What it's like for other people, I would imagine...
It's intense, and looking into each other's eyes...
..ripping each other's clothes off.
Kissing, but, you know, like, deep kissing.
Like that's the last kiss you're ever going to have in your life.
And it's passion.
Yeah.
My husband is amazing.
And he is gentle and he's loving,
but for me, in my body,
it's like assembling a Meccano.
What should be the most amazing feeling,
a lot of the time isn't.
When it hurts, it's like glass shattering inside you.
Embedding itself.
Sharp.
The more you try to get it out, the more it hurts.
And then it's not just the sex in itself that's painful,
but it's the after-pain.
The cramping.
And they can last up to two days.
Sometimes it's twisted, like someone is wringing out a dish cloth.
And it's miserable.
It's so miserable.
I think it was probably just before we got married
that the painful sex began.
There was one particular time where we'd finished
and I had tears in my eyes,
and they were just trickling down my cheek,
and my husband said,
"What's wrong? Did I hurt you?"
And I'm like "No, it's not you."
But he felt so guilty, and he just said to me,
"Why didn't you stop me?"
"Why didn't you say, I cannot do this?"
And I was like, "But that's not what you do."
"You just get on with it."
And he was like, "You don't ever have to just get on with it."
"How do you think I feel knowing that I've hurt you?"
"That kills me."
Feeling like I'm not doing what I should be doing,
and not being the way that I should be,
as a wife and as a lover...
That's really hard to deal with.
No. SHE LAUGHS
They didn't believe me. It was in my head, apparently.
My GP said to me, "It's fine."
"There's nothing wrong with you."
And I said, "But I know something is wrong."
And he was like, "The scan showed nothing."
"There's nothing wrong with you."
And I just felt absolutely crushed,
like I was a bottle that had just been screwed up.
And that's when I was like, "Maybe it is in my head."
"Maybe I am going a bit crazy."
And my husband, he was just like, "What's wrong?"
And so I told him that apparently there was nothing wrong with me,
and that the scan had come back completely fine.
And he was like, "Well, that's a load of shit."
When the doctor was like, "OK, so what are your symptoms?"
"Oh, painful periods, they're really heavy, they're prolonged.
"I'm fatigued, I feel sick."
And my husband was squeezing my hand, and he was like, "And...?
"Go on."
And I was like, "Oh, and sex is really painful, as well."
The doctor was like, "OK, right."
"Pop a few ibuprofen and get on with it."
Just, "You need to be a bit more relaxed."
That's really hard when you feel like
you're being stabbed up the vagina.
SHE LAUGHS
The painkillers and the medication they gave me didn't work.
They did absolutely nothing.
And he was still very reluctant to do a laparoscopy to check.
He was just about to finish the appointment
and I turned around and said,
"You know, I've been having unprotected sex for 18 months,
"and I haven't fallen pregnant."
And he kind of sat up in his chair, and he went, "Well...
"It can't hurt to do a laparoscopy."
"We'll just have a little look and we'll see what's going on."
So, I had the operation in 2013
and I was diagnosed with severe endometriosis.
To not be believed by a doctor,
feeling invisible even though you're there in the room with them,
I found myself just detaching from my body.
And sometimes, you feel like, "What's even the point
"of telling you how I feel, if you're not going to believe me?"
I wish someone had told me when I was younger
to believe in myself more.
And to know that I know my body...
..more than anybody else does.