Rectocele

At some point, the wall gave way. The thin layer of tissue between the rectum and the vagina — normally stable, normally invisible — bulges forward, pressing into a space that doesn't belong to it. What held before no longer holds. What was in its place has shifted. Medically, this is called a rectocele: a protrusion of the rectal wall into the vaginal wall. The consequences are as concrete as they are uncomfortable — a feeling of pressure, difficulty passing stools, the sense that something in the pelvis isn't right, that something is pushing downward where it doesn't belong.