any housework or parenting is laziness. If you want a housewife, you have to be prepared to not only finance all of the necessary bills but also her lifestyle. If she’s stuck at home taking care of the kids and the home, she deserves to be compensated for it.
Because women are expected to look after most of the domestic work and childcare, they’re often held back from promotions because employers automatically assume they’ll be distracted by motherhood. They’re stressed out of their mind and receive criticism for the littlest thing. On top of this, many women have to deal with a man so incompetent, he doesn’t even do his own laundry and can’t even find his own keys.
Final Thoughts
I am afraid that if I don’t get sterilised, even if I choose to refrain from having sex with men, there’s a risk that I will be sexually violated … again. Even with proof, rapists are rarely ever locked up. Even in cases where there were witnesses, a rapist has only been given 6 months of jail time and probation. People care more about saving a man’s reputation than they do about protecting women.
This means that even if I was violated and fell pregnant, unless I had an abortion, I could risk having to share custody with my rapist. This is not an irrational fear. This happens to women every day. I was violated by men as a child. I’m still healing from that trauma and it happened over a decade ago.
I know sterilization is permanent but so is having kids. I’d much rather regret getting sterilised than regret having a child. Because regretting sterilisation only hurts me. And not even that much since I’ve always wanted to foster and adopt. But regretting a child could mean I potentially come to resent that child and end up abusing that child as a coping mechanism. I don’t want that.
And I know that if I ended up having a child, unless the father was genuinely a good person, I’d probably end up responsible for most of the child-caring. I’d be expected to look after a newborn while recovering from having a human being grow inside of my body and exit my body by ripping my flesh.
Disclaimer: I understand that not all men are incompetent and lazy when it comes to domestic work. There are, of course, many healthy relationships where either only one person works while the other stays at home or both partners take care of financial and domestic responsibilities equally. I have no issues with that. But it’s undeniable that what I described above happens to many families. It may have even happened to yours. While women have been given the right to work and remain financially independent, we’re still being overloaded with responsibilities that should be shouldered by both partners.
If you’re offended by what I said because you feel called out, that’s on you. If you’re a woman who works full time and takes care of all the domestic work and all the childcare with a male partner whose only contribution is him working, I’m sorry to tell you this but you need a new man. Your current partner is a child. If you’re a man who only takes care of 50% of the financial responsibility but none of the domestic responsibility, you’re a child and should move back in with your parents. Men like you are the reason why I don’t want to risk pregnancy. Do better.
