Female Experiences are Human Experiences

Every month I have an enormous emotional low within 48 hours of the beginning of my period. Inevitably, I am depressed and overwhelmed, sometimes I am hopeless, occasionally I wish I were dead. Always, there are tears. And then my period starts. And then I feel better pretty quickly.

I never, ever, ever make the connection. This has been happening with great consistency for over twenty years of fertility now, and it surprises me every single month.

There is a tidal wave of emotion, and then the release of blood.

I have wanted to write about this for a few months now, but I have been hesitant to because of the stigma associated with this monthly phenomenon shared by half the human population. I could see the predictable commentary in my mind’s eye: “Umm, why are you writing about THAT?” And when I anticipated being shamed for giving words to my female experience, I put the writing idea away, agreeing with the cultural notion that “women’s stuff” is only to be discussed among women, and never aired out in front of men (gasp!). What was I thinking? Why should men have to be confronted with the fullness of my humanity when I can simply keep it to myself?

Well, because the fullness of my humanity is valuable, and because my body is healthy and beautiful not gross and inconvenient, and because female experiences are human experiences, and because as long as women’s lives are relegated to a separate sphere away from the general public, then the general public will continue to be a man’s world in which women are supporting characters.

I started my period this morning. My emotional wave came immediately beforehand in this case.

I felt like I was failing as a mother, like my children dislike me no matter what I do, and that my mere presence causes them pain. Both my 6yo and 4yo were whining (maybe eat your breakfast?!), I was going to be late for work, it’s Friday and I wanted to be done on Wednesday, I still hadn’t had MY breakfast, and the kids were promised Ted Drewes ice cream at the VBS performance tonight, which they can’t have because of my son’s dairy intolerance, so I have to be the mean mom and deprive them of the treat that everyone else will be enjoying. My daughter told me that I hurt her leg when I was hugging her on the countertop, and then I kissed the injury on the wrong spot which made her cry more – no ice cream plus an injury from Mom plus shitty nursing care from Mom? My son had already told me that I am the worst about 30 minutes prior: he had overheard me tell Grandma that I made a doctor’s appt for him, and then he wanted to know where and why, and ten questions later he was terrified of his hypothetical adenoidectomy, and also how dare I insist he sit on the potty long enough to actually expel feces. Now in the kitchen, both of them were crying – Gabe broke into tears for seemingly no reason after my incorrect tenderness towards Phoebe – and I became overwhelmed and stomped away, fury expressing itself first before the vulnerable sobs of rejection and incompetence and fraying mental health came pouring out while I straightened my hair in the bathroom.

When I returned to the kitchen, the tears had stopped and the kids were eating banana airplanes (peeled whole bananas with peanut butter smeared down the length of it). I apologized to them for stomping away and getting mad. I told them I was not mad at them, I was mad at myself, because sometimes Mommy feels like she’s not a good mommy, and she’s working more than she wants to, and she just can’t get everything right, and also uphold the entire world. They gave me blank stares and then said I was being silly and that they loved me, precious darlings. And then I felt a trickle and then a wet spot on back of my right thigh. And then I knew.

I grabbed my Diva cup and took care of business. It was 8:35 and I was supposed to drop off the kids at VBS by 9 and be at work by 9, so although I had a crimson stain on my peach-colored pants, there was no time to change. We’d spent the night at my parents’ house and I had exactly one outfit. So I stood in front of the full-length mirror and did the thing where you hike up the offending leg and peer at your crotch to see just how noticeable the stain is, and then I did the thing where you put your head between your legs and press your thighs apart with your hands to get an even better view. It was the size of a dime, so I bet on the assumption that no coworker of mine would put their head that close to my crotch today, and we left the house, me in my bloody underwear (but I stopped caring about that around the time I stopped caring if a child peed in my bed) and my 99% peach pants with some hidden, dime-sized, female-experience flare.

(I’m also writing about my period because I’m hoping I’ll find out that other women over the age of 14 still sometimes have blood leak out of the side of their underwear, too. Seriously, why?? Just bleed straight, damnit!).

Women whisper in hushed tones when they need to borrow a tampon. We consider a boyfriend or husband who is willing to purchase tampons on our behalf “a really great guy” — shouldn’t we have a higher standard, in which it’s not “great” that a man would stoop to involving himself in female realities, but rather expected that a decent man happily buys Playtex when he makes a Target run? We tell our moms when we get our first period, and maybe our friends, but definitely NOT our siblings, and definitely NOT BOYS. We are primed from a very young age not to tell boys that we are girls. Show them you are a girl, sure, wear makeup and cute clothes and learn to flirt, but don’t tell them about the things that make you distinctly female. Keep that shit to yourself. Aspects of your body that can be sexualized, put those on display. But any part of you that demonstrates your power but doesn’t confer male benefit – menstruation, amniotic fluid, placentas, lochia, breastmilk – pretend that doesn’t exist. 

• Don’t talk about your period.
• Don’t go out of the house much when you are past due with your baby – what if your water breaks all over the place?!
• Don’t share all the “birthy details” – mucus plug, bloody show, placentas, postpartum blood – no one wants to hear about that.
• Don’t nurse your baby without a cover, or in public at all.

I wept over So. Many. Toilets in my adolescence because I just COULD NOT figure out how to get that stupid piece of cotton in there, and pads are bumpy and bunchy and annoying, and I wanted to go swimming with my friends but I couldn’t because I was bleeding and I didn’t understand my anatomy and NO, MOM I DON’T WANT YOUR HELP because I was so embarrassed and ashamed. It’s my period…it’s my blood…it’s gross…they say.

I made up some lie about why I couldn’t go swimming. Custom dictated I couldn’t talk about it.

Why don’t we talk about it?

Why don’t we normalize it?

Why don’t we marvel that we can bleed and bleed for days and not die?

Why do we accept this rule that the things of men are for everyone, but the things of women are just for women?

Why is “women’s health” a specialty and men’s health is regular health?

Why is God considered male, described as male, spoken to as male without second thought, but the minute anybody refers to the Holy Spirit as a She, or heaven forbid, refers to God as female, people completely freak out?

Clearly, there is a lot more to write about.

Photo credits in order:

• Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash
• Photo by Jenny Smith on Unsplash
• Photo by Josefin on Unsplash