When I was nine, I was diagnosed with Endometriosis and Dysmenorrhea. Endometriosis is a condition where endometrial tissue grows and forms cysts outside of the uterus. Dysmenorrhea is just a formal term meaning extremely painful abdominal cramping during the menstruation cycle. During my menstruation cycle, I wouldn’t be able to stand on my own for more than five minutes due to the immense feelings of pain, nausea, dizziness, etc. Attending school- at age nine- during the fourth grade- was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. The first time I was hospitalized for the pain, I realized that I had finally lost my childhood; playful, wide-eyed child I was vanished as I laid in that hospital bed.

Not for the fact that I began my period earlier than my friends did at the time, not for the fact that I left school early almost every week to head to doctor appointments, not for the fact that I was now the one to go to if girls had any questions about having a period, but for the fact that I began signing safety waivers and disclaimers for special tests and surgeries to help ease my pain. For the fact that I began to talk to my doctors myself about the recent symptoms I have been feeling that week rather than my parents vouching for me. For the fact that I began organizing and explaining my own medications to my parents because they couldn't keep track of how many new pills I had to take. And for the fact that I had my own room for a period of time with my own bathroom just in case I had to throw up or be taken to the hospital and did not have to worry about waking up my sisters in the middle of the night.

I realized I lost my childhood once I noticed that I would rather sit and stay still and comfortably warm inside than play outside with my sisters or cousins at home or answer questions and participate in group activities at school. When I noticed that I would be enraged when my fellow classmates would make the same hurtful jokes whenever I was feeling pain because they didn't understand. But then again, how could they?

Back to laying in that hospital bed, along with burying my childhood, I lost something else with it: my sense of “womanhood”. So far I have had more that four surgeries to remove cysts, endometrial tissue, and an ovary. Waking up from my final surgery- where my ovary is removed-  made me feel old; as if I was eighty because after that surgery I thought there was no way now that I was going to have children. Not after that. I felt defeated and mournful, my body was slowly dying, and with it, my strength and hope of having a pain free life; my body was slowly withering away, losing its reason for existing. If I couldn’t bare a child of my own in the future, was I really human? Was I really qualified to be identified as a girl? A woman? No, at least in my eyes and deep in my being I knew I couldn't come close to being a real woman.

Laying in that bed post-op, I was crushed. I knew that in the span of five years, I had my memories from my childhood, and the start of my womanhood, stolen from me when I didn't have the appropriate time to appreciate and cherish them. I remember, at this time I was around thirteen or fourteen, writing letters to myself, like the movie Collateral Beauty starring Will Smith, to ask “why me?” “when will I be okay again?” But I knew I would never get my answer. Till this day, I still feel like there is an empty part of me, not my childhood, but my womanhood missing. I knew my childhood would have to eventually end, but the sequence of life was supposed to be childhood to womanhood. My childhood ended, but so did my womanhood, so now where do I go next? I will eventually find my away, but until then I will miss my past, and mourn my future.