We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program to Bring You...
... a short story about being a woman on the first day of her period. Enjoy!
It’s a relatively mild Wednesday morning in November. You’re not quite sound asleep having been disturbed a number of times throughout the night when suddenly you’re awakened once more. This time the disturbance is internal. There is a sensation deep in your abdomen; a weight, like a small round stone has been placed inside your body. You recognize it immediately.
‘Ah,’ you think to yourself, ‘Today is the day.’
You knew this was going to happen very soon, and you’re glad it was on a day you weren’t scheduled to do anything important. Still, you have your plans for the day. You consider the situation for a moment:
‘Well, I’ve been doing pretty good lately. I’ve been walking a lot, getting some good exercise and trying my best to eat properly. Maybe it won’t be so bad today.’
You resolve within yourself to do your best to fight the coming battle without resorting to using medication, since you’d rather not mess any further with your hormones anyway. You feel confident and prepared to take on each of the 4 stages of the coming battle without relying on external forces. You are currently in:
Stage 1 - Today’s The Day
Your body feels unusually fatigued today, even counting the terrible night’s rest you just experienced. Still, you decide you want to start the day off right. Lately, due to classes, you’ve spent every morning getting showered and going for a walk to catch the bus. This led to a feeling of refreshment despite your insomnia. Therefore, you have resolved to start the day with a morning walk, even on your days off. That means you have to get showered and dressed quickly so you can start the day off right.
You attempt to get up off your bed. I say attempt, but really all that happens is you sit perfectly still with the strong intention of getting up. For some reason, your body and your will seem to be at odds with one another. You want to stand, but your legs aren’t responding.
‘... maybe I’ll just ease myself into things a bit slower today. I have been pushing really hard lately. I should rest.’
This is what you tell yourself. You lay back down, and as you do so, a sharp pain like a hot needle stabs its way into your lower back. Even though you have back problems already, it hurts more than usual. This worries you, but you shake off the fear and play some mobile games to get your mind off of things. There’s still plenty of time to have the day you desire.
A couple of hours pass by. You’ve made a lot of great progress in your game, but you’re starting to get antsy. You really want to get ready and start your day off right! However, each time you’ve paused your game and willed yourself out of bed, your limbs still won’t get on board with your intentions. So you’ve been forced to continue laying in bed. You have managed to get up once in this time to go to the bathroom as well as... protect yourself (in whatever form you choose to do so). But beyond that, you haven’t left your room. Your mom eventually comes in to check on you. When you explain what’s going on, she says:
“You’ve been pushing yourself a lot, sweetie. You need to let your body rest.”
You know she’s right, but it feels so weird to just vegetate. You want to be productive. Eventually your mom leaves for an appointment. It’s now 1:30PM. You’ve spent 4 hours in bed since you woke up, and you feel a little disgusted. Maybe your walk isn’t going to happen today after all... maybe that’s okay. This is your day off. Maybe you should relax a little bit.
You decide to keep positive and change your outlook. Once you do this, you suddenly feel a tiny energy burst. You attempt to get out of bed, and this time you’re successful. Congratulations! You’re standing! You’re celebrating your small victory over yourself, but you notice something. Something has changed since you got up this morning. Welcome to:
Stage 2 - The Stone Grows Larger...
That sensation in your abdomen feels different than before. Rather than being small, it seems to have doubled in size. Now that you’re on your feet, you can feel the medium-sized stone weight gently pulling the organs in your abdomen downward, stretching your body from the inside ever so slightly. It’s not an altogether unpleasant feeling, but it’s definitely foreign and there is a tiny aspect of pain to it, like a warm-up stretch being taken a bit too far outside of comfortable. On top of it, your lower back is still mildly in pain; mild as long as you don’t twist it too much. You also feel a bit lightheaded upon rising.
‘Well, I haven’t eaten anything today. And it is the afternoon. Maybe I’m just hungry.’
You decide to take a shower and get cleaned up. Afterwards, you wander to the kitchen and make some fresh steamed rice. You’re keeping positive, but you’re secretly grateful to yourself for making homemade Japanese curry yesterday instead of putting it off until today since the simple act of making rice is proving to be a bit tiring right now. But you won’t allow yourself to consciously acknowledge any of this. You don’t want to demoralize yourself into losing the battle you know is yet to come.
Once the rice is done, you briefly contemplate making sushi hand-rolls since you’ve been craving them for a while, but the ache in your abdomen from being on your feet for too long advises you to heat the curry and sit down to eat.
While retrieving the curry from the fridge, you notice a cute black box you’d forgotten about. Your sister had bought a delicious green tea cheesecake from your favourite Japanese dessert place and saved you half of it. The entire cake had the diameter of a softball, so half a cake isn’t as much as it may sound. The cake has been sitting in the fridge for 2 days, 3 if you count today. Which you do. You decide it would be best for you to eat the cake after your curry so it doesn’t go bad.
Looking at the spread before you, you briefly consider your meal.
“Carbs from the white rice, which is a refined grain. Carbs from the potatoes in the curry. A small amount of sugar in the curry sauce. Caffeine from the matcha in the cake, and of course sugar in the cake... hmmm.”
Looking at the food, you become worried. You know the sugar and caffeine are both highly forbidden in your current condition; they may make the pain completely intolerable in the end. But you reason that it’s such a small amount that it probably won’t do much damage. You can handle it. Also, you’re far too fatigued to make yourself anything else at the moment. You could save the cake for later at least, but you’ve had some serious sugar cravings lately and decide to just go for it and handle the consequences later, if they come.
Eating is a race against nausea for you at the moment. You’re fairly hungry, but the stone in your body is also pushing against your stomach and making it feel kind of sick. Each bite is delicious, but as the meal gets closer to being done, you find yourself feeling thankful. You finish it off because you know you’ll need the strength later.
Once you’re finished eating, you’re feeling kind of sick to your stomach. You watch some tv and try to ignore it, but you only manage to get through one episode of your current favourite show and with a bit of difficulty. Your ability to pay attention is slowly dwindling. Also, the weight in your stomach has gone from being a benign pain to a bit of an annoyance. As your mom pulls in the driveway, you quickly shut off the tv and make your way out of the living room. You’re in no mood to talk because you’ve just crossed the threshold into:
Stage 3 - The Battle Isn’t Over!
You enter the bathroom and lock the door behind you. The pain is increasing by the minute. It’s a dull and constant ache; no ebb and flow, no throbbing. Just a consistent feeling of pain radiating inside you like someone reached their hands into your abdomen and scratched around in there, and you were left with the inflammation and soreness caused by their rough actions.
You sit down on the toilet to relieve yourself. Things are coming out a bit... looser than you’re used to. It’s uncomfortable and anxiety inducing on top of everything else. The moment you’re about to get up after finishing, a wave of pain washes over you like a steady rise of tidal waters. You pitch your upper body forward and rest your head on your knees, hugging your legs and gritting your teeth as the pain increases. It stays that way for a few minutes (and what feels like an eternity) before subsiding to its initial level. You sit up a bit. Your breathing is somewhat laboured from holding your breath and enduring the wave, and now you’re feeling actually dizzy instead of just lightheaded. You look down at your shaking hands. Your fingernails are starting to turn cold and blue from the blood loss. It seems the battle has finally begun, and is progressing at an alarming rate.
Just as you’re starting to recover, another wave hits you. Somehow, against what you would imagine to be possible, after each wave ebbs out the baseline of your pain increases by a little bit. You’re being assaulted by a constant barrage of attacks. Just as you’re about to get up after being kicked down, another attack comes before you can completely recover. As you begin to really understand the scope of the battle you’ve chosen to fight, you mentally picture enemy forces rising over the horizon as you enter:
Stage 4 - The War.
This is it. The moment where your resolve will be completely tested. You wanted to fight totally unaided and overcome the enemy through your own strength of will. It was a noble thought, but it is at this moment you realize how naïve you’ve been. Still, despite that fact, you haven’t given up yet. You feel your muscles growing weaker as you continue to lose blood and strength. You also feel your body becoming colder which just makes you notice more as the pain inside of you radiates like a hot knife.
Every single sound makes you feel absolutely sickened. A lesser will would have vomited a number of times by now, but you refuse to give in to that feeling. Mostly out of a fear of vomiting that you developed after your first time having the flu when you were 8. The sensation of your hands on your own skin hurts. You’re losing the ability to think or comprehend, and sometimes the pain is so intense that your vision temporarily blurs. The knife keeps stabbing you over and over, twisting around in your delicate flesh. Your mind becomes so desperate to escape that you once more start daydreaming about carving your uterus out and throwing it away. Somehow that seems less painful than what you’re currently experiencing.
You’re contemplating the logistics of that thought when yet another wave hits you. You’ve lost count of how many this makes. Each blow leaves your resolve a little less strong when it’s over. You realize that you’re losing the war.
In hindsight, regardless of the cake consumption, you understand what your biggest fatal flaw was in all of this. Sitting beside your bed the whole time, completely untouched, was your 1.5 L bottle of water. You know from past experience and through research that if you were to have any chance of surviving on your own, you needed to drink that entire thing before it got to this point, no matter how sick that might have initially made you feel. Water reduces inflammation, a key player in this uncomfortable process.
Another thing that has helped you to fight the war solo successfully in the past was bathing in Epsom salts. These were your two greatest tools, like a sword and a shield on the battlefield. Water is your defence, Epsom salts are your offence. But, in your current house, you are minus one bath, making any offense totally impossible. Still, you could have defended yourself more conscientiously. You chastise yourself for being too arrogant.
Your chastisement happens only mentally, however, as you have long ago lost the ability to speak. The pain is so intense that you can barely even form coherent thoughts, let alone put forth the effort to project sound out of your throat. It has become agonizingly apparent that you won’t be walking out of here with your sanity intact if you don’t surrender and take some painkillers. But being unable to call out for help or move leaves you in a bit of a pickle. Even though you now WANT to ask for help, you’re unable.
You’ve been trapped in this position for over an hour, and you’re quite sick of the scenery by this point. You want to rest somewhere comfortable. You want your bed. With your little remaining brain power, you devise a plan. You focus all of your energy on relaxing. You’ve been trying to relax this whole time, as tension makes the cramping worse, but now more than ever you know you absolutely must conserve as much of your energy as possible if you’re going to have a shot at calling for help. Honestly, this whole situation feels a little bit ridiculous to you, but the enemy waves menacingly remind you not to underestimate the seriousness of the situation you’re in.
You wait. You wait some more. You wait for even longer. Finally, after what feels like forever, there is a momentary lull in the action; the opening you’ve been waiting for. You muster up the rest of your strength to send your mom a simple text:
‘Please bring me my water.’
After a few moments, she responds:
‘Ok.’
Before you know it, she enters the room with your giant water bottle in tow. She also manages to figure out what you want it for, and gets you 2 extra strength painkillers. You’re supposed to only take 1, but you know from experience that that never works for this particular problem. You place the 2 tablets in your mouth and aggressively chug as much water as you can to wash them down. Without waiting for the meds to kick in, you clean yourself up and force your body off the toilet and into the shower for another dose of heat, only this time you turn the hot water to almost boiling to distract you from the intense pain you’re in.
After 15 minutes, you step out. For the second time today, you put your pyjamas back on. You really wish you could wear normal clothes, but you can’t risk anything putting pressure on your body.
You stagger out of the bathroom and wobble your way towards your bedroom. You want to go for a walk. You want to study for your classes. You want to clean and organize your room. You want to cook something. As your head and heart fill up with your desired activities, you lay your head on your pillow and pull the covers up over your body. Congratulations; you survived the first day.
THE END
Well, that was an interesting experience. Yes, it was based on true accounts... *ahem*
Anyhoo, I’m going to continue laying here thinking about all the things I wanted to accomplish today. Peace out.
It’s a relatively mild Wednesday morning in November. You’re not quite sound asleep having been disturbed a number of times throughout the night when suddenly you’re awakened once more. This time the disturbance is internal. There is a sensation deep in your abdomen; a weight, like a small round stone has been placed inside your body. You recognize it immediately.
‘Ah,’ you think to yourself, ‘Today is the day.’
You knew this was going to happen very soon, and you’re glad it was on a day you weren’t scheduled to do anything important. Still, you have your plans for the day. You consider the situation for a moment:
‘Well, I’ve been doing pretty good lately. I’ve been walking a lot, getting some good exercise and trying my best to eat properly. Maybe it won’t be so bad today.’
You resolve within yourself to do your best to fight the coming battle without resorting to using medication, since you’d rather not mess any further with your hormones anyway. You feel confident and prepared to take on each of the 4 stages of the coming battle without relying on external forces. You are currently in:
Stage 1 - Today’s The Day
Your body feels unusually fatigued today, even counting the terrible night’s rest you just experienced. Still, you decide you want to start the day off right. Lately, due to classes, you’ve spent every morning getting showered and going for a walk to catch the bus. This led to a feeling of refreshment despite your insomnia. Therefore, you have resolved to start the day with a morning walk, even on your days off. That means you have to get showered and dressed quickly so you can start the day off right.
You attempt to get up off your bed. I say attempt, but really all that happens is you sit perfectly still with the strong intention of getting up. For some reason, your body and your will seem to be at odds with one another. You want to stand, but your legs aren’t responding.
‘... maybe I’ll just ease myself into things a bit slower today. I have been pushing really hard lately. I should rest.’
This is what you tell yourself. You lay back down, and as you do so, a sharp pain like a hot needle stabs its way into your lower back. Even though you have back problems already, it hurts more than usual. This worries you, but you shake off the fear and play some mobile games to get your mind off of things. There’s still plenty of time to have the day you desire.
A couple of hours pass by. You’ve made a lot of great progress in your game, but you’re starting to get antsy. You really want to get ready and start your day off right! However, each time you’ve paused your game and willed yourself out of bed, your limbs still won’t get on board with your intentions. So you’ve been forced to continue laying in bed. You have managed to get up once in this time to go to the bathroom as well as... protect yourself (in whatever form you choose to do so). But beyond that, you haven’t left your room. Your mom eventually comes in to check on you. When you explain what’s going on, she says:
“You’ve been pushing yourself a lot, sweetie. You need to let your body rest.”
You know she’s right, but it feels so weird to just vegetate. You want to be productive. Eventually your mom leaves for an appointment. It’s now 1:30PM. You’ve spent 4 hours in bed since you woke up, and you feel a little disgusted. Maybe your walk isn’t going to happen today after all... maybe that’s okay. This is your day off. Maybe you should relax a little bit.
You decide to keep positive and change your outlook. Once you do this, you suddenly feel a tiny energy burst. You attempt to get out of bed, and this time you’re successful. Congratulations! You’re standing! You’re celebrating your small victory over yourself, but you notice something. Something has changed since you got up this morning. Welcome to:
Stage 2 - The Stone Grows Larger...
That sensation in your abdomen feels different than before. Rather than being small, it seems to have doubled in size. Now that you’re on your feet, you can feel the medium-sized stone weight gently pulling the organs in your abdomen downward, stretching your body from the inside ever so slightly. It’s not an altogether unpleasant feeling, but it’s definitely foreign and there is a tiny aspect of pain to it, like a warm-up stretch being taken a bit too far outside of comfortable. On top of it, your lower back is still mildly in pain; mild as long as you don’t twist it too much. You also feel a bit lightheaded upon rising.
‘Well, I haven’t eaten anything today. And it is the afternoon. Maybe I’m just hungry.’
You decide to take a shower and get cleaned up. Afterwards, you wander to the kitchen and make some fresh steamed rice. You’re keeping positive, but you’re secretly grateful to yourself for making homemade Japanese curry yesterday instead of putting it off until today since the simple act of making rice is proving to be a bit tiring right now. But you won’t allow yourself to consciously acknowledge any of this. You don’t want to demoralize yourself into losing the battle you know is yet to come.
Once the rice is done, you briefly contemplate making sushi hand-rolls since you’ve been craving them for a while, but the ache in your abdomen from being on your feet for too long advises you to heat the curry and sit down to eat.
While retrieving the curry from the fridge, you notice a cute black box you’d forgotten about. Your sister had bought a delicious green tea cheesecake from your favourite Japanese dessert place and saved you half of it. The entire cake had the diameter of a softball, so half a cake isn’t as much as it may sound. The cake has been sitting in the fridge for 2 days, 3 if you count today. Which you do. You decide it would be best for you to eat the cake after your curry so it doesn’t go bad.
Looking at the spread before you, you briefly consider your meal.
“Carbs from the white rice, which is a refined grain. Carbs from the potatoes in the curry. A small amount of sugar in the curry sauce. Caffeine from the matcha in the cake, and of course sugar in the cake... hmmm.”
Looking at the food, you become worried. You know the sugar and caffeine are both highly forbidden in your current condition; they may make the pain completely intolerable in the end. But you reason that it’s such a small amount that it probably won’t do much damage. You can handle it. Also, you’re far too fatigued to make yourself anything else at the moment. You could save the cake for later at least, but you’ve had some serious sugar cravings lately and decide to just go for it and handle the consequences later, if they come.
Eating is a race against nausea for you at the moment. You’re fairly hungry, but the stone in your body is also pushing against your stomach and making it feel kind of sick. Each bite is delicious, but as the meal gets closer to being done, you find yourself feeling thankful. You finish it off because you know you’ll need the strength later.
Once you’re finished eating, you’re feeling kind of sick to your stomach. You watch some tv and try to ignore it, but you only manage to get through one episode of your current favourite show and with a bit of difficulty. Your ability to pay attention is slowly dwindling. Also, the weight in your stomach has gone from being a benign pain to a bit of an annoyance. As your mom pulls in the driveway, you quickly shut off the tv and make your way out of the living room. You’re in no mood to talk because you’ve just crossed the threshold into:
Stage 3 - The Battle Isn’t Over!
You enter the bathroom and lock the door behind you. The pain is increasing by the minute. It’s a dull and constant ache; no ebb and flow, no throbbing. Just a consistent feeling of pain radiating inside you like someone reached their hands into your abdomen and scratched around in there, and you were left with the inflammation and soreness caused by their rough actions.
You sit down on the toilet to relieve yourself. Things are coming out a bit... looser than you’re used to. It’s uncomfortable and anxiety inducing on top of everything else. The moment you’re about to get up after finishing, a wave of pain washes over you like a steady rise of tidal waters. You pitch your upper body forward and rest your head on your knees, hugging your legs and gritting your teeth as the pain increases. It stays that way for a few minutes (and what feels like an eternity) before subsiding to its initial level. You sit up a bit. Your breathing is somewhat laboured from holding your breath and enduring the wave, and now you’re feeling actually dizzy instead of just lightheaded. You look down at your shaking hands. Your fingernails are starting to turn cold and blue from the blood loss. It seems the battle has finally begun, and is progressing at an alarming rate.
Just as you’re starting to recover, another wave hits you. Somehow, against what you would imagine to be possible, after each wave ebbs out the baseline of your pain increases by a little bit. You’re being assaulted by a constant barrage of attacks. Just as you’re about to get up after being kicked down, another attack comes before you can completely recover. As you begin to really understand the scope of the battle you’ve chosen to fight, you mentally picture enemy forces rising over the horizon as you enter:
Stage 4 - The War.
This is it. The moment where your resolve will be completely tested. You wanted to fight totally unaided and overcome the enemy through your own strength of will. It was a noble thought, but it is at this moment you realize how naïve you’ve been. Still, despite that fact, you haven’t given up yet. You feel your muscles growing weaker as you continue to lose blood and strength. You also feel your body becoming colder which just makes you notice more as the pain inside of you radiates like a hot knife.
Every single sound makes you feel absolutely sickened. A lesser will would have vomited a number of times by now, but you refuse to give in to that feeling. Mostly out of a fear of vomiting that you developed after your first time having the flu when you were 8. The sensation of your hands on your own skin hurts. You’re losing the ability to think or comprehend, and sometimes the pain is so intense that your vision temporarily blurs. The knife keeps stabbing you over and over, twisting around in your delicate flesh. Your mind becomes so desperate to escape that you once more start daydreaming about carving your uterus out and throwing it away. Somehow that seems less painful than what you’re currently experiencing.
You’re contemplating the logistics of that thought when yet another wave hits you. You’ve lost count of how many this makes. Each blow leaves your resolve a little less strong when it’s over. You realize that you’re losing the war.
In hindsight, regardless of the cake consumption, you understand what your biggest fatal flaw was in all of this. Sitting beside your bed the whole time, completely untouched, was your 1.5 L bottle of water. You know from past experience and through research that if you were to have any chance of surviving on your own, you needed to drink that entire thing before it got to this point, no matter how sick that might have initially made you feel. Water reduces inflammation, a key player in this uncomfortable process.
Another thing that has helped you to fight the war solo successfully in the past was bathing in Epsom salts. These were your two greatest tools, like a sword and a shield on the battlefield. Water is your defence, Epsom salts are your offence. But, in your current house, you are minus one bath, making any offense totally impossible. Still, you could have defended yourself more conscientiously. You chastise yourself for being too arrogant.
Your chastisement happens only mentally, however, as you have long ago lost the ability to speak. The pain is so intense that you can barely even form coherent thoughts, let alone put forth the effort to project sound out of your throat. It has become agonizingly apparent that you won’t be walking out of here with your sanity intact if you don’t surrender and take some painkillers. But being unable to call out for help or move leaves you in a bit of a pickle. Even though you now WANT to ask for help, you’re unable.
You’ve been trapped in this position for over an hour, and you’re quite sick of the scenery by this point. You want to rest somewhere comfortable. You want your bed. With your little remaining brain power, you devise a plan. You focus all of your energy on relaxing. You’ve been trying to relax this whole time, as tension makes the cramping worse, but now more than ever you know you absolutely must conserve as much of your energy as possible if you’re going to have a shot at calling for help. Honestly, this whole situation feels a little bit ridiculous to you, but the enemy waves menacingly remind you not to underestimate the seriousness of the situation you’re in.
You wait. You wait some more. You wait for even longer. Finally, after what feels like forever, there is a momentary lull in the action; the opening you’ve been waiting for. You muster up the rest of your strength to send your mom a simple text:
‘Please bring me my water.’
After a few moments, she responds:
‘Ok.’
Before you know it, she enters the room with your giant water bottle in tow. She also manages to figure out what you want it for, and gets you 2 extra strength painkillers. You’re supposed to only take 1, but you know from experience that that never works for this particular problem. You place the 2 tablets in your mouth and aggressively chug as much water as you can to wash them down. Without waiting for the meds to kick in, you clean yourself up and force your body off the toilet and into the shower for another dose of heat, only this time you turn the hot water to almost boiling to distract you from the intense pain you’re in.
After 15 minutes, you step out. For the second time today, you put your pyjamas back on. You really wish you could wear normal clothes, but you can’t risk anything putting pressure on your body.
You stagger out of the bathroom and wobble your way towards your bedroom. You want to go for a walk. You want to study for your classes. You want to clean and organize your room. You want to cook something. As your head and heart fill up with your desired activities, you lay your head on your pillow and pull the covers up over your body. Congratulations; you survived the first day.
THE END
Well, that was an interesting experience. Yes, it was based on true accounts... *ahem*
Anyhoo, I’m going to continue laying here thinking about all the things I wanted to accomplish today. Peace out.