My period is not annoying.
I know, how dare I.
Yet. My first memories of being informed about it mentioned only this. I was a girl, the tone was somber, almost accusatory. “You’ll get this…nuisance. You’ll have to deal with it for years and years. And when it stops…well, it only gets worse.”
On that day I learned that a woman’s life pretty much starts propelling downward around the age of thirteen. I was a girl and played with dolls. The idea felt exciting at first. “So, I’ll be able to have babies!”
“Oh…no, no, no. It’ll be years before that. You’ll have to be careful.”
Life would become dangerous after my first period. And ugly. And gross.
My skin would break out, and I would swell. Let’s not even think about the mood swings. You’ll get PMS, which is kind of like losing your mind. You’ll feel too much, things that aren’t real. Don’t pay attention to them. You will smell, and be dirty. Maybe you will get a stain on your pants and be mocked. Your partner won’t want to get near you, you’ll gross him out. You won’t be useful. You will be tired. Oh, and the pain, have I mentioned that? Periods hurt. They will bend you over in pain and could put you to bed for days.
They said to my mother, “Put her on the pill as soon as possible, better be on the safe side.” A pregnancy? God forbid, nothing but a pregnancy. An STD perhaps, but a pregnancy? The only thing worse than my reproductive system getting sick would be for my reproductive system to perform its main function.
So I learned to complain, as we all did. We complained when we first got our periods, and when it took too long for them to come. We complained about our faces breaking out, and our breasts being tender. Being too small or too big. We complained about being fat. We complained about cellulite. We complained about our hair being frizzy or too straight.
We were thirteen.
And then time passed. We complained about cramps. We complained about sex being painful. About having PMS. (Was it the PMS making us irritable or the fact that we were having painful sex? Or that when we bled we were disgusting? Or that we had lost our minds to our hormones?) Some complained about getting cysts. Endometriosis. Fibroids. Scary medical terms came to the battlefield that we’re our bodies.
We took the pill, to even things out. To make out bodies predictable.
We got migraines and worse mood swings.
Our periods only got more annoying with time.
We went to get checked, just to see if everything was normal. We were strapped and spread open and inspected and touched, year after year. “Everything looks fine.” A faceless voice approved between my legs. “It’s just a time bomb.” I hear a faceless voice inside my head. “It’s just a matter of time before you get cancer, herpes, an unwanted pregnancy, infertility, an abortion. It will turn against you, this…uterus of yours.”
That’s how we felt. The unpredictability of our bodies made them untrustworthy.
We complained about having to remove inconvenient embryos. At other times we complained about being unable to conceive those embryos. When we managed to get pregnant we complained about everything. The nausea, the mood swings (again?), the swelling and cramping and reflux and what not. You can get hypertension, diabetes, you can have your dead child inside you, count its heartbeat and its movements. Be alert, your body could turn anytime.
And then, oh the consequences! You will be cut because something won’t work out. If your body hadn’t turned, by the Heavens and the mighty Scientists it will. You will be cut, over here or there, but inevitably. Your uterus will bleed for days on end. The birthing will hurt. So will the afterbirth. The soggy skin and stretch marks on your belly will hurt your eyes. Your nipples will crack. Oh, and maybe you’ll be incontinent and become the target market of adult diaper companies. (Don’t believe me? Check this out.)
We were scared. Who wouldn’t?
And then, blessed. My uterus gave me two daughters. (With uteruses of their own.) It never turned. It did hurt at times when it bled, I won’t lie. But it passed and the pain stopped being scary. As in birth, I learned that pain is not a cause but a consequence and that it passes.
The blood of a period that never came made my uterus a home. It made life and brought forth life. It didn’t doubt because it hadn’t heard the girls and the boys and the doctors say what an unreliable piece of flesh it was. Because it wasn’t.
My period brought life. And I realized this annoying and putrefact accumulation of blood in my womb is one (of two) of humanity’s paramount tools of self-preservation. It is our first cradle yet it made our stomachs turn. (Was it that we were disgusted by ourselves?)
My period is not annoying. It is the change that breaks the monotony of life otherwise. It is a cycle that reminds me that my body is in good health and working as it should. It forces me to stop when I won’t listen and propels me forward with energy when I will. It makes me face what bothers me, not with mood swings, but with real emotions about real things.
We complained about our periods until we didn’t, and when those little girls, our daughters, asked about them we said, “Yes, that’s what will make you able to have a daughter of your own.” And they went off to play dolls knowing that what their wombs harbored was not an unreliable time bomb, but the blessing of having health and the possibility of life within their bodies.
