That's all I fucking
need, I think furiously. I check
my planner: 27 days. Lately the intervals have gotten a few days
shorter, hovering around the textbook 28, but flow
duration is still longer than average. I've had 17 days off.
Looking
at my planner, I remember what I thought last month, and the month
before, and the month before that: That's all I fucking
need. I think back over the past
decade. Ten years – that's approaching half my life – I've been
putting up with this monthly exodus of dark matter, and not once have
I been able to feel anything remotely positive about it.
Every
month: That's all I fucking need.
Fifteen
years old, in the bathroom, crying and cursing my body for its
monthly betrayal, uncontrollable, infuriating, pointless. Twenty-one
years old, in the bedroom, being upbraided by my girlfriend for my
squeamishness about bodily fluids. All the years in between, growing
into feminism, learning to deconstruct my internalized misogyny,
reading Steinem,
finding out that many women see this as something empowering,
something beautiful, something to celebrate.
I
don't find it empowering.
I
don't find it beautiful.
I
don't want to celebrate it.
I'm
utterly sick of trying not to hate it. I'm sick of trying to locate
some essential femininity in it. Sick of trying to see it as
emblematic of the life-giving facility of the female body. Sick of
trying to view that same facility as a source of power rather than a
source of visceral horror, something I would gladly relinquish given
half a chance.
I
hate it, this thing my body does. I want to be rid of it.
If you want some sympathy...
ReplyDeleteMine is irregular due to regular medication I take for an unrelated condition. I don't even keep a planner because sometimes it's "Didn't I just have this two weeks ago?" Mine's heavy, too - looks like someone slaughtered a pig in the bathroom, and I feel faint and stuff. I actually wonder if I have a problem.
In my idea of the perfect body - it's probably the first thing to go.
Yes, yes yes yesyesYES.
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly how it is. I hate it. I do not want to see some essential part of me-ness in it (realizing that I am genderqueer actually helped out; now I recognize the "this body is wrong" as what it is and can handle it a little better.) I do not want to put up with this a third of my life. (10ish on, 20ish off.)
I wish it were gone.
I don't know how to get rid of it, though.
The drug companies will be happy to sell you a solution. Haven't you seen the commercials?
ReplyDeleteI am so with you. I was mercifully blessed (?) with amennorhea for a good bit of my twenties and now I give in to the drug companies and tri-cycle to keep from dealing with it more than quarterly. It makes me sick, keeps me from running as well or as fast as normal & is a major pain. Those days I lose productivity spending half my day in the bathroom, and I get migraines to boot. There is nothing to celebrate about menstruation in my opinion. Don't beat yourself up. We don't all have to be earth mothery about it.
ReplyDelete