I’d always been self-conscious about my abdomen. When I got endometriosis, everyone else became conscious of it too.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
I was checking out at the grocery store, loading cat litter and toilet paper into my cart when the clerk paused, mid-scan. "Oh my gosh!" she said with the unmistakable — yet very mistaken — joy I now recognize instantly. "When are you due?"
My heart sank the way it does when somebody identifies the one thing about yourself that you're constantly hoping nobody will notice. I bent to put the litter in the cart and stood up, conscious that I was trying to stand up straighter, and even more conscious that no matter how straight I stood, my belly was not going to suddenly melt and flatten underneath my yoga pants. "I'm not pregnant," I said. I sounded apologetic. I'm sorry my body has confused you.
The clerk's face flushed red: "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. That's the worst. Don't worry, I'm not perfect either…" And then, somehow, remorse wound its way around to incredulity: "Wait, really? You're not?"
Really. I'm not.
But it was an honest mistake. From the end of my twenties to the start of my thirties, I spent around 10 days of every month looking three to six months pregnant. My not-a-baby bump was caused by endometriosis, a chronic medical condition where the lining of your uterus builds up in places other than your uterus. In my case, the uterine lining has coalesced into lumps that doctors creepily refer to as "chocolate cysts" in both of my ovaries. The cyst on my left ovary, which I named Horace, was almost three inches in diameter. During my period, around ovulation, and really, any time according to his own whims, Horace flared up, which felt like someone shoving a red-hot fire poker repeatedly through my pelvis. The pain lasted for hours, sometimes days, and brought many delightful side effects: migraines, nausea, and watching horrible infomercials at 4 a.m. because I couldn't sleep for the vomiting. My abdomen swelled up to an early-second-trimester-sized bump as a result, and stayed that way for days or sometimes weeks after the pain subsided. Yoga pants, empire waists, and flowy tunic-y things became necessities: I could no longer button my jeans.
Endometriosis has no cure, but many women find relief by staying on the Pill indefinitely or with laparoscopic surgery. I tried both, but Horace was irrepressible — he grew back three months after my surgeon removed him and all his friends (4 pounds total) with lasers in the spring of 2012 — which left me trying to answer a question facing anyone with a chronic illness, a disability, or any other constant body frustration: How do you love your body when it doesn't love you back?
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
I've always had a complicated relationship with my stomach. I spent years in yoga and Pilates trying to find my possibly nonexistent transverse abdominal muscles. The pair of jeans that doesn't give me a muffin top has yet to be designed. Look, everyone has their own body-shame deal. But J.Lo taught us to embrace the booty; Christina Hendricks brought back hourglass curves. No celebrity — unless she's actually building another human inside of her — ever says, "I love having a Buddha belly." Even before my diagnosis, I spent more hours than I'd like to admit in dressing rooms asking, "Does this make me look pregnant?" So when I first started getting sick at age 28, I assumed I was making too much of my stomach yet again.
Then I started getting mistaken for pregnant in public. A lot.
And I started to privately obsess, documenting my stomach swelling with selfies shot in profile before and after Horace flare-ups — yes, exactly like a pregnant woman charting her belly growth. I hopped on the scale and confirmed my weight could swing 6 to 10 pounds in either direction, depending solely on Horace's mood. Fitted cardigans, sheath dresses — it felt like half my wardrobe was on hiatus. My worst body-image fear had taken up physical residence in my body.
But no matter how fake-pregnant I looked, my family and friends seemed to think I was focusing on the wrong issue. Why get worked up about something as shallow as the shape of my stomach when I was missing work and birthdays and quality time with my loved ones due to mind-numbing chronic pain? "You need to just be nice to yourself," my mom would say. My husband also refused to play ball, sticking to "you're still beautiful." But more than declining to indulge my insecurities, everyone seemed to want me to rise above such petty concerns, as if a chronic illness should make you all profound and Zen-like. But being sick didn't erase my complicated relationship with beauty — it just made it more fraught. Wanting to look pretty isn't a privilege reserved for the healthy; the standard just feels even more out of my reach now.