Bleedin’ Christ
Hagar in the Wilderness, Camille Corot, 1835
I swear people able to see the good in their periods must have an easier time at it than me. They must not throw up or pass out or bleed heavily enough to fling blood across the floor reminiscent of an axe murder scene. They must not have erratic cycles, never sure if their next period will start in 20 days or 35 days, never knowing if it'll last 4 days or 10 days. Or maybe they do—maybe when it comes to pain and enduring it, I'm just a coward. More than 300 periods in, though, I know there's nothing good about them; they're punishing and grueling and I'm pissed I'm forbidden to bitch about them to more people.
As someone who is not religious or spiritual and doesn't subscribe to any kind of sixth sense, coming to terms with my period each month can be a very lonely pursuit. Outside of its biological imperative—which alone should but doesn't make periods worthy of respect and normalization—there is no metaphysical meaning or power in my period. Don't get me wrong; I’d love for it to feel sacred, I suppose as a way of justifying the impudent monthly intrusions I have no control over or thwarting society’s disgust towards it. But alas, I'm my own Hagar in the wilderness, roaming, lacking, and seeking. Except God doesn't find me; I find myself.
Acute, repeated pain is an extraordinary anchor, a gift that’s kept me grounded since I was 16 years old, continuously connecting me to the here and now, teaching me the temporal values of patience and endurance, responsibility and potential. It’s honed my trust and faith in atoms, time, and the collective.
Sixteen is when I started passing out from severe cramps. I distinctly remember the first time feeling those sharp, debilitating twists, exactly as I feel them today, every fucking month, more than two decades later. I was in art class, sketching a face from memory (mine, my art teacher would later say), when I felt a quick, heavy jostle through my body—like something had halted or sputtered out. Not knowing what to make of the sensation, I just kept drawing.
I started to feel clammy as the classroom lights dimmed and black patches filled my vision. Gradually, my ears began lightly ringing, and I suddenly recognized the onset of cramps, slowly screwing up, buckling, tightening. Again that quick, heavy jostle, but this time my brain and body’s entire focus immediately narrowed to my uterus. Apart from the mounting pain, there was nothing else. Face pallid and hunched over, I floated to the nurse’s office, leveraging the cool concrete walls to usher me through the empty halls, hyper aware of every step, of every groove and pucker my palm ran over, of time—and that I was losing it, that my body would liquidate from the pain.
By the time I reached the nurse’s office, I was soaked with sweat, shitting, vomiting, crying, writhing around senseless. Building, building, the pain always only ever building. I was given a few pills to swallow before I passed out from pain and exhaustion.
And that’s my life every month. My body shows no mercy. The oly (and massive) difference is, rather than simply feeling and enduring, I’m now able to recognize and treat my cramps before I pass out (most of the time). I was on birth control for 14 years, which did treat the pain, but came with its own host of issues. Fourteen years of birth control and you lose yourself a bit. Anyone who's been on the pill for that long likely understands what I’m talking about. I’d rather take my chances with the pain—treating it with copious amounts of ibuprofen and heating pads—than go back on birth control.
I’ve bled around 2,100 days at this point—that’s more than five years. I resent that I can’t talk openly about my period. I resent that telling people I have a migraine is totally acceptable, but sharing that I have terrible cramps is uncouth and taboo. I swear the day periods are socially normalized, the day they are no longer seen akin to fucking excrement, that's the day we’ll stop craving to find the sacred and holy in it.