Now Playing: Heavy In Your Arms by Florence + The Machine (I was a heavy heart to carry but he never let me down, when he held me in his arms my feet never touched the ground)
***WARNING THIS POST IS ABOUT PERIODS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***
I have this theory that most guys dismiss PMS as hokum because everyone knows at least one girl who shrugs and says 'I don't have PMS. My periods don't bother me'
What guys fail to realize is that periods are like...well, periods are like adolescence in general. For some people it's all hunky dory, things grow when and where they're supposed to and nature just takes its course. For some people there's a little angst, a little pain, but no big deal. And for others, growing up is pure hell.
So for some people, periods really don't bother them. But I know some people who are actually bedridden by periods. So guys, seriously, have some fucking respect.
When I was younger I think I had a hormonal imbalance. I had horrific acne, and for a week before my period my legs would turn to jelly and I was just really tired and moody all the time - I burst into tears over absolutely everything. I've always found it strange that people are willing to drag me forcibly to the nurses office every time my pacemaker glitches, but laugh at me when I had tears streaming down my cheeks and bent double with cramps. Some days I couldn't walk. I could never predict my period, but when it came it was eight or ten days of heavy bleeding, wearing overnight pads in the middle of the day.
Why are periods such a taboo? I felt sick. I felt horrible and tired and teary all the time. And I didn't get one shred of sympathy. Pain is still pain. Whether it's tied up in the taboo of blood and sex and babies or not. I felt weird and creepy and unnatural lying in hospital, kept alive by technology - and yet its this most natural and uncontrollable thing that people detest, think that we're 'just making up'. At least periods are normal, natural - everyone has them. Yet everyone is so much more understanding because I have a FUCKING METAL COMPUTER IN MY STOMACH and I'm ALLERGIC TO MAGNETS.
I'm starting to think we'd be kinder to aliens than our own kin.
I think my body sorted itself out, because I don't get that now. PMS is just a very mild breakout and one day of being slightly irritable and just a little tired, followed by another day of being just a little bit more tired, a little bit more moody. And then it starts and all that stops.
Unless it's late.
I am definitely not pregnant, just putting it out there. I wouldn't even be talking about this if I didn't feel like SOMEONE has to break the taboo, and I probably should explain why I was such a psychopath today.
This doesn't apply to everyone - as I said, periods are different for everybody. But I am definitely not making this up. I am so tired and so wound up I am going to strangle anyone who tries to say I'm just making this shit up.
But for me, for every day I'm late the tiredness gets worse and the moodiness gets worse and worse. I'm six days late. I am a fucking psycho.
I'm already a pretty restless person. But all day I've been fidgeting, tapping, walking around for no reason, looking for people even though I have nothing to say to them. I lurch from retching at the thought of food to suddenly ravenous. I'll be shivering one minute and sweating the next. I've been shaking all day and I've spent the whole day on the brink of tears for no apparent reason. This morning I was super tired and moody and snapped at people but this afternoon I was running around like a loony. Any misunderstandings or glitches in any of my friendships or relationships have just been amplified ten thousand times. And because I'm so tense my muscles are a bit clenched and so my pacemaker's hurting a bit more. At least I get some sympathy for that. I have all of two girlfriends who can sympathise and only me, myself and I to empathise.
It's been a constant fight for composure, especially at school. But it's never been this late before and I'm really starting to lose it a bit. But why? Why can't I just tell people that I'm PMSing and be over it? No. Discretion - it's something we're taught from the cradle. You actually cannot buy a package of pads or tampons without the word 'discreet' on it. Why? Why do we hide it? We're only encouraging ignorance.
I'm sixteen. I'm a girl. I bleed. Sometimes it's shit. So what?
It was in this frame of mind I wrote that blog post 'guyfriends and notgirlfriends'. I don't actually remember writing it - it was sort of like psychosis. All I remember is seeing it, reading it, realizing someone may try to use it to commit me to an institution, and write the epilogue in a brief moment of rationality.
So I'm really not well. Please please please please don't take anything I say or do very seriously for a bit. I am so on edge and I have to spend every second fighting to stay reasonably normal. I'm sorry if I snapped at you today. I'm sorry if I've freaked you out. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.
I'll be fine again soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment