You know, the usual

I woke up today with an uncharacteristically yellow brightness because it was a Monday but I didn’t have to work. I have plans of attack in place, write in the morning, gym in the afternoon, read in the pockets of time remaining outside of keeping myself alive. But there was a vaguely familiar pain in my right side. I struggled out of bed, attempt some sense of routine by going to the bathroom and washing my face and brushing my teeth despite the whoosh of cold against my exposed skin just from moving from one place to another.

Oh no.

I’d promised myself to try and arrange my life and plans around my period; my version of accepting the realities of my life instead of fighting them. But I’d been doing so well the week before last week and a few days into last week. I finished my novella draft, I streamed, I went to the gym once, I grovelled at the cold, I watched stuff, listened to stuff, played Silksong. My mind was inexplicably clear despite the same thoughts rampaging inside it: definitely better weeks than most.

I must have forgotten. What day was it supposed to be again? I checked the Garmin app, arguably the only reason I use it for (because I’ve been focusing on just getting to the gym for at least twice a week over tracking all my workouts and being all perfect about it), and yeah, today’s the day.

The cramps began soon after. I laid on the sofa all morning, riding through the intermittent tightening of my lower abdomen. You might call it contractions, but for the unfertilized egg perhaps. It came in waves, with differing intensity. The feeling was like someone from behind me was grabbing a fistful of my insides and twisting it sadistically every now and then. The bright yellow promise of the morning saturated into the predictable monthly scarlet.

At some point, I went to the bathroom, and the blood arrived. There was the smallest of dopamine hits when I saw this, because it meant the end of the cramps was near. By near, I mean, in the next four to eight hours. There’d been months where I would get the same kind of premenstrual contractions days before my actual period, and it would be a different flavored kind of hell, to be feeling that kind of pain with the resolution still far off into the future.

This is what social media was made for, I thought at some point. I turned all the lights down, spun up Mr. Mercedes on Netflix because it looked warm and had gore, and scrolled on my phone for hours, screaming only every once in a while when I feel my abdomen cramp up. Sometimes I sang, sometimes I screamed, sometimes I cursed. When the Dublin gang rang the doorbell for food-related stuff I screamed into the speaker and one of them asked whether there was something wrong with the intercom. It was me, I was the static devil of pain being transmitted live over electrical wires.

I don’t even remember what I saw on Instagram the entire time. Something about jackfruit, something about colonization, books, nature stuff, I didn’t even care anymore, I was just waiting it out, as usual.

As usual.

I was diagnosed with endometriosis before I flew here and I’d been told over and over again that there was no cure. The doctor here in Dublin told me something about installing a Mirena coil in my uterus, which I was pretty sure my body will not take to, and in any case the stories about it are harrowing. The other option was an oestrogen patch, which wasn’t viable for me given I’m under a forever kind of aspirin therapy given past medical incidents. (That’s also the reason I couldn’t take pain meds for the pain because if I did I would risk internal bleeding, yay.) It’s not “bad enough” to warrant surgery, which again is also a thing that would be considered undesirable as I’m taking aspirin every day.

Sometimes I feel like a wuss for complaining about the pain, since it happens every month and I should have been used to it by now. But the pain is always a present kind of thing, it doesn’t really care if I know I’ve survived it before or that it will likely go away by later in the day. It’s just there, in cycles, and every now and then it hurts so much I want to die.

But then the minutes pass and I’m okay again.

Have you tried meditation? This or that homeopathic onion-garlic-turmeric-anti-inflammatory-Vicks-vaporub combo? Asked your OB-GYN what to do?

I mean, of course. Of course I’ve tried everything. Of course. Everything? Yes, everything. Yet here we remain. In pain, suffering, like a dry, dirty rag being squeezed of every last bit of blood.

I think about the social injustice side of it sometimes and I get into a blind rage. How can it not have a cure? Why don’t they still don’t know how to help women with this? The reason is endometriosis has not been studied well enough because women who come to their doctors were told to put up with the pain because nobody really cared that women were in pain. I’m not imagining it, there’s a whole swath of articles that talk about how undiagnosed women’s medical issues are because of systemic misogyny.

There is an accumulated cost to these hours and days that I’ve been in pain every month and the weeks of madness that come before it, and I’m not even talking about work productivity because fuck that, I deserve my paid menstrual leaves and I should have had them the moment I got into employment in 2003. I’m talking about being able to write in a stable state of mind, being able to proceed normally with life things, and not besieged by the semi-constant desire to just disappear so I could no longer be hurting, being well.

I do get well. For about one and a half weeks in a month. I’m not in pain for the two and a half remaining weeks, sure, but my hormones are also wildly fluctuating during this time, and I have very strong suspicions that if I had any fight left, I would try and shoot for a diagnosis of premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

You know, getting pregnant is a possible cure.

Okay, nice to know. So you are suggesting I have sex, conceive a child, carry that child to term, then give birth to that child, and then raise that child throughout its life, just for the off-chance that it would cure my endometriosis? You do know how psychotic that sounds, right? No? It sounds psychotic. And for the record, I know women for whom periods have gotten worse after pregnancy, so if that’s not some male propaganda for women to have sex with them every time women say they’re in pain, I do not know what is.

Anyway, as I type this, the worst of the period cramps is over. The next thing that will happen is a notable dip in mood two or three days during my period, where I will be so (small D) depressed and unmotivated that nothing will make sense to me. I will of course be able to barely function as an adult. Masking, I think they call it, because I’ve been cosplaying as a functional adult for all my fucking life so I will still look pretty together if I meet people outside, I think. But inside, ooooh, inside, I be spiralling.

I had so many plans today. I guess they’re not happening until later this week. I would know, I’ve been having period pains since April 21, 1993. Guess it’s going to be like this for at least 15 more years. 180 more months. With perimenopause to boot.

Good times. I LOVE being a period-having woman. /s