Tracey Coleman

My Son-In-Law Saw My P*ssy

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Darnell has watched me sit half undressed on a toilet seat. Earl hasn't put his arms around me in over two years. The day of Thanksgiving they both pushed through the bathroom door at once and hauled me upright with my clothes twisted around my knees, and I pressed my face into a chest that was not my husband's. Fifty eight years old. I spent 35 years working the front counter at Meadowbrook Long Term Care. Walked in at seventeen and never left. Answered every call. Sorted every intake file. Put on a smile for the relatives who stood in the lobby looking lost while they checked their people in. At 55 my body quit on me and I filed for disability because finishing a full shift was no longer something I could do. Three years pinned to a couch cushion with a heating pad while everything else moved on without me. Mama did the same thing for twelve years. That recliner of hers. She died in 2019 still sitting in it. I swore to myself I was not headed the same direction. I was already there. Earl and I set aside money for 30 years so we could travel to Italy. Florence. Rome. The Amalfi Coast. Those brochures lived on our kitchen counter for two full years before I had to leave my job. We pulled the plug on the whole trip six months after my leave started. Not over finances. Because lifting myself off the couch made my whole face clench. Burning. Stabbing. Every joint, every muscle, every single morning. Pain that drifted. Pain that dug in and stayed. Every test they ran came back unremarkable. One doctor. Seven years. He stared at the file. Never raised his eyes to look at me. Handed me a Cymbalta script before he bothered to run a single panel. "It's fibromyalgia, Joyce. This is something we manage. Not something we fix." Where I come from pain does not get to stop you. You punch the clock. You prepare a plate. You sit yourself in that pew on Sunday morning and you do not allow one person to watch you suffer. So I accepted what he told me. And the couch became my world. Heating pad flat against my lower back. Remote resting in my palm. Staring at strangers living their lives through a screen while my own body turned into something foreign. By the time I hit 56 the couch was where I lived. Not because I chose it. Because climbing out of our bed every morning required crawling across the mattress on all fours and clutching the nightstand just to drag myself vertical. On bad mornings that process took twenty minutes. Earl was always downstairs already with coffee brewing. Carrying on as though he heard nothing. So the living room couch became my bed. Sitting upright. Pillow stuffed behind my neck. I blamed it on my body when Earl asked. He did not question it. He went right on sleeping in our bed. Solo. No s*x. No contact. Not even the familiar press of his feet finding mine beneath the sheets the way they had for decades. I ached for him. I ached for the solid weight of him stretched out next to me in the dark. I ached for his hand settling against my hip at dawn. I ached for the feeling of him inside me. I realize that is not what people expect a 58 year old woman to confess but I am confessing it. I wanted my husband to f*ck me and I was too mortified to tell him because standing up from a chair without groaning was beyond what my body could manage. What kind of woman asks her husband to put his hands on her when she cannot hold herself upright. Where I come from you do not fall apart. You do not request that kind of attention. You do not so much as whisper it. So I kept my mouth closed. And he quit reaching for me. And we dissolved into two people under one roof, sitting across from each other at supper, saying goodnight through walls. That is what two years looked like for us. Then came Thanksgiving. Our daughter Keisha lives two hours east. Split level house. Narrow guest bathroom right off the kitchen. She works as a nurse. BSN. Runs the floor at a care home out in East Memphis. The toilet in that particular bathroom is built low. Painfully low. Like it was designed for a child's legs. I stepped in there after the plates were cleared. Sitting down was no trouble. Standing back up was impossible. My knees would not cooperate. My hips froze solid. I planted both palms on the seat and shoved upward and every muscle in my body clamped down so violently I collapsed right back onto the porcelain. I gave it one more try. Identical outcome. Five full minutes I struggled to get off that seat and my body refused to allow it. So I raised my voice toward the door. "Earl? Come here." Footsteps in the corridor. Then a second pair. Earl. And Darnell. My daughter's husband. The door came open. Both men standing in the frame looking down at me stranded on the toilet with my clothes bunched at my ankles. Darnell averted his eyes but had to turn back because Earl could not manage the lift alone. Each of them took hold of an arm. Pulled me straight up off the seat. Braced me on my feet while I tugged my pants up with hands that would not stop shaking. Darnell went red. Earl showed nothing on his face at all. I wept against Darnell's shoulder because looking at my own husband in that moment was more than I could bear. Keisha was waiting in the hallway when we emerged. She is a nurse. She witnesses women fall apart like this on every shift she works. Women built like me. The way Mama was built. Her eyes moved from me to Earl to Darnell. The hallway stayed silent. We walked out of that house twenty minutes later. Earl steered us home in total silence. I rode in the passenger seat with my eyes fixed on the road thinking about how my daughter's husband had just seen every inch of me at my absolute lowest. And my own husband wore the face of a man who had seen this scene so many times it no longer registered. Like the shock had worn off years ago. That was what gutted me. Not the disgrace. The fact that Earl did not flinch. As though he had already accepted the woman I had turned into. A woman who could not rise from a toilet on her own. The same as Mama trapped in that recliner. The same as every patient Keisha watches slip away on her ward. Four weeks later I was sitting in Keisha's front room when I caught her voice drifting out of the kitchen. She had someone on the line. I had not been trying to listen. But every word found me anyway. "$6,800 a month. She can't handle the staircase. Dad deserves to get his life back." I sat frozen on her sofa. She was shopping for a facility. For me. My own child. A licensed nurse who should have recognized what was really going on. Pricing assisted living for a 58 year old woman. When she came back into the room I gave her a smile as though nothing had happened. But something had shattered. My daughter was researching care homes because she decided I was too broken to remain in my own house. And she had decided her father was owed a better life than being married to me. Christmas showed up. Keisha hosted once more. Twelve bodies packed around the table. Collards. Mac and cheese. Sweet potato pie. Everything. We were deep into dessert when Keisha rose from her chair and vanished into the kitchen. She walked back out holding a brochure. Set it on the table squarely in front of me. Willow Creek Senior Living. Bright photographs of cheerful elderly residents gathered in a dining room with tall windows running wall to wall. "We only want to make sure you see what is available," Keisha said. "Just in case things go downhill." My eyes stayed fixed on the brochure. Earl kept his eyes on his plate. He did not push back. He did not tell her I was fine. He offered absolutely nothing. Keisha turned to me. "They have tours scheduled next week. We could go together. Just to take a look." I glanced over at Earl. He was dragging his fork through his slice of pie, dividing it into smaller and smaller fragments. Never lifting the fork to his mouth. Only cutting. I told her yes. Not because I had any desire to visit. Because where I come from you do not make a scene at someone else's table. The tour landed on a Tuesday. Keisha was behind the wheel. Earl sat in back. I sat up front staring through the windshield and thinking about how this was the first chapter of the end. Exactly the way it unfolded for Mama. Somebody else driving the car. Somebody else charting the course. Willow Creek Senior Living matched every page of the brochure. Large windows. Broad hallways. Stainless grab bars bolted to every surface. A woman by the name of Dawn was waiting for us in the lobby. Late 50s. Nurse practitioner. 31 years in the field. You noticed it in the way she stood. The way her gaze landed on a person and stayed. Like she was genuinely present. She led us through the building. Showed us the dining hall. The activity space. The reading room lined with large print books. Keisha kept saying "Look how nice this is, Mama. This is so nice." I said nothing. We were moving down a long hallway bordered by handrails on both sides when Dawn noticed my knuckles turning white on the rail at every step. She dropped her pace. Let Keisha and Earl drift ahead. Then she came to a full stop. Looked directly at me. Not at a chart. At me. "You should not be here." I stared back at her. She spoke barely above a murmur. As though she did not want Keisha to catch any of it. "How long has the fibromyalgia been going on?" I blinked. "Three years with a diagnosis. But the pain arrived before that. They just had no label for it." She nodded in that slow, knowing way. "And they handed you Cymbalta. Before they ordered a single test." "It did nothing for me," I said. "It almost never does," she said. "Not in the way they promise. Those medications attempt to muffle the signal. But the signal is not the root of what is wrong." I stayed where I was, both hands wrapped around the rail. "I have worked as a nurse practitioner for 31 years. I have seen hundreds of women walk through these doors with fibromyalgia. Women who look like us. Every scan spotless. Every lab panel clean. Every MRI showing nothing. And beneath all of it, every single one of them has the identical thing happening." "Tell me." "Their pain gates are wedged open. There is a gate built into your nervous system called the NMDA receptor. Under normal conditions it opens when real danger appears and closes once the danger clears. In fibromyalgia that gate locks in the open position. Every input gets amplified. A bedsheet against your skin registers as sandpaper. A hug registers as a bruise. Your nervous system is screaming at full blast about stimuli that should never register as painful." I had no words. Because what she described was the precise experience of living in my body. "And the compound your body depends on to shut that gate," she said, "is magnesium. But here is the detail nobody shares. Especially not with women who look like us. Nine out of ten are already running low before any of this starts. When chronic pain moves in, your body produces cortisol around the clock. Cortisol spikes every night. And cortisol eats through magnesium. Night after night after night. So the one mineral responsible for closing the gate gets burned up by the stress of the gate being open. It is a loop. And that loop has been running inside you for three years." "But every blood test I have taken says I am normal." "Because a blood test reads serum," she said. "That is the magnesium floating through your veins. About 1% of your total reserves. The remaining 99% is locked inside your cells. A person can test perfectly normal in the blood and be completely drained at the cellular level. And for women who look like us, the baseline is already lower to begin with. So a number that reads normal on paper still translates to starvation where it counts." She peered down the corridor to make sure Keisha was far enough away. "Has any doctor ever sat you down and explained this?" I shook my head no. Not a single one had ever bothered to break any of this down for me. They opened the chart. They never opened their eyes. "And somewhere along the way you tried taking magnesium on your own. The drugstore shelf variety." "All it gave me was an upset stomach." "Because you were taking oxide," she said. "Your body absorbs roughly 4% of magnesium oxide. The other 96% pulls water straight into your gut and passes right through you. That is not a supplement. That is a laxative wearing a vitamin label." I had handed Mama that same exact bottle. Nine dollars from the grocery store. Three years running while she withered in that recliner. I told myself it counted as caring for her. Four percent is not care. She went on, "The form that actually reaches your cells is called bisglycinate. It is bonded to glycine, an amino acid. Your gut absorbs it completely. Your body holds onto up to 90% of it. And the glycine on its own works directly on those NMDA receptors. It helps shut the gate from two sides at once. The mineral restores what cortisol consumed. The amino acid quiets the receptor by itself." "Why has no doctor in seven years ever brought this up?" Dawn offered a thin smile. Not a kind one. A worn one. The face of a woman who has been asked that exact question more times than she could track. "Because they never order intracellular magnesium testing. And the only form of magnesium most people ever try is the cheap variety that does nothing. So they write off magnesium entirely and grab the prescription pad. And for women who look like us, they skip the explanation altogether. They sign the script and flip to the next folder." She dug into her pocket and took out her phone. Pulled up a photo. Turned the screen toward me to show a bag. Celuvida. Magnesium Bisglycinate Gummies. "This is the one I take. Pure bisglycinate. No oxide hiding in the small print. It arrives in a bag, not a bottle. Raspberry flavor. Look over the ingredients if you have any fruit sensitivities. Other than that, two gummies before you go to sleep." My eyes stayed locked on the screen. She said, "It is a gummy. It does not look like much. The first night you will not feel a difference, and I am not about to stand here and pretend it is a miracle. But fewer than 2 in every 100 people ever ask for their money back. I am not telling you that your gates are stuck open. But if they are, this is the place I would begin. I have seen women walk out of facilities like this one. Women that everyone else had written off as permanent residents." She looked at me the way no one wearing a white coat had ever looked at me. "You are 58 years old. You do not belong in this building." Keisha's voice carried from the far end of the hall. "Mama? Coming?" Dawn tucked her phone back into her pocket. "You do not have to sign anything here," she said gently. "Not today. Possibly not ever." I walked back to where Keisha and Earl were standing. We finished the rest of the tour. Keisha signed the paperwork for the waitlist. I kept my mouth shut the entire time. That night I sat on the couch and typed Celuvida into my phone. Mama's recliner was still right there beside me. We never moved it after she passed. I never had the heart. Magnesium Bisglycinate Gummies. Pure bisglycinate. Up to 90 day money back guarantee. I ordered one bag. Told neither Earl nor Keisha. Just placed the order and let it sit. It arrived two days later inside a plain brown box. I tore it open on the kitchen counter. A bag. Not a bottle. Not the bottle I spent years buying for Mama. Not the oxide that did nothing for her across twelve years while she sat frozen in that recliner. I read the back of the bag. Bisglycinate. No oxide. Two gummies. That night I chewed two before lying down. They tasted like raspberry candy. No grit. No chalk. I stretched out on the couch and waited for something. Night one, nothing happened. Night two, still nothing. Night three I woke at 6am and understood I had slept the entire night without waking once. No bolt of pain at 2am. No fire radiating through every nerve. Just sleep. I pulled myself upright. Rose to my feet. No bracing against the armrest. I just stood there. Earl was in the kitchen. Coffee already going. I walked in and he looked up. "You're up early." I gave him a nod. He said nothing else. He just held his mug and watched me move across the kitchen. Day six I headed upstairs for something in the bedroom. Made it halfway up the steps before I realized both arms were hanging loose at my sides. Nowhere close to the banister. I stopped mid step. Looked at my own hands. Then continued up. Week two I woke on the couch and my thoughts drifted to our bed. The bed I had abandoned two years ago. That night the couch stayed empty. I went upstairs. Got in on my side of the bed. Earl was already under the covers holding a book. He looked at me above the rims of his glasses. "Sure about this?" I gave him a nod. He leaned across and clicked the lamp off. We lay there in the dark. No contact. Then I rolled his direction. Laid my palm flat across his chest. He held still. I let my hand slide lower. He breathed my name. Low. Almost a question. I said, "I have missed you." He shifted his body toward me. His lips found mine. Soft at first. Then harder. I drew him on top of me and he paused. "Your body..." "F*ck my body," I told him. A short laugh escaped him. Then the laughing ended. I am 58 years old and I rode my husband the way I did at 30 and I had lost track of what it felt like to hunger for something this completely. To be hungered for in return. To feel my husband inside me again after two full years of sleeping on opposite ends of the house. When it was over we lay there in the blackness with his arm resting across my stomach. I cried. Not the sad kind. The other kind. He put his mouth against my shoulder and said, "I was convinced I had lost you." I said, "I was convinced you no longer wanted me." He said, "I never once stopped wanting you. I simply thought you did not want to be touched." I said, "I could not even stand on my own. What woman invites her husband to f*ck her when she can barely get to her feet." He gathered me closer. "The one I chose," he said. Week three I woke up next to him every morning. Swung my legs over the edge and stood without crawling. Walked downstairs without clutching the banister. Made coffee before he opened his eyes. Stood at the kitchen window with tears running down my cheeks because somebody had finally lowered the volume. Three years of my body screaming and now I could simply move from room to room without steeling myself for every footfall. Mama never got to feel this. Twelve years confined to that recliner and nobody ever explained the gate to her. Nobody ever told her why the bottle I kept showing up with did absolutely nothing. She died in 2019 without ever getting out of that chair. The following Saturday Earl was at the kitchen table with the newspaper spread out in front of him. I scooted my chair back and got up to refill my coffee. His head came up. "You did not make the sound." I turned around. "Which sound?" "The sound you make every single time you get up from a chair. That groan. You did not make it just now." I stood there holding the mug. I had not even noticed it was gone. Mama made that identical sound every time she moved. Easter came around. Keisha hosted one more time. The same house. The same low guest bathroom. I went in after we finished eating. Lowered myself down. Lifted myself up. No one else in the room. Walked out and sat back down at the table. Keisha was clearing plates. I reached inside my purse. Pulled out the Willow Creek brochure. Slid it across the table in her direction. "You can throw this out," I said. She looked at the brochure. Then raised her eyes to mine. "Mama..." "I am fine," I said. "More than fine." Earl was sitting directly across from me. His eyes went to Keisha. Then back to me. "Book Italy," he said. Keisha just stared. "Say that again?" "Book Italy," he repeated. "We are going." Tears hit me right there at the dinner table. Keisha looked stunned. "But you cancelled..." "We are uncancelling," Earl said. Two weeks later the flights were booked. Florence. Rome. The Amalfi Coast. September. Thirty years we put money aside for that trip. Three years I was certain I would never go. Now we are going. Because I can walk. I can handle stairs. I can stand up from a chair without flinching. I can get out of bed in the morning without hauling myself across the mattress. I can fall asleep next to my husband. I can let him touch me. I can crave his touch. All because of two raspberry gummies before bed. If you are dealing with fibromyalgia and you are trapped on a couch with a heating pad, if every medication left you in a haze and the pain stayed right where it was, if you are frightened that your own children are researching facilities because you cannot do stairs anymore, I am not telling you your gates are stuck. But I threw away three years believing fibromyalgia was simply the hand I was dealt. Three years on a couch while my marriage crumbled in the next room. And magnesium was the answer the whole time. Not the oxide I fed to Mama. Not the nine dollar grocery store bottle that achieved nothing for twelve years. The correct form of magnesium. Celuvida Magnesium Bisglycinate. Pure. Two gummies before bed. 50,000+ customers. Up to 90 day money back guarantee. You do not even need to send the bag back. Some people feel the shift within the first few nights. For others it takes a week or two. Stay on your medications and check with your doctor if anything concerns you. I gave it three full weeks. By week three I was sleeping in my own bed again. By week four my husband and I were together again. By week six my daughter stopped mentioning Willow Creek. A few nights ago Earl and I were lying in bed and he said, "I was certain that place was going to take you from me." I said, "It very nearly did." He pressed his lips against mine. "Not anymore," he said. Keisha called me yesterday. She wanted to know what I had done differently. Said I seemed like an entirely new person. I walked her through all of it. She did not buy it at first. So I sent her the link. She called back inside of an hour. "You are telling me this was magnesium?" "I am telling you it was the right magnesium," I said. She paused. Then she said, "I am sorry, Mama. For the brochure. For all of it." I said, "You were trying to do right by me, baby. I know that." "But I was wrong," she said. "Yes," I told her. "You were." She fell quiet. Then she said, "Grandma would have loved these." My voice left me for a solid minute. Because she was right. Mama would have. Our flights are four months out. Earl brought home a new suitcase last week. I bought a pair of walking shoes. We are going to stroll through the streets of Florence. Take the stone steps in Rome. Sit down to pasta on the Amalfi Coast. Things I had accepted I would never do. Because my daughter believed I belonged at Willow Creek and my husband believed he had already lost me and I believed fibromyalgia was just what my life was going to be. It was not. The answer was magnesium. Dad deserves to live. So do I. There is a five minute read that explains how the gate works and why your blood tests missed it. I wish someone had put it in front of me three years ago. celuvida.com/pages/woman-advertorial-fibromyalgia P.S. If you have tried magnesium before and nothing happened, flip the bottle over. If oxide is printed on the label, that tells you everything. Your body took in 4% of what was inside. The remaining 96% never entered your cells. You did not fail magnesium. That bottle failed you. P.P.S. Keisha told me something after church this past Sunday. She said, "Mama, every single day on my floor I look at women who are the mirror image of you six months ago. Women whose chart gets read while they sit there invisible. I hand them their pills and I watch them disappear into their chairs and all I can think about is you sinking into that couch. And Grandma vanishing into that recliner. And that nine dollar bottle of oxide you carried home from the grocery store for three straight years because you believed it was love." She held my gaze. "That was not love, Mama. That was four percent." Then she said, "Grandma would have loved these." And I knew she was right.