Monday 16 January 2017

A letter to My Period

Dear Period,

Who are you? I have heard many men spoke about us women as complicated as they asked who we are. I am led to believe that you play a major role in this and yet, here I am, a woman, asking who are you?

This month you showed up on time, but you visited me with your cramps some two weeks before.  Then you came with your headaches and belly aches and your insomnia. Why wouldn’t you allow me to sleep? What have I done to you?

I have been trying to figure you out for years. I have been very lucky, I supposed, to always know what time you would come.  I have heard several of my friends complaint about your lack of manners just showing up when and where you feel like and when you do, you appear to want to make up for the time you did not come, lasting weeks and sometimes months, and then you would leave and stay away for months again. You remind me of some baby fathers who appear with their two big scandal bag of groceries after months of not seeing them, somewhat believing that they are doing the world of good and can make up for the time of their absence. We hate men like those!

I am glad you have not done that to me because I would be pissed! I am super organized and you just would not have fitted in. Yet, you still trouble me; the mysteries that surround you are overwhelming. Month after month, I see a new face. Sometimes, you visit and have me snapping at everyone, husband, parents, siblings, child and even the dog for just looking at me.

Then another month, I am an emotional wreck. It is all about the tears I do not understand. I am not normally a 'bawler' Misses Period, but you! I am afraid to go to the movies or even out in public because all it might take is for a dog to pee on the sidewalk to make me cry and ask, why can’t men tie their dogs and keep them at home? Why do they let them roam and destroy our beautiful surrounding?
Do I have any good memories of you? I think in the absence of you, when I got pregnant with my daughter. Oh what a joy and relief. I needed that time off to see where our relationship stood. I wondered throughout the pregnancy if I should end the relationship completely. I wanted more than a separation. I wanted a divorce, but alas, here we are together again. You won because I was thinking then about another child. Sigh!


I guess I should be grateful. I hear you whisper every month, if I remember. Yes I remembered how you use to have me as teenage and young adult curled up on the bed before moving to the floor. I was your slave then and you enjoyed it. I tried pain killers upon pain killers and you pretended as if they worked before you spat in my face. You had me twisting and turning like a ship on a stormy day and there were other times I felt like an acrobat in the Olympic Games. You would bend me in some super positions that I thought were beyond me and then give me a break from your pain and in fear of you, I would stay in that position until I could not anymore. You were such a monster! So yes I remember. That’s why it was so easy for me to do that surgery. When everyone else was in fear, I was smiling. I broke your arms and legs. I should have ended you!