I’ve said before that I’m more or less a master of compartmentalization.

This does not mean that I never deal with things, or that I can pack my pain into neat little boxes and let them sit there indefinitely.

It means that I plan out my pain accordingly.

It means that when I have to go to the doctor for a women’s health exam, I schedule it no later than early afternoon. This gives me sufficient time to:

1) Go through the painful procedure which inevitably triggers flashbacks of the first exam I ever had, which was a rape kit in a hospital emergency room.

2) Explain to the physician and nurse why the procedure inevitably upsets me and assure them it’s not their fault.

3) Hold it together in order to safely drive on the highway twenty minutes back home.

4) Get home, let the dog out, fill up my water bottle, curl up on the armchair with my favorite blanket, and allow myself to rest and fall apart for about an hour or so.

5) Put myself back together so that I can tidy up the kitchen and be presentable and functional by the time I have to leave the house again, to pick my kid up from daycare.

6) Pick said kid up from daycare, and have anyone I speak to be none the wiser about how much of an ordeal my afternoon was.

Compartmentalization is about learning how to plan out time to fall apart, in between all the rest of the time when you need to keep it together. Compartmentalization is hard as fuck, but I’ve learned that not coping is harder, in the end. Still, with all the compartmentalizing I’ve just had to do, I can’t help feeling today, as I sit here trying to relax and decompress and ignore the physical pain, that I’ve had way too much practice at it.