Bleeding

I do it every month. For a whole week. And there's no tiny toons bandaid I can put on it. And you know what's worse, all my life, I've been thinking that I have to pretend that it's ok, I'm ok.
Well it's not. And I'm not. I'm bleeding profusely and uninterruptedly! I can feel my own body tearing itself apart, literally, and then shedding itself rather grotesquely and graphically. Yeah yeah, I don't buy that the whole self-renewal theory applies here.

I have to admit it now, it's part of my self purging: I actually thought it was woozy (I know that's not a word, but the opinion really isn't ready for a real word, don't you think?) for us women to say oh but my period just started and I'm cramping terribly so no, I can't. I can't to whatever: hang out, have this conversation, run that errand… I would feel a certain disdain for that excuse, I would never accept it as a real excuse. I used to think well suck it up and deal with it, it's part of life, and this kind of attitude is what's kept us hitting the glass pad. I know, I know, I'm repenting.

But as I go through the journey of realizing that I have to accept and confront things and not remain in denial, it sunk in. 'You know what, I should not be forced to be as rigorous and productive during Aunt Flow's visits.' I have no explanation for this, but neither do I have a choice (one of the very, very few areas I can actually say that latter bit about). And, I believe that my gender's scientifically-proven greater capacity for physical endurance more than makes up for it, as does my intelligence quotient as a woman.

While I'm sometimes equally as un-thrilled about spiritually-based limitations on menstruating women, some that I hear about in other cultures, some that I adhere to, I sometimes think that maybe these seeming limitations were at some point constructed by women themselves to give us some time off. I mean don't use it as a license to be a raging hormonal monster, but at the same time who wants to cook three meals every single day? (Link to that thought, fyi: I've heard that in some cultures it used to be, or maybe still is, that menstruating women aren't allowed in the kitchen or to cook or something) (By the tangential way, part of all that feminist baggage has been confronted and I have just begun to admit that I do enjoy cooking - but only when I don't have to do it. Tangent # 2: Hmm, is that akin to enjoying writing when I don't have to write? By writing being an integral part of my professional choices, I hardly write for catharsis or leisure – I even associate my prized laptop with work and distance myself from it when actively trying to relax.)

So, I'm thinking of recommending to my wonderfully forward thinking corporate clients that they should have policies giving women flex times (at the very least) during their special time of the month – or wait, you know what no more pseudo-euphemisms, scratch that, during the days when their uterus self destructs and bleeds to death, only to regenerate and re-kill itself. Sounds like some torture technique out of hell, doesn't it? It's true. I'm grateful that I rarely feel horribly – in fact when it started to bleed to semi-death this afternoon somehow I instantly went into this holiday-mood, well not full-swing, but I was kind of happy. Don't ask me to explain everything – that's half the bane of my existence, or so many close and dear ones tell me,: that I over-think everything.

So what do you think?

We get maternity and paternity leave, don't we? We've accepted that it's a biological need we can't deny until science figures out how men can give birth. Not as an enforcement, but as a choice. If you want go full-swing and be discreet about your suffering, that's fine too. But if you'd rather work from home in your pajamas, at the very least, then wouldn't you like to have that option? So why not - at least for the first day of our uterine self-destruction?