16 And Not Pregnant
The best part of learning you’re incapable of conceiving when you’re 11 is that you’re 11 and not being able to birth a slightly smaller version of yourself seems like a substantial victory. The worst part of learning this exceptionally hapless information when you’re 11, is that you don’t fully grasp what it means. It takes until you’re twice that age when the bubble of denial protecting your subconscious and its distant friend, awareness, finally burst. Bubbles tend to do that when jabbed too many times. Jabbed with the painfully sharp ends of warning flags waved by prying, nosy doctors. The prying, nosy doctors had warned you the entire time, apparently sharing potential preventative measures that might give you a 10-percent chance. But you’re 11, and then 13, and then 15, and besides a brief phase of yearning to be the “young, fun mom” coinciding with a short, yet unfortunately impressionable binge on 16 and Pregnant, their advice seems aggressively premature. So you ignore the advice and kiss your few options goodbye. Because you’re 11, and less worried about how hospitable your uterus is than which Capri Sun flavor will accompany your Fruit Roll-Up.
One day you're 24 and four of your hometown friends are married, and two of them have newborns, and three have dogs, or maybe two have dogs and one has a newborn… well there's at least one human baby and between two to three dog babies and you’re abruptly reminded that, that can never be you because: a) there aren't currently any prospects to help generate a baby. b) the most recent attempt at taking care of a living organism that wasn't yourself involved petsitting your roommate's betta fish named Sushi for an extended weekend. A time span in which it somehow acquired a large growth on the left side of its face, ultimately leading to its demise. c) Taking care of yourself is hard enough. Oh, and d) you physically cannot conceive nor bear children. Or so you've been told.
Out of all the valleys you've hurdled over, this one never seemed too sizable. It never seemed pressing, never seemed like a concern you should actively address. And that is as accurate a representation as I can depict of the insidious nature of chronic illness. Of chronic pain, of chronic I don't know what's happening to me and I will throw my trust and faith and effort into someone who claims that they do. You know it exists, but every now and then, your safety brake proves faulty and you feel its full weight as you plummet down that valley. While you’re on your way down, flying at a high velocity, the world throws a surprise five-star slap on your sensitive skin, just for the heck of it. When it does, it's betrayal, it's embarrassment, it's emotional pain because evidently the physical wasn't enough. And then you regroup, you read an inspirational book, you talk to someone who's been there or someone who's been somewhere else. And you proceed forward and upward, guided by the very hand that left a blotchy, stinging mark.
I was 11 when Dr. Awkward (not his legal name, but the only name I knew him by) informed me there was a slim chance I could ever have children of my own. Two years earlier, he had diagnosed me with congenital anosmia, a fancy term meaning that I entered this confusing life unable to smell. Unfortunately, and to my childhood self’s great disappointment, it doesn’t mean that I myself never produce smells–simply that I am incapable of perceiving the scents around me. Smellblind. Smelldeaf.
Apparently, standard procedure for investigating someone’s sense of smell involves a small book of scratch-and-sniff cards that allegedly produce fun and sweet smells. “Can you tell me what this smells like?” He asks.
“Good,” I say. It smells like good. It was my trained reflex. Before age nine, I never knew I was missing out on anything, let alone an entire sense. Before nine, I’d mimic the responses and observations of those around me.
Cookies smell good. Flowers smell good. Smoke smells bad. Gas smells good when I’m with my cousin and bad when I’m with my brother. They were funny words, said at funny times. I figured it was simply one of those, “you’ll understand it when you’re older” kind of things, you know, like politics, and how quicksand works. I guess it was.
“Right, but can you tell me what type of food it smells like?”
Until you possess the information that you are unable to smell, your brain creates responses as if it could. It’s like a defense designed to not help you, but nonetheless, adamantly asserts itself at every possible opportunity. It’s like the brain doesn’t even know itself at all, or maybe it knows itself too well and works restlessly to protect you from it.
“Okay we’ll try something else,” he offers. I sit next to my mom, glancing at her frequently, searching for the correct answers and hoping they’re plastered across her face. (I was) Confused why a funny man would ask such funny questions.
He leaves the room, and a few minutes later, a nurse walks in carrying smelling salts. My mom’s eyes tear several moments before she (the nurse or her mother?) enters the room. I do my very best to smell the small tub held just below my face. I strain, ping-ponging my eyes between my mom and the nurse, and I come up with nothing. I fail to describe it other than “bad.”
No one cares if you can’t smell. I don’t mean that in an insensitive way. I mean it in a you-can-know-me-for-a-year-or-two-or-three-before-you-ever-find-out way. When I tell most people, the standard response goes something like: “Oh, I just had a cold too—something nasty going around.” Or, people assume I’m only referring to the scent of concern. “How do you not smell that skunk?” Well, Jerry, the same way I don’t smell all other scents. Or they really hear me, and they ask why and immediately begin questioning my partial sense of taste. Then they proceed to tell me I’m really missing out on fresh-baked cookies, but boy, am I not missing out on farts. Yeah, farts are the worst. They gradually begin to list off all the smells I’m lucky to have never smelled, and in the end they conclude it’s not a bad gig at all, this whole not smelling thing, in fact, they’re a bit jealous themselves.
It doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me, for the most part. It doesn’t bother me until I’m in high school chemistry and my teacher asks the lucky student seated in the front row (me, thanks to his very own seating chart), to demonstrate wafting for the other fellow students. To those of you unfamiliar with wafting, it’s an extremely vital, tremendously important skill all scientists utilize on a daily basis and can be more properly explained via a quick google search. It doesn’t bother me until I’m driving my always reliable, trusty, manual transmission up a nearly vertical hill and upon peaking the summit, the car slows, and after a brief evaluation of the dashboard and its festival of lights, I look up to realize all other passengers evacuated the vehicle, questioning, “Can’t you smell the smoke?” It doesn’t bother me until I’m working in my first lab, training rats to recognize odors I couldn’t identify myself. It doesn’t bother me really, it doesn’t bother me ever. Until it does.
Bad things always come in twos, (this is not true lol it’s bad things always come in threes) I was always told. What they don’t tell you is twos come in twos, and those twos come in more twos. I can’t smell, but I’m nine and it doesn’t matter. Two years and an exhaustive set of medical testing later, I’m 11 and I can’t smell and I can’t have kids. But it doesn’t matter still. What does matter, is Dr. Awkward extensively elaborating on the exquisite metamorphosis of puberty, abusing phrases like “budding breasts” and “natural desires” in front of my father amidst the onset of prepubescent angst and unconditional parental embarrassment. What does matter, is this awkward, awkward man informing an awkward and naive and confused and afraid child that she is different, that she is alone in that difference, that she will never be able to bring someone in to share her difference.
It’s weird not having a sense (and missing part of another) and it’s weird when biology makes important decisions for you. It’s weird when a whole world exists that everyone knows but you. It’s weird when a whole world exists that only you know. I’m 28 and just now learning what people have been telling me all along. Bad things come in twos, not being able to smell farts is a highly-coveted trait, and I’ll always be a little different, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.
Lindsay is a clinical psychology doctoral student who freelance writes for the joy and liberation it provides. Her creative nonfiction pieces have been featured in The Alacala Review, The Book Smuggler’s Den, Fat Daddy’s Farm and Z Publishing’s Emerging Author Series. She additionally published a poetry book entitled, This is M.E., which attempts to address the emotional toll of chronic illness. She writes to better understand the world around me and to connect with others through shared emotions when experiences don’t align.