liminality and versucher

2009-07-16T13:40:00.004-05:00

shit, I should maybe post something. it will probably be shoes, as I just signed up for shoedazzle upon Shannette's suggestion.

commitment to my phd

2009-05-19T07:43:00.012-05:00

Brought to you by the letter P.

Last night N and I were playing Scattergories. I couldn't come up with anything for #8 and left it blank. The category was college majors. The letter was P. Seriously.

2009-04-28T23:44:00.004-05:00

you know, I think it probably doesn't really matter what I do professionally or what I do with my life in general, as long as I'm kind

so there's that
I might have to work on it though

repercussions

2009-04-23T09:50:00.005-05:00

On Sunday I was in kind of a bad place and, out of habit, called someone that I should not have. There were repercussions.

Wanting to send the message that these repercussions are not ok, wanting these repercussions to not happen again, I reached out to a mutual friend/acquaintance asking for his help with this, thinking he would relay the message, that they would call me a bitch, and at least J would get the message and leave me alone.

Instead, I was surprised when J's friend responded to me with kindness. Sorry that I have had to go through this, letting me know that, unfortunately, this is not the first one of these requests that he's gotten, promising to talk to J, to consider thoughtfully the best way to approach the issue with him, to respectfully keep the details of their conversation to himself, shielding me from any further emotional/verbal abuse per my request.

It occurs to me that this is how much my interactions with J over the years have warped my perception, my perception of this situation and how others perceive me, thinking it a matter of commonsense that his friend would respond to me with hostility rather than compassion, kindness and understanding.

In some ways it helps to know that this is a pattern with J, and that there is not just something wrong with me, which is what I have been hearing from him for the past six years. But I also hate to know that he has put other people through this, can't help but feel some complicity in normalizing and accepting his behavior for so long. And yes, I know it doesn't make me responsible for his behavior. But it's difficult reconciling this past with who I want to be, the threads of this past that keep finding their way into my present, in between some old way of being and some new way that I keep just missing, that I haven't quite found my way into yet.

self-care

2009-04-18T18:41:00.003-05:00

lavender and chamomile bath
plus lavender and chamomile tea

session

2009-04-18T15:29:00.004-05:00

so many connections made this morning

tried to walk them off

linking stories and words

walked to a yard sale
and didn't buy lemonade for fifty cents or touch anything really
i walked back down the street and tried things on and took them off
came home emptyhanded

making the connections i already had in words coming out before i can censor their double meaning

it became a habit

jason then jordan

for something like six months
of talking about myself for an hour every week i did not tell her about jason
jason who was in my life from 16 to 23
not i did not tell her about jason
i did not tell her jason exists
did not seem relevant somehow

when we finally talked about him a few months ago she wanted to know why "he is gross"
it had not occurred to me
that i did not have an answer because it seemed so obvious like common knowledge, jason is gross

never forgot any of it just didn't know how to connect it
only how to bury it in my stomach

with everything else
connected

start wearing purple wearing purple

2009-04-16T12:11:00.003-05:00

This made me need to post this video: (although sadly I can't listen to the video b/c my laptop is broken and N's laptop's speakers are busted--I'll have to put the CD on later)

my little life

2009-04-15T09:17:00.009-05:00

For roughly probably a year and a half now, my partner and I have been dealing with the mystery of our laundry occasionally reeking. It started with our towels. We washed and dried them and folded them and hung them up and discovered they reeked. Like headache inducing weird unidentifiable smell approximating grill smoke or charcoal reeked. We rewashed all the towels. They still smelled. We googled, experimented, and after some trial and error and many many quarters later found the winning combination: pre-wash spray down with febreeze + downy ball full of white vinegar.

Theories have abounded over the past year and a half as to how to explain why our clothes sometimes come out smelling like this as well as theories of how to avoid it and thereby avoid having to rewash all of our laundry over again. Our best theory, which we came up with after I noticed that our A/C was pulling charcoal smoke into our bedroom when our neighbors grilled, was that we must be doing our laundry while people were grilling and smoke was getting into the basement. Though we never smelled smoke in the basement, doing the laundry in the morning seemed to help avoid the problem and we haven't had the problem for most of the winter.

Last night my partner and I, both already exhausted from work/school, set out to do the laundry so it will be ready for him to leave for Coachella (of which I'm extremely jealous by the way!) We sorted and loaded up the laundry basket, stepped out of our apartment and both immediately said, oh crap, remembering that the door handle had broken off the door leading to the back stairwell which leads down to the basement a couple days ago, leaving the door permanently locked. So we hauled the laundry down the front stairs, outside, around the building, through the side door into the basement and started our three super-full loads of laundry.

When we came back down (the front stairs, outside, around the building, etc.) to move the laundry to the dryers, by the way, my partner somehow managed to drop his keys in the small space between the step down and the inside door to the basement, which required about three to five minutes of (locked out panic!) plus fishing to get the keys out.

A couple weeks ago while doing laundry we noticed someone smelling the dryers, and so before putting our clothes in the dryer we thought to stick our noses in there, and guess what? There it was, the smell. Our dryers reek. Not wanting to leave all our wet clothes to mildew we dried them anyway, and lo and behold everything that went in the dryer reeks and everything that hung to dry is totally fresh and normal.

It still doesn't explain why the dryers reek, or why they only sometimes reek, but the mystery of the source of the smell is finally finally solved. Though it's a little bittersweet, because now all the clothes are back in the hamper, except for N's, which we had to just febreeze so he can pack them tonight, and I am really not wanting to do it all over again until that stupid doorknob gets fixed.

And still, my life is really not that hard.

[eta:] 5:45 pm--got home to find doorknob fixed. dryers smell normal. decided there is just enough time to redo laundry before N needs to have everything packed. Walked to gas station to get the one quarter we were short. Just removed laundry from washing machine, all three loads again, still smell. Sigh. Make dinner, and try again tomorrow with more febreeze I guess.

[eta:] In case anyone was worried, by the time the clothes came out of the dryer again they were pretty much ok--clean clothes for all!

on Keira Knightley's domestic violence awareness ad

2009-04-03T10:48:00.005-05:00

[trigger warning]

So, an ad has been made with Keira Knightley in it by an anti-violence against women organization that will be shown in theaters to raise awareness about domestic violence. I haven't seen the video, though I read the transcript, and it is supposed to be pretty powerful. You can see the video and transcript here.

Echoing what I said here, I have to say that I actually have a real problem with this ad, since it's not going to come with a trigger warning when it's shown in theaters. If I saw this in the theater it would pretty much ruin the movie for me or I would have to just get up and leave. I understand the need to drive home the reality of this violence, but for lots of us it's already real, and it's blatantly insensitive to survivors and victims (and ironic) to not respect survivors'/victims' need to not have this sort of material forced on us or to have some kind of warning ahead of time. I'm not entirely sure how to get around that, but I think we need to work on better ways of raising awareness about domestic violence that don't force people who have already experienced it to be potentially re-traumatized with no warning. We've already borne enough of the costs of domestic violence, put it on someone else now.

I'm sure some people will say I should just suck it up and be triggered for the greater good, but that's a personal decision--whether survivors want to put their own health second to raising awareness, and that's a choice that survivors should get to make on their own and not have forced on them.

2009-03-29T17:24:00.005-05:00

Dear makers of commercials,

While I appreciate your efforts to ensure that we don't miss your thoughtful marketing by making your commercials really really fucking loud, I thought I should let you know that all it really accomplishes is to give the mute button on our remote a frequent workout and ensure that we miss entirely whatever misogynist, fat-hating, racist, ableist, or heterocentrist message you happen to be selling. Maybe you are in fact marketing remote controls with really large mute buttons on them, in which case kudos. Otherwise, seriously, think this one through. And by the way, who the fuck is your target audience, I mean, who are all these self-hating, misogynist, fat-hating, racist, ableist, and heterocentrist assholes who apparently need to be convinced to buy your products?

Love always,
Omphaloskeptic

abstinence only education and rape culture

2009-03-26T11:39:00.005-05:00

[possible trigger warning]

I've recently reconnected with an old friend, L, who I've known since I was four and who I've stayed in touch with off and on over the years. Reconnected is maybe not the right word but I've opened up conversations with her recently about things that we experienced growing up but never talked much about, about abuse and rape and sexuality. I've spoken to her openly for the first time about the violence in my early home, things that she nonetheless more or less knew about and that I'm happy to find out that I did tell her about when I was young, in my own way, in the only way I knew how to at the time. It's meant a lot to be able to tell, finally, the person I would have if I'd known how, and to know that I did tell in some way, that I was not alone, that I had at least one witness.

L and I both grew up in abstinence-only advocacy environments, in church and at our respective homes. Something L said to me recently is that she never learned to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy experiences of "sex," which I put in quotes because so much of what we thought was sex in fact bordered on rape. Since all forms of sex were supposed to be dangerous and wrong, we did not learn how to recognize rape, unhealthy "sex," or coercion when we encountered it. This goes well beyond the normal critiques of how abstinence only education does not prepare young people to protect themselves against pregnancy and STDs. It does not prepare us to make positive decisions about the kind of sexuality we want to embrace, the kinds of sex and pleasure we want to experience, does not equip us to communicate openly with potential partners about what feels good or safe. It does not prepare us for rape. Abstinence only education reinforces rape culture. I'm sure this has been written about and need to find the places where.

I've recently gotten to confront my mom about how she and my stepdad chose to teach me about dating, something I don't feel up to going into the details about right now, but which was significantly damaging, triggering, and traumatizing for me given my past experiences with trauma. I've gotten to realize that the first thing I learned about dating is that I should not trust my own feelings and intuitions about what feels safe or appropriate for me and that it doesn't do any good to speak up when something does feel gross or inappropriate.

I was told growing up to stand up for myself, to stop dating guys who disrespect me, and I was taught not to use my voice and I was taught that disrespect and abuse are the normal way of things and I was taught that it's worse not to have a father than to maintain a relationship with a father who is unstable and unsafe. I was told that sex outside of marriage is wrong and shameful, and I was taught that marriage is not in the least safe or desirable. I was told that just because my partner was older than me "doesn't mean I have to do whatever he says," and yet I was taught that I don't own the rights to my own sexuality, that my sexuality is open to the intrusive policing and surveillance of others.

And I have learned that sex is not safe. I have learned that sex is a weapon to combat having to listen to me or view me as a person. So far from the kind of sex that loves, that brings us into our own bodies, that connects us with life, and loved ones and other bodies. The foundation I have to creatively and constantly tear down, so far from sex that is creative and erotic and beautiful, loving and self-loving. So far.

"relationship violence made real"

2009-03-24T13:00:00.009-05:00

[trigger warning]

via feministing

I'm not directly linking to the video or organization here, but there is apparently an organization called Do Something that filmed a reenactment of Chris Brown's assault of Rihanna in order to help raise awareness about the reality of relationship violence among teenagers. (And by the way, for some not so readily apparent reason used white actors in filming the reenactment.) Courtney at Feministing acknowledges that the film is controversial but says that she supports the video for:

making the incident--which has been so obscured by the media hype, ignorant commentary from pundits and the public alike, and so much disrespect--real again. A woman, a man, out of control emotions, and inexcusable violence. If Rhianna weren't already horribly outed by this whole incident, I might feel like it were an invasion of her privacy, but at this point, it's just so public. It seems like the most respectful thing we can do for Rhianna is make sure that this whole thing inspires young people to get educated about relationship violence--as the ad does.

Given the aura of the fantastical and the sense of unreality that generally surround our images of domestic violence and sexual assault--as our acquaintance with them is so often through the "unreal," in fiction, in movies, in music, in sensationalized news stories that distance us from victims and survivors--I totally get the need to drive home and make apparent the very *real* nature of this violence. However, I'm concerned about the cost of "making this violence real" falling on the shoulders of those for whom it is already real. So I was pretty thrown by Feministing's endorsement of this video. My comments as follows:

I should first say that I did not watch the video, in heed of the trigger warning and because I find the description and premise of this video deeply disturbing.

That said, I want to echo what Renee and others have said about the troubling and problematic co-optation involved in this public reenactment of a survivor's story without her and without her permission, for a cause that she may or may not endorse. Whether or not this video might be "for a good cause" should not trump survivors' rights to determine how and/or whether they want their story to be "used." The so-called ethical imperative to speak publicly (so as to "save" other victims) is all too familiar to many survivors and places an undo burden on survivors to speak out *for the sake of others.*

While educating young people about relationship violence is an admirable goal and may be a way of demonstrating respect for Rihanna, usurping Rihanna's personal story for this goal is, in my view, extremely disrespectful. The choice to share one's story of survival so as to help educate others is a personal one and one that usually carries with it a great deal of physical and emotional costs. Hoisting these costs onto Rihanna, treating survivors as though they have a universal responsibility to save others by speaking out--or asserting that we have the right to use Rihanna's story simply because it is already out there, already a matter of public knowledge--places the burden of combating violence on survivors themselves and perpetuates the idea that this responsibility automatically trumps the psychic, emotional, and physical tolls and threat to one's safety that so often come with telling or having one's story told in public.

Charging survivors with this imperative both disrespects and undermines survivors' rights to silence, to self-care, and to making their own decisions about what that self-care should look like. While I am beyond thankful to all those who have shared their stories willingly, I equally respect those who for whatever reason have decided not to. It is not the responsibility of survivors to undergo more suffering in order to end domestic violence, it is the responsibility of *those who commit that violence*. Seeing as Rihanna's pictures were released without her permission, and presumably she did not choose to have her picture and story plastered everywhere and made the object of public consumption, speculation, and use, like others I am pretty appalled to see Feministing endorsing this video.

convalescence

2009-03-18T11:53:00.007-05:00

Amazingly, the same passages that I could read over and over again three months ago and not be able to process, think through, or in any way comprehend, now, now that I am no longer mired in the kind of depression and anxiety that crowd out all other feelings, no longer feeling like I am going to throw up from sadness and flashbacks and fear all the time, now these passages appear as though they are written in a completely different language, one that I speak fluently and understand.

My knowledge hasn't changed. Well, my self-knowledge has changed, and so maybe in some ways my ways of knowing have changed. But I think the main difference is that my knowledge is qualitatively, phenomenologically different. I have known this way of knowing before, and I have known the way of knowing I knew three months ago before--my knowing undergoes these shifts over time, like waves crashing on my sensibility, coming in and going back out again. These qualitative, phenomenological shifts in what I know, in my ability to "know" that I am blessed, lucky, loved, intelligent, bright, and beautiful and that life is full of bright places but not be able to know it at my core, to know at my core the bell jar instead and have no way to remove it in spite of these repeated truths that I "know" but that cannot reach my core.

I watched _Rachel Getting Married_ last night and wept as Kym sat in the bathtub, her sister silently, gently washing her skin, with love and forgiveness and understanding, pausing over the tattoo that told the story of their mutual pain, witnessing her bruises. Wept remembering sitting in the bathtub five and six years ago, the water washing over me, wanting to die, with no one to witness, no one to put a sponge on my back and wash me over with love and forgiveness and understanding. Wept for fear of one day losing my partner, the one who cries with me and holds me as Kym's sister washes her bruises in the bathtub, who washes me over with love and forgiveness and understanding. Wept for not wanting to die, not wanting him to die, ever. Wept for the girl who sat in the bathtub not knowing that kind of sadness, the sadness of not wanting to die.

Life is so full of sadness, but my sadness is so much more full of life than it has been in such a long time.

hiding

2009-03-04T10:30:00.001-06:00

I so much want to scrap all of my projects and just write stories about chameleon knowledge and survival and things I have not even thought of yet. But I am still learning the way they go.

I am thankful, as always, for sunshine, sweet music and friends.

emails

2009-02-25T09:13:00.007-06:00

in the middle of an email conversation with my mom about memory, and what things were like in our home up until I was seven

mom:
You know, I've come to accept that everyone remembers things differently, and it is scary, but I guess it's just a fact of life. .... [about her friend D...] C [D's daughter] told D that she remembered something really awful from her childhood, and D just can't believe it's true. I don't think D wants people to know about it, so I don't want to say too much.

Me:
I don't know what the story is that D will not believe about C, but I know it is really traumatic to have something horrible happen to you and have no one believe or listen to you. I can't imagine that C would move away and cut off ties with her mom for no reason. But I guess I can't really say anything about it since I don't know the whole story. If the story involves D and it's something that she thinks she would never do then I think that's more understandable, but if the story is about someone else and she just can't believe that person would do something like that, I think a lot of people have those kinds of responses and it's understandable because you don't want to believe the worst about people, but I guess it's just too bad for C since she probably doesn't get to choose what to believe.

Mom:
C has done, and probably still does, a lot of drugs. D didn't automatically assume C was wrong. She thought about it for some time before coming to the conclusion that it was a false memory. She said some things didn't add up that C said. But apparently C believes that what she remembered really happened.

Me:
I just know that lots of people's stories might not 'add up' because when you're trying to survive a traumatic situation you're not all busy about recording the details you're busy about surviving, and someone doing drugs years later is not a reason to not believe them. Sorry if I am being unfair to D, because she could very well have good reasons for assuming that whatever C's story is isn't true, but maybe there's a reason C 'has done a lot of drugs'.

I love my mom but really what the fuck.

[eta:]
mom:
No one gets to go through life without being wronged, hurt, falsely accused, not believed, misunderstood, let down, etc. No matter how hard we try or want to, we can never prevent our children from ever having to experience these things. I guess it's part of life that we have to go through certain things. And nobody goes through life without making mistakes. I sure would do a lot of things differently if I could go back and do them over. All we can do is try to do our best with what we know and what we understand and what we are aware of. You have to try and learn from things, and go on, and do better next time. I love you and A more than anything, and I always had your best interests at heart. I'm sure I made mistakes, and I'm sorry if I did. I don't think I realized when you were born that I couldn't protect you from everything, and it sure hurt like hell to ever see either of you hurting. Still does.

2009-01-12T08:40:00.006-06:00

My mom and I email a lot, since she is far away and at work all day. I wrote to her that I went to a workshop on PTSD yesterday, that I was miserable and my head was spinning the whole time and I could not listen. She didn't respond to this part of my email at all. And it is just like being six and twelve and twenty and not being listened to all over again. My mom's own way of dealing with trauma has created such a gap in understanding that I don't know whether I can ever be not invisible with her, if I am so many of the things that she will not look at in herself, if our heads are spinning and spinning memory out of us and we can't listen.

I know this but her silences loom larger and larger and I fill them with all the things I imagine she wants to say, that I should just get over it, that nothing happened, that I'm just being lazy, that I'm acting crazy, that I should be spending my time and money on getting out of debt instead, that I don't deserve, that I can't afford, good health and good things.

I asked, in group yesterday, if self-blame helps us reclaim some belief that we are in control of things then how can we give up self-blame without losing whatever sense of safety and security we've built up. This is what we're all trying to figure out, she said. But speaking that did not help, did not feel safe, shaking and crying in front of others, even the most understanding of others. It did not feel safe to use my voice for hours. I could not speak, could not listen, could not feel the snow crunching under my feet because I learned a long time ago that this is how to survive, in a daze, waiting to come back to myself.

2009-01-09T13:02:00.004-06:00

The news has become too close to me. There are stories that stay with me for days. I cried and cried on Monday over the video of Oscar Grant. I have been waiting for some way to make sense of this, for someone on the side of those at fault to come out from hiding and say that this was a horrible mistake, for someone in a mainstream position of power to stand up and demand accountability, for some authoritative declaration simply that this was wrong, to read or hear about this story somewhere besides in blogs, but then I am not watching the news much and don't know what the coverage has been like. It occurs to me that I am more vulnerable, more open to people I have never met and will never know than I am to the people who are close to me, sometimes. I haven't known what to write about this, just finally can only say that this story has weighed on me this week, though I've done nothing, continue to do nothing, though I know there are things I can do now, but all I can seem to think about is the long run and however I will find some way, outside of academics, to lessen all the unnecessary violences we daily undergo, some small way to matter.

2008-12-08T16:26:00.004-06:00

omg fuck this semester so much.

2008-12-02T08:56:00.006-06:00

It's not true that everything sucks. It's probably a testament to how much everything does not suck, that I have a space and home and partner with whom I am able to process all these things right now, but it is true that the processing of all these things sucks.

2008-11-25T17:55:00.005-06:00

god, everything sucks right now

that wasn't meant as a letter, but it could be. dear god, everything sucks right now, maybe we could work on that?

things to which to look forward

2008-11-17T10:51:00.006-06:00

Is that right? "Things to look forward to" is sort of wrong, but this sounds even more wrong. Good thing I've lost my ability to do grammar just before starting the three papers in three weeks marathon.

But at any rate, after a much needed phone date with one of my girlfriends yesterday, in which it was decided that during our winter visit to Dallas we will be taking a road trip to Austin (destination: queso), my determination/motivation to make it through the next few weeks is restored/renewed. That and my ambivalence about being in Dallas has shifted somewhat, and I can actually get a little excited about going home.

One of the highlights of going home the past few years has been driving by our old high schools with Erin while she screams out the window (at Clark High School), "Fuck you, Clark!!! Fuck you!" Our road trip means not only all the joys of road tripping, of seeing Erin, and of planning a trip around queso and gingerbread pancakes, but it also means that I get to drive by the place where I did my undergraduate degree for the first time in four years and tell it: Fuck you.

Oh, this is going to be great.

2008-11-11T12:32:00.003-06:00

All my tests came back basically normal, so in one sense that is good news. On the other hand, it would be great if there were some easily identifiable way to fixeverythingallatonce. But no, of course, there's not. So, instead of (that is, after) getting overwhelmed, I decided to draw a picture of all my major problems with lots of arrows and question marks and sarcastic exclamation points (religious baggage!!) so I can make sense of how things relate to each other, in order to prioritize and figure out some central place to start treating all of this, recuperating and maybe eventually even convalescing! So now I have a pretty clear picture of what is going on, which is exciting because the hardest thing lately has been just getting things clear in my head. And I'm even kind of optimistic because I think that if I can address/knock out this one big problem, a lot of the rest will be much much better/more manageable. So, now it is just figuring out a treatment plan that will work for me.

november 5, 2008

2008-11-05T13:08:00.008-06:00

I'm struggling lately with how to critically engage views that are different from my own. Rather, I'm reaching out, fumbling around, and coming up against the limits of my ability to engage these views.

Three examples. In class, talking about truth and narrative, questions of truth and narrative, I shut down when a classmate aggressively argues at me that the initial response to the narratives of *alleged* survivors of sexual assault should always be one of skepticism.

[two and three deleted because they're boring and worth forgetting]

My head is spinning in these stories, my stomach turning, my body shutting down, my mind shuts down, rejects, rejects these views. Because, no more of this crap can be internalized and I still survive. Somehow, somehow I need to distance myself, but at the same time I am still finding my way out of long bouts of numbness and apathy. And part of me knows that I need to find a way to stop shutting down, because how can I begin to communicate and respond and make peace with those folks whose support is needed--needed for all of us to survive. I just can't make my way right now to the place where I accept that fucked up, bigoted views are going and going to exist.

I just don't know how to stop shutting down without opening myself up to being wounded by folks whose views I find so deeply broken and hurtful that I can't even get my mind around them. This is a problem.

I think this is the first time I've known what it feels like to believe in a candidate, to feel like my vote matters, will make a difference, because the person I'm voting for has given me hope that there can be differences made. It stings, to in the very next moment see so many people voting against marriage rights for gay people--it takes the edges off my hope and faith in communities of people to care and fight for each other. And I need that hope and faith and have been without it for awhile now. It's just, how do we come back from this, knowing that at every corner we have to face this kind of disregard for whole groups of people. How do I not become one of those people who disregards whole groups of people, when their views compel them to limit the rights of others in ways I find so deeply hurtful, damaging, and sad.

Choosing when to engage, when engaging is worthwhile and when it will only exhaust and wear me down without making a difference at all. Choosing when to listen. How to listen, how not to stop listening.

2008-11-03T10:43:00.005-06:00

not that I have been doing anything, not that I have been a part of any real movement for awhile now, because I have been exhausted for years now, not that this is an excuse for me to never do anything, but as a way of being kinder to myself this bears my hearing/listening to/remembering:

What I would share with you from my own experiences–it’s ok to be tired. it’s ok to say, i need to stop, i need to rest, I need to just not think any more.

I always thought that ‘community’ meant being willing to sacrafice *everything* for the community (I am a Latina after all!! :->) and so for me, it’s been a revolutionary moment to realize that 1. it *doesn’t* mean that–but also 2. *everybody* in the community must be willing to give the same amount, or ‘community’ is just a recreation of harmful hierarchies. what could be more revolutionary than stopping the rebuilding of the same old structure and saying we need to rebuild–and we’re going to rebuild on MY HEALTH? the foundation of our new world will be my health?

[edit]

2008-10-31T17:44:00.004-05:00

As it turns out, my insurance covers the lab tests, just not the exam. Perfect, now if I can just figure out how to get my pap cells to hop off my cervix and over to the lab! Jerks.