Lines

I killed my maths viva career in two words.

My teacher asked me the difference between parallel and perpendicular lines. I said, “who cares?”

It is annoying to ‘crunch’ down numbers and also prove that LHS=RHS, my own shoulders are not aligned left and right and I might be at an angle that I haven’t figured out how to measure. Geometry, Algebra, Arithmetic, Trigonometry, theorems that need to be proved…. are added to a list of things that make me anxious.

Questions make me anxious.

Because I never get the answers right.

Even when I answer with my point of the truth, it is not truth enough for the people around me and I do not know how to fit the numbers and words in a way that fits into the right answer box.

While you might be thinking oh its okay maths is not the end of the world, you can always figure things out as the universe has a plethora of other subjects to master you must know this about me…. I pretty much suck at biology too.

I cry when I see other people in pain even when its not my own,I laugh and celebrate with others even if someone else has won, I have mastered the art of conversing with the people in my head even when I am all alone and I will absolutely not step out of my room without sunscreen and cologne.

Coming back to the subject of biology; and why I am not even succeeding at being a woman. You see I have been menstruating since the age of 12.I am 35 now, you do the maths of how many times I have bled as you know my history with numbers.

Yet with all that blood and pain and PMS and mood swings and my mammary glands that have brought more shame to me than my maths skills I still can not bear a child.

People insinuate a lot of things about me and my husband, that we are selfish, that we have not tried hard enough ( whatever that means), that we are everything that a married couple in their thirties should not be…. DINKS!!!

I care, I care so much and yet the perpendicular lines do not show up.

I didn’t know then that one day I would press my thumb against a small white strip and beg — quietly, in the bathroom, alone — for two lines to appear side by side, parallel, perfect, proof. That I would finally, desperately, care about getting the answer right.