Every now and then, I would say maybe every – I don’t know – four weeks or so, the life is completely sucked out of me. It’s pre-game week. It’s when I first get the phone call that Aunt Flo has just boarded a plane headed straight for my house.
What’s my first clue? Usually I begin crying while watching a commercial. And I’m not talking about a Feed the Children or a Sarah McLachlan animal commercial. I’m talking about a Bounty paper towel commercial.
My next clue that my hormones have taken a drastic stand against my life choices is my sudden RAGE! There may be no use crying over spilled milk, but it is worth angrily spitting out indistinguishable words that lead to more tears and then a raging anger at the construction of milk cartons, the shelf spacing in the refrigerator, and the toddlers who need to step in it.
Another clue that Aunt Flo’s plane has hit turbulence but is still headed on a non-stop flight for my life is the fatigue. As a Mom of two toddler boys who rarely sleep through the night, I am no stranger to being tired – even exhausted at times – but this is a whole new level. This is when you’re grocery shopping and you happen upon a bottom shelf in the diaper aisle that is completely empty, and everything inside your body tells you to leave the kids belted in the cart and just climb on the shelf for a necessary nap. This is a tired that naps don’t fix. This is a tired where you wake up from eight hours of sleep feeling like you’ve pulled an all nighter. This is the kind of tired when you look at the clock and it’s 10:00 a.m., and no matter how you calculate the day it just isn’t going to end for at least another ten hours and so you begin to sob. At this time your child comes over with his broken lego tower crying that his brother knocked it over, and you respond with throwing the legos in the garbage as you snap, “If you can’t play nice with your toys you don’t deserve them!” That way, you no longer have to cry alone. You can cry with your children.
The days before the crimson wave crashes it’s magical splendor is full of short fuses, total fatigue, and suddenly my reflection appears too fat to fit through doorways. What has happened to me in only a couple of days? How have I gained 7 pounds and seemingly 35 inches? I appear a disgusting beast who should be put down. Suddenly all of my clothes are ridiculous, and if my husband DARES to say I look nice then I am forced to respond gratefully by saying “Well apparently you have horrible taste. I probably wouldn’t have let myself go like this if you had higher standards. Have you ever thought of actually caring what I looked like? Actually caring at all? Do you even love me? Why did you marry me if you don’t love me? I can’t be with someone who treats me like this!”
I consider myself a tolerant and loving person by nature. I believe people are different, and they should be allowed to explore those difference without persecution as long as they aren’t hurting anyone. I’m not too concerned with how others live their lives, and I save my judgements for my own life and how I can improve myself, BUT before the “blithe” of womanhood finds me, I begin to see the world in an ugly light. My Facebook newsfeed becomes a disturbing announcement of everything I hate in the world, which is apparently: puppies, babies, pictures of meals, “statuses that end in “lol” when I know the person didn’t really laugh out loud, and duck-faced selfies.
I once heard a husband of a friend say, “You’ve been getting your period for over 20 years, shouldn’t you know how to control it by now?”. After we finished burying his body we contemplated whether there was any truth in what he said…but determined that the fact that we usually don’t kill our husbands, delete all our friends, put our children up for adoption, or cut off all of our hair and join a cult is proof that we do, in fact, control it.
According to internet research, if you increase your iron, calcium and vitamin D, exercise regularly, and decrease your alcohol, caffeine and complex carbohydrates, you can soften the blow of the hormonal seesaw taking place inside of you. I have found truth in all of these suggestions, but I dare say even a fitness guru who follows all of the rules and lives a life of regulated emotions still falls prey to the curse.
I always like to end my blogs on a happy note, considering the silver lining – so let’s not forget that it’s only the week before, and the week of, and sometimes the week after, but the rest of the month is smooth sailing! Or as my mother would say “this too shall pass.”
