"My Vagina Was My Village" (12)

My Vagina Was My Village

(pages 61-63)

“My vagina was green, water soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw.

There is something between my legs. I do not know what it is. I do not know where it is. I do not touch. Not now. Not anymore. Not since.

My vagina was chatty, can't wait, so much, so much saying, words talking, can't quit trying, can't quit saying, oh yes, oh yes.

Not since I dream there's a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line. And the bad dead animal smell cannot be removed. And its throat is slit and it bleeds through all my summer dresses.

My vagina singing all girl songs, all goat bells ringing songs, all wild autumn field songs, vagina songs, vagina home songs.

Not since the soldiers put a long thick rifle inside me. So cold, the steel rod canceling my heart. Don't know whether they're going to fire it or shove it through my spinning brain. Six of them, monstrous doctors with black masks shoving bottles up me too. There were sticks, and the end of a broom.

My vagina swimming river water, clean spilling water over sun-baked stones over stone clit, clit stones over and over.

Not since I heard the skin tear and made lemon screeching sounds, not since a piece of my vagina came off in my hand, a part of the lip, now one side of the lip is completely gone.

My vagina. A live wet water village. My vagina my hometown.

Not since they took turns for seven days smelling like feces and smoked meat, they left their dirty sperm inside me. I became a river of poison and pus and all the crops died, and the fish.

My vagina a live wet water village.

They invaded it. Butchered it and burned it

down.

I do not touch now.

Do not visit.

I live someplace else now.

I don't know where that is.”

This is an excerpt from, The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler. When I first thought about writing a blog post about this book, I was stuck. I had no idea how I was going to write a piece on a book all about vaginas. Then Mrs. Talley told us that we should talk about how a certain part made us feel. After she said this, this is the chapter that I kept going back too.

So, how did this make me feel?

I felt incredibly upset after reading this. That this happens. Not just once, but all the time. This is something that is normal in some parts of the world, and it troubles me. I also felt angry. How could a man do this to a woman and be able to sleep at night? Doesn’t he have a wife? Doesn’t he respect women? I felt moved. This was just such a powerful piece that I was moved to want to change circumstances for other women. I felt uncomfortable. Who wouldn’t? I was sitting in the library reading about a woman’s vagina getting torn, and things that are not meant to be up there, shoved up there. It made me incredibly uncomfortable. I felt shocked. I felt compassion, compassion for the women who have been through this and feel like they can’t go on. Woman that use to believe that their vagina was their “hometown,” comparing it to a place of comfort and safety, and now can’t even think about it without being disgusted.

I think that one of the reasons this piece is so powerful is because of the way it was written. You go from reading a beautiful sentence, of how her vagina was “green, water soft pink fields,” to a sentence like this one, “Not since I dream there's a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line. And the bad dead animal smell cannot be removed. And its throat is slit and it bleeds through all my summer dresses.” This part of her body was so beautiful and sacred to her, and now has no meaning to her at all, except disgust.

This is a true story, and we need to be careful that we do not dismiss it. I am a victim of reading a story, and because it did not happen to me, I don’t really think twice about it. This habit is dangerous. We were placed into a safe life, when we could have easily been born into a village where this happens to women daily. We didn’t get to choose where we ended up, so we should do something about it while we still can before it’s too late.