Disclaimer: This piece has been written a day after my period finished. That is, the LEAST hormonal day of the month. This essentially means that this “rant” is as legit as it gets, and rooted in reality not manufactured by my hormones.
No man will ever know what it is like to bleed between your legs every single month, like clockwork. Take a moment to soak in the gravity of that – every month, all through adolescence, young adulthood, and middle age, every woman bleeds out of her vagina. There is actual red fluid that oozes out of an orifice, with blood and parts of the uterus and unfertilised eggs. While men, they go through their entire lives with their bodies in a natural state of equanimity (of sorts; hi testosterone). How is this fair?
But wait. The actual bleeding is the least of our concerns. It is, in fact, the sweetest part of this bittersweet cycle of menstruation. Tinged with relief that your body is healthy and in tune with the natural rhythm of what it means to be a woman; this monthly explosion is actually cathartic. It is everything else that is even more unjust.
Actually having a period is only a part of what a woman goes through on a monthly basis. It is just the outwardly, visible, tangible (and now apparently, taxable) manifestation of the complicated and physically uncomfortable female reproductive cycle. But before we move on, let us state how ridiculous it is that we now pay taxes because we menstruate? It’s not a choice we have, government. (Read more on our website, here). Back to the reproductive cycle now … it’s something that men don’t seem to notice. Doing its thing quietly, coming out and fertilising an egg in a woman’s body if and when it’s time. But, a woman is and has to be aware of her reproductive cycle at all times.
It is only the 14 days or so after the period ends that there can be some relief. Moments of not having to think about whether that strange, uneasy feeling of sadness, or just something not being quite right, is because of something that is actually occurring, or just hormones doing their thing. Yes, hormones do their thing a lot. Precisely for two weeks every month. That is half of every month. Month after month. Year after year.
It’s not just sex that we have schedule according to where we are on our cycle. Running up to our period, we can’t wear body hugging outfits because of bloating. We bloat up, and sometimes we look like we are six months pregnant, when we are actually just six days away from our period. And the nausea and the cramps! Don’t even get us started on that! Some of us have food aversions, and some times there are so severe that you can’t actually function.
We hate everything about when we are PMSing and why shouldn’t we? We didn’t sign up for this shit. To be so controlled and driven by something that is invisible to us – our hormones. They control us. They make us snap at people we love, and cry at meaningless things. The only way to control it is to constantly tell ourselves that it’s just the hormones. But imagine the challenges that come with this. What if it is not the hormones? We have to constantly question our mood because we know that there’s life too that happens, and sometimes it gives us legitimate reasons to be upset. We are bigger than our hormones, and we have to constantly prove that to ourselves and to the world. That said, there are days when we feel so small and so insignificant, and just a product of progesterone and estrogen.
So the next time you callously say, “Why are you overreacting? Are you on your period?” Or something that is that flippant … think about that.
