The rash was not improving. I was crying, laughing, shaking, and not sleeping; I didn’t want to go outside; I developed joint pain. I felt like I was losing my mind. 

I had been taking the birth control pill for four months. Side effects were to be expected. I felt that it was the price I had to pay to be in control of my body. 

At the end of November 2022, I admitted that something was wrong—my childhood eczema returned with a vengeance, and the joint pain was such that I could barely bend my arms. The best course of action was for me to fly home the same day to get an immunosuppressant prescription in Ontario. I was petrified.

After the plane landed, I blindly followed another passenger through Toronto Pearson Airport and soon found myself—having flown domestically—in the international baggage claim. The ensuing events led to a customs officer taking me to the interrogation room. Sobbing, I desperately wanted to tell them I was smart, but that I felt like I couldn’t think. I explained that I hadn’t meant to discover a serious security flaw in their airport; they eventually determined that I was not an international security threat, and escorted me out the back. 

That night, I stopped taking the pill. At the ER in Fergus, Ontario, I explained to the triage nurse that I had been taking the pill and felt like my mind and body had gone rogue. When she told me I wasn’t crazy, I cried.

For the months I was on the pill, I doubted myself constantly; I was horrified by the idea that my body wasn’t cooperating. Birth control was supposed to be empowering, and I felt terrible for not feeling empowered by it. Part of me—enchanted by fictional images of beautiful sick women with ambiguous diseases, punctuated only by demure coughing that kept them lovely and made them tragic—was upset that I had not developed a more poetic health condition. The infected rash was not sexy.   

My experience has led me to advocate not against birth control, but for better birth control. For some, the pill is wonderful. But too often, birth control is prescribed with a trial-and-error approach: You’re prescribed a dosage, and you hope it works for you. Reproductive healthcare is increasingly de-individualized and difficult to access. To advocate for better birth control, we have to talk about it—and have someone willing to listen.

I now have an IUD, Kyleena. (Kyleena, Mirena, Skyla, Twirla—I do not know who decided to give birth control AI-generated millennial baby names.) When I picked up the prescription, the pharmacist handed me a box the length of a standard fireplace log. I was horrified. I was not well-acquainted with my uterus, but I was sure that it did not have room for the log. 

To my relief, Kyleena was only 3 cm long. I had tried to have an IUD inserted months earlier, before I began the pill, but the insertion didn’t work. This time, my gynecologist prescribed me painkillers, and I brought my mom with me. I listened to The Chipmunks Christmas Album during the insertion to distract myself from the pain of the pointy metal medieval tools (gynecological instruments).

This isn’t a comfortable topic for me—I’m sweating writing this, and reading this piece will likely be how many of my family members discover I was taking birth control in the first place. But, to my bewilderment, nearly everyone I’ve spoken to about my problems on the pill revealed that they or someone they knew had struggled with its side effects. I suppose I wasn’t as difficult as I thought; it was the system that made me feel difficult—that advocating for myself was inconvenient, that women taking control of their bodies was supposed to be painful.

Birth control can change. Researchers are developing new methods, including birth control for men. Pieces appeared in The Walrus and The Atlantic earlier this year calling for a “Birth Control Revolution.” A new world is forming, wherein birth control could provide reproductive autonomy without sacrificing well-being.