Memory 1 Week 3

**I apologize in advance for any discomfort or TMI that this post might offer**

I memorized the pattern of our bathroom tile, tracing the caulk over and over again, lying on my right side, curled around the toilet. I clenched my tear ducts tighter than my ass cheeks, holding all liquids in for the 20 minutes my doctor scribbled onto the suppository box.
My mother sat on the lip of the tub, rubbing my leg, crying for me.

Three weeks earlier, my doctor ordered an all liquid diet, saying that my colon was clogged and the water and Welches white grape juice would "flush me out." I was in third grade that year and hadn't taken a shit in a month and a half.

For a two weeks,  I drank nothing but a milky liquid that tasted like chalk and left residue on my lips and gums, which I then washed down with watered white grape juice. Lunch, even at school, consisted of apple sauce and juice, and threatened multiple bathroom runs.
I remember a substitute teacher, having zero bedside manner, mentioning that "should I have to go to the bathroom, feel free to just leave," as she turned out the lights for an in-class video. As the class turned to stare at me, some kid in the back snickered and another threw a crumpled paper at me, and I lowered my face to the desk.

I returned to the doctor after my three week juice cleanse, only to have another milky liquid shoved through a hose in my rectum. It was something that would allow my colon to be shown on this little screen, and the hose had some camera attached at the end, causing my mother much pleasure as she watched the doctor go through my body.

I crushed her hand, focusing only on the small drips of nasty oozing incorrectly from me.
"Look Tay. How cool is that?" my mother shrieked in awe as the doctor laughed. I smiled half-heartedly, a stray tear dribbled down my cheek but I craned my neck, hoping the inside of me would take my mind off of the knifing going on at the opposite end of me, something jabbing, trying to mimic the alien emerging from the belly of that woman in the movie I watched the night before.