Catherine is 30 years old. Despite her young age, she has a lot to tell: in her early twenties, she had cervical cancer. And yes, it changed everything when it comes to sexuality. And not exactly for the better. Unpublished story and, above all, punch.
“Doctors are very good at explaining things to you in theory. OK, but in practice? I wish I had known that…”
The pain, the burning, the thrill, nothing is the same. And never will again. For all sorts of reasons, yes, but still: his sexuality took a big hit. And she wished she had been told.
Despite the heaviness of the subject, the smiling young woman who invited us to her bungalow on the South Shore to confide is rather entertaining. Yes, we laugh a lot during the interview.
“I don’t know anyone who’s had this at 22,” she says bluntly. Me, I had four years of “normality”. »
Way of talking. “Have you read Aliss, by Patrick Senécal?” “, she begins. His first time, at 18, looks a bit like this. She “picks up” like the heroine of the novel in a remote neighborhood, with a rather odd guy. Think: pit bull on one side, snake on the other. Ah yes, with a long rifle in a corner, too. “He wasn’t touchy,” she sums up, even remembering him chatting with another during parts of the act. “It was very humbling, honestly. »
“I experienced a lot of humiliation…”, continues our talkative interlocutor. “There were others, four or five, with whom it ended badly too,” she adds, laughing, anecdote of ejaculation in the eyes (yes, the eyes) included.
Her current partner, the father of her child, she met when she was 19. “He’s my first real boyfriend,” she smiles. I thought he was handsome! Better: “He was not like the others. […] He was not a humiliating person. He didn’t force me. He didn’t make flat comments about my physique. Because I’ve always been like that…”
Their first years, everything is going pretty well. In bed ? “I have never been very demanding,” Catherine clarifies here. And that’s an understatement: “I’ve always been on my guard. If I ever show too much that I have fun, it will backfire on me, ”she fears, to justify if not her lack of confidence, at least an obvious modesty.
And then, at precisely 22 years old, Catherine finds herself at the doctor’s for a routine examination. She was found to have “abnormal cells”: “lots of people have that,” the doctor said to reassure her. A closer look later and lo and behold, the cells have evolved. Other tests confirm it: it’s cancer.
“I cried for five minutes!” […] Then I said to myself: I can’t bawl all my life! »
The young woman spares us the details of her “big operation”, then declares: “I no longer have a cervix”. But she still doesn’t know everything. “Doctors tell you what they do, the steps, but they don’t tell you the repercussions…”
The repercussions ? It was that she learned, years later, that she had been “hooked on a nerve” in the process, and not just any nerve: “the one that goes to the bottom of the vagina.” The pleasant feeling that makes you happy? That one. Three or four years later, I knew that feeling would never come back.”
Still, two months after the operation, and once her recovery is over, she makes love again with her boyfriend. ” I was stressed ! “, she remembers, grimacing, with a disconcerting lightness.
“It was burning at the entrance, she recalls, and it hurt all the way inside. I had zero pleasure. Pantoute. Oh ! God, but is this going to be this all my life? “What she cried…
And then ? “It’s been like that for four years. I thought it would never come back. »
How did it “come back”? Catherine accurately recounts her physio exercises, what relaxed her “inside”, etc. “But it didn’t hurt any less on entry,” she clarifies. And then “by dint of doing it”, quietly but surely: “hey, it doesn’t hurt me anymore!” “, she once congratulated herself. But only halfway: “But I can’t feel anything anymore!” »
It is at this precise moment that she finds herself in consultation to learn, to her amazement, this story of a severed nerve. “I wish I had known that, honestly…”
Result ? “Most of the time, I don’t feel much anymore. »
We dare to probe, to know if on the clitoris side, everything is fine. “He’s okay,” Catherine blushed. But it’s not something my boyfriend is good with, so I won’t insist. »
She explains, “Most of the time, I let him have fun. Me, I think of something else. No, she’s not caressing herself in front of him. Never. “No, no, no, that bothers me way too much!” she laughs.
For eight years, therefore, sexuality, “it’s not the most exciting thing in the world”. At least, most of the time. “Sometimes a little at an angle, it rubs something else, it’s more pleasant. But too high, it hurts. You would pretty much have to pull out a protractor! »
So, Catherine has made up her mind and prefers to satisfy herself alone, in complete privacy, modesty obliges. This is his “secret garden”. No, she nevertheless declares loudly and chuckling, “I’m not going to be a sister!” »
Through it all, she still had a child. “I forced myself to make love so much. I wanted to ! ” It was five years ago.
And how has she been since becoming a mom? “I think I’ve learned to accept the situation,” she replies. Above all, she mourned her “inner thrill” of yesteryear.
When “mister needs” as she says, “let’s go, you have ten minutes”, she laughs even more, “and I don’t insist on my pleasure. Modesty obliges, bis.
What to take away from this testimony? “Am I the same girl as before? I do not think so. […] Less the fun? Probably, yes, I’m always afraid of being in pain. But I learned that you can be loved for something other than your body. Or by what I can bring sexually. And I’m able to set my limits, too,” argues Catherine.
And in his wildest dreams? “It would go back to how it was before!” And maybe I’d be less embarrassed? Less embarrassed to say it: touch me there…” We wish it.
