To my squeamish readers: I am about to write about my period. So if you are too immature to handle it, stop reading now. But probably don’t tell me that because next time I see or speak to you I will mock you. That is a promise.
Sometimes I think my period is a cosmic joke. Or, I guess, sometimes I hope it’s a cosmic joke because then I can assume that someone, somewhere is finding it funny because I most certainly am not. Ever. (When I figure out who is laughing at my pain there will be hell to pay!)
Mostly the whole thing just sucks.
My period has always been heavy and long. Right when I think it couldn’t possibly get heavier or longer, it does. It plays tricks on me. For days before it actually starts, it pretends like it is starting. A little blood here, a little blood there and then suddenly BAM! There it is. There it is and there it stays for the next 6-7 days of torture. And then maybe it doesn’t completely go away for another day or so, just to twist the knife a little. My period, in short, is a jerk.
So today, day 4, my period was like
“yea, I think basically I have finished depleting you of 50% of your blood so I’m gonna slow my roll a little.”
In response I decided to follow the directions in my box of tampons which instructs me, in roughly these words, to just use the smallest absorbancy tampon that is appropriate for my flow. Okay. I assessed and I downgraded. And what happens? My period gets heavier. It’s as if it knows. It’s all,
“Psych! You think I would let you get away without ruining any of your underwear? Without staining any of your jeans? Well, wait till you get a load of this!”
ZOOM!
Inevitably, this happened when I was out running errands. There I was, in the pet store, looking for cat food when all of a sudden I thought to myself,
“Wait, is that…? Is it…? Oh you have got to be kidding me!”
Quick! Pay for the food! Stop making that weird face! Don’t walk like you have a pole shoved up your ass! Just walk quickly and calmly back to the house. It can smell your fear and it will fuck with you.
Luckily I made it with limited muss and fuss but with an extreme amount of resentment directed at my period. It’s as if it’s a highly competitive athlete that wants to outdo its last performance. Like my period and I are on different teams and it takes my handling of it as motivation to do better next time. Go big or go home, it thinks.
Recently, it’s decided that the heavy bleeding is not quite enough so it’s added cramps. Bad ones. I mean, not so bad that I can’t get out of bed in the morning, but bad enough that when I am standing up, I can feel my lower abdomen throbbing and the only way to deal with it is to bend at the hip at about a 60 degree angle. I know that’s the best way to deal with it because my cramp day always, 100% of the time, comes when I am working, and I work on my feet so I get a good amount of practice. I only work 3 days a week and I generally only have one day of cramps but that day always, always, always falls on one of my three days behind the bar. So there I am, conspicuously leaning on the bar and grimacing. I’m sure I make a very welcoming impression on customers. Sometimes I want to look at people and be like
“I don’t usually stand like this! Or make this face! It’s not my fault! I am dying of blood loss!”
But that would be weird and would probably scare a lot of people away. So I just take more Advil.
One thing I can say about my period, although don’t tell it I said this because then it will somehow change its stripes, is that it doesn’t really effect my mood all that much. I don’t become any more bitchy or snarky or quick-tempered than I usually am. I also don’t become terribly emotional. I suffer alone and in silence.
At least one time during the week of uterin-purging I think to myself,
“If there was a god, he* wouldn’t let this suffering continue.”
But then I realize that no, he probably would, because he wouldn’t get it. He’d be thinking that he had to deal with having a random erection during heath class or the time his voice changed in the middle of his 7th grade presentation of Lord of the Flies. He’d be thinking that anyone can deal with a little bit of blood every once in a while. He’d be thinking that we ladies get to experience the miracle of childbirth. Well, god, if you’re really there, I would like to refer you to the UberFact I read the other day that said
“Giving birth is the second most painful thing a human can experience — the first is being burned alive.”
Miracle of childbirth my ass. So god, if you’re there and you’re laughing, if you find this funny, I will hunt you down and kick you in the nuts. We’ll see who’s laughing then.
*I use the pronoun “he” because if god were a woman, this shit never would have happened in the first place. She would have been like
“Bleeding for days on end? Cramps? Mood swings? Water retention? Oh, hell no.”
franklyrebekah 