I resist. Each month. Same day. I know it’s coming. I know the fix. I know how to be comfortable. Still, I resist the comfort. There is no real purpose for the resistance. It is not about my beliefs about western medicine. It is not about my belief about authority figures. It just is. I am supposed to be able to handle it. I’ve been telling myself this over and over again for almost 4 decades. Each year it gets worse and I allow myself the masochistic dive into it. Three days usually, 72 hours, 4,320 minutes of the darkest, lowest, sharpest, continuous agony. This is a gift though because I am on birth control pills. If I was not, the 72 hours would easily be 168 or more. A gift. I take it as this. I buckle down, and lay in bed with my phone and stay there unable to live my life. I lie in bed with food my only comfort against the throbbing.
It is Thursday. Day 1. I see it a week away. Count how many pills before. Look at my calendar. What is scheduled to be done at work? What did I plan not thinking that Day 1 was coming? I am 41 and finally smart enough to find ways to make it less. I cancel plans, change lesson plans to ensure I am not actively doing much, do as much as I can. Still. There is a Henna party coming, a wedding happening, and progress report narratives looming. So, I look at my pills and make the decision. I have to skip it this month knowing I will possibly bleed for 5 weeks after. It is the sacrifice I have to make for now.
I sit with this decision for a long time staring at the pill and remember last year, the same month, 5 weeks. I bled for 5 weeks and transitioned into a hybrid classroom, while training a substitute on all the systems in my department. I bled. I did not at that time have the luxury of staying in bed for the pain days. Instead, I started my first week with students, in a pandemic, as a high risk person for COVID-19, without a vaccine in my body. While my body contracted to pass clot after clot, I figured out how to teach students at home and in person simultaneously. I use “figured out” extremely loosely here. By figured out I mean I was there, it happened, and it ended. None of it was the feeling of what I was so used to with my profession of then 15 years. I bled for 5 weeks during my first month back in the classroom in October of 2021 and that memory will remain a horrific event in my life to date.
I am in the student center, on my way up four flights of stairs about to teach class when my principal stops me to communicate about a student. I am in so much pain that I lean into the lunch tables for support as I listen. He does not see it on my face because it is so easy to not show any of it on the outside. Underneath, my body is bleeding. Inside, outside, everywhere. I can feel the flooding in my pad and think, can I make it through the next period without changing it or should I squeeze in a restroom stop in the 2 minutes that remain between classes. All the while, responding to my principal about the student we need to discuss. I inhale deeply when he finishes, and walk away, deciding to teach the full period and hope that I do not leak. These days I wear only black when I menstruate. It is the safest. I will leak, even if I think I am covered, I will leak. I have finally learned my lesson. After wearing sky blue pants to the 8th grade awards ceremony and knowing there was a blood stain in between my thighs while I called up my students and hugged them in front of the entire middle school, thanking the gods from above that I had thick enough legs to not show the stain to the world. So now I wear black, leaks are normal. The flooding is normal. The contractions are normal. The laying in bed for two full days on the weekend, also normal. Only to me and my husband though. No one else would say this occurrence is normal. Not even other women would say it. But I do. I say it to myself every month. Every 28 days. I say it. Force myself to believe I am not different. I can handle the pain.
So I lay in bed and resist the prescription pain meds that I know will give me enough energy to at least sit up. I torment myself with thoughts of judgment and “you are not good enough’s” and “this is why you are fat’s”. They are my pain meds. They are the only relief I’m accustomed to. I do not want to climb out of the dark den I’ve created for this time. I am comfortable. It is normal.
Until Neil comes and says, “did you take your meds?” I am laying on my side, staining the sheets because that is what I do now. I stain all the things even with the largest pad in the world in my panty. No I say, staring at the wall.
“Why not?”
It’s a logical, concrete thing for him. He is a doctor. If you are in pain, you take the meds and allow your body to heal and let yourself be comfortable. I understand the logic. It is clear to me and I resist. There is no purpose to the resistance. It is just easier to stay here than pick myself up, and take the meds. Here I can sink into the cozy hole I have spent decades creating. One that convincingly pulls me inward so that I am not here nor there. Just breathing through every contraction and berating myself for not eating the right things, and being fat and not working out.
I look up and Neil has brought over the nasal spray pain meds to my side of the bed. I take it, scoot up, and squirt it up my right nostril. It burns all the way done. A fiery tunnel of sharp currents glides down my throat. I look at the time. 2 o’clock. I have 30 minutes of pain before relief. The last little bit; I relish. Hands on my stomach, I rub in circular motion. My swollen belly eases slightly at my touch. And I am awake again, pain free for the next 6 hours, blood pooling in my underwear, but comfortable.
