Heads up, this post is peppered with some TMI. So if you’re not one who likes to dabble in any sort of poop or period talk, you should probably just go ahead and X out now.
A couple months back, my husband and I were preparing to go out for a rare date night to celebrate our anniversary...which had occurred three months prior. Anyhoo, my sister was babysitting. It was a Monday night and I was having a major case of the Mondays: tired, irritated, seriously craving a night session with Netflix in bed with my sweats and cozy socks. On top of it, I had been feeling physically crummy most of the day. Not entirely nauseous, but just teetering on feeling like I could maybe puke in the near future. I was unusually bloated and I my stomach was starting to do some quite questionable rumbly tumbly. Buuut, since we NEVER go out (apparently not even when our anniversary rolls around) and babysitting was secured, I pulled it together enough to get out the door and out to a restaurant with the old hubs. It was a short, but enjoyable night. We went to a ramen place, so that was fairly easy on the whole internal system, went for a quick night cap and then headed home.
Upon returning, I really started to feel like shit. Literally. I plopped down on the couch and started lamenting to my sister, telling her all about my various feelings and ailments. I quite literally have zero fear with her. From toilets to tampons, she hears it all and vice versa. A relationship quality we’re quite proud of. In collusion with our other sister, we’ve even been known to try to out-gross each other via text message. Fun game. But she always wins.
“I’m about to get my period too...UGGGGHHH.” I groaned, clutching my stomach.
“Well, that’s it.” She said. “That’s why you’re feeling like shit.”
I furrowed by brow. “Why would my period have anything to do with it? Ohp. BRB.”
Faucet ass is the only term quite polite enough to describe what ensued next.
Fast forward to last week. (You’re welcome.) I started having similar sick intestinal feelings. Like, I’m about to get sick but nothing ever really happens? The whole week, getting out of bed in the morning felt like an Olympic sized feat. My body was heavy, my muscles ached, my head hurt and I couldn’t trust a fart. And judging by some pretty impressive mood swings, I deduced that I was also about to get my period. Zoinks! I thought back to that moment when I was moaning to my sister on the couch. Could she have been on to something?
I popped open my tracker app and sure enough, 9 days to P day. Then I took to the Googles: Flu like symptoms before period. WHAM. Results upon articles upon subreddits. Why in the actual fuck have I not heard about Period Flu before? Did I miss a pamphlet? Have you heard of it? Why didn’t you tell me? Why aren’t doctors, women, girls, Midol commercials talking about this as an actual symptom of PMS? Why, why, why?
I feel like I just read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. for the first time and I’m 40.
I mean, I know the usual precursors to my period—vicious night sweats, afore mentioned mood swings, intense cravings for everything I’m not “supposed” to eat. But I had never associated any sort of flu-like symptoms with my Aunt Flo visit. Nor have I ever really experienced them until recently. I guess maybe that’s why I didn’t know about Period Flu...because I didn’t need to? Must be yet another perk of my aging female body? But. Why. Tho.?
Fucking hormones. Fucking patriarchy. I don’t really know how those two are related but fucking fuck. As if bleeding out of my vagina one week a month wasn’t enough, now I have to worry I’m going to shit my pants, vomit AND sweat the bed for the whole week prior...and act normal and got to work and parent and shit? I mean, that leaves only two weeks out of every month where I actually don’t want to wear adult diapers, bathe in French fries and cheese cake or murder someone with my fingers. The unjustness of it all makes me want to burn my panty liners in protest.
But since one of the most primal aspect of our bodies is not going to edit itself out anytime soon, the only way I can deal with this fresh hell is to talk about it. And you should too, that is if you haven’t X’d out yet. Since we can’t make anyone pay for getting our periods (I mean, besides emotionally) it’s the only way to combat the fact that this info. isn’t readily available in any truly normalizing fashion—at least not that I can see. (It’s been reduced to reddit for fuck’s sake.) At the very least, we can commiserate. So read about it. Talk about it. Ask you your mothers, friends, daughters, doctors, sisters about it. Just don’t ask my sisters about it, unless you want some seriously NSFW images to pop up on your chat screen. You can’t unsee that shit. #periodpoop
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