Oh No! It's That Time Of The Month Again!
©Jan Andersen 2001
I like to think of myself as a rational, tolerant, pacifistic kind of woman, who wouldn't normally say things like, "What the hell do you think you're staring at?" when someone has held my gaze for more than 0.1 seconds. Nor would I typically wave my middle finger out of the car window, when the chap in front doesn't move away from the traffic lights with the speed and dexterity of a Formula One racing driver.
I'm not normally prone to sobbing helplessly into my pillow when I wake up in the night and discover that my partner is laying with his back towards me, igniting all sorts of irrational thoughts about how he can't love me as much if he doesn't want his body sweatily glued to mine all night.
"What's up sweetheart?" my partner will ask, as he is disturbed by a foghorn sound, created by my attempts to clear my heavily, weeping induced, congested nasal passage.
"Dothing", comes the standard, nasal reply. "Just got a bit of a blocked dose," I continue, as I cast yet another damp tissue onto the floor by the bed.
Accepting my explanation, he rolls sleepily over and is purring contentedly within five seconds flat. This sets me off again, as another river of tears flows relentlessly into my ears and hair and I empty the box of paper hankies, whilst contemplating everything awful that has ever happened to me in the past, everything that is wrong with my life now and everything harrowing that will inevitably occur in the future.
So, why do I behave like this?
Is it because I am depressed, I hear you asking? No, it's not. Neither is it because I've suffered a bereavement or undergone some harrowing experience that has caused me to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
It is simply because, horror of horrors, it's that time of the month again. The week that every male hitched up to a woman with an even vaguely functioning reproductive system views with dread. The crampy, irritable and disquieting week prior to my period.
Men are terrified by anything that revolves loosely around the word "hormones". In fact, they would rather trap their dick in their zipper than discuss a woman's menstrual cycle. The closest they come to talking about the "P" word (period that is, not penis), is offering something helpful like, "Are you due?" just after you've flung the third pair of jeans across the room because they won't fasten over your bloated, water-retentive abdomen.
The Rastafarians, according to my partner, have the best solution. Not only are women banned from the house during their menstrual cycle, but they are not allowed to cook. Is this idea fundamentally flawed? Definitely not, says my partner, since they have two women on the boil with alternating cycles! "A religion made in heaven", he added.
However, when you consider that women who live in close proximity to each other generally synchronise their menstrual cycles, in reality that means that the Rastafarians must experience two weeks of hell each month, not to mention a period (forgive the pun) of starvation in every sense of the word.
The words rational, level-headed and sane don't feature in a pre-menstrual woman's dictionary.
If my partner happens to comment that it must be cold on the set of Friends, because Jennifer Aniston's erect nipples are visible through her top, then during my pre-menstrual phase, this signifies that he is lusting after other women. Mind you, I'm sure that if I made a similar comment about Matthew Perry's genitals, it would be received far greater overemotional reaction, at any time in the male month.
With pre-menstrual tension comes extreme clumsiness, which means having crockery inexplicably flying out of your hands and arriving at its accidental destination in substantially more pieces than it had when it slid from your grasp, to cracking the prominent and most sensitive bony parts of your limbs and torso on any inanimate entity that happens to be remotely within your personal space.
Any such mishap is inevitably followed up by a string of offensive expletives, spat with venom at the offending inanimate object and followed up by tears of frustration and half a pack of Evening Primrose Oil capsules (or Prozac, if you're lucky), washed down with a glass of wine.
This clumsiness also extends to tripping over your words, with the subsequent inability to intelligibly string more than two letters together without sounding like a babbling six-month-old baby.
This is most fitting if you happen to be a mum at home with a six-month-old baby, but very inconvenient if this phase just happens to coincide with a first date or a crucial business meeting. I'm certain that many potential relationships, both personal and commercial, have failed to move past the first hurdle, after the companion or associate has spent a few hours with someone who appears to be a completely inarticulate thicko, or else spaced out on some illegal substance.
However, it is not women who use their impending period as an excuse for behaving like a mental patient on day release. It's men. Any display of emotion other that total ecstasy prompts helpful remarks such as, "I can tell you must be approaching blob week again", signifying that every negative reaction is related to the functioning of the womb. Well, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that the man in their life has just behaved like a complete arsehole, could it?
My partner is fully au fait with the mechanisms of the female reproductive system. And, thankfully, he doesn't automatically assume that my insides are about to drop out if I snap at him for leaving the toilet seat up or his dirty socks in the middle of the bedroom floor.
Only last month, after I'd had a tantrum because he'd consumed the last two cookies without my knowledge, he volunteered to go the shops to buy me a huge bar of chocolate. My wrath subsided and I went all gooey-eyed, marvelling at what a wonderful, caring and understanding partner I had. Then, just before he left, he popped his head around the door and ruined the spontaneity by enquiring, "By the way, do you need me to buy you some tampons whilst I'm out?"
***************************************************************************************
On a more serious note, PMS is a condition that can cause misery for many women for anything from a couple of days to two weeks each month. At its worst, some women have been driven to commit the most heinous of crimes, including grievous bodily harm and murder, but more usually sufferers become irritable, weepy and develop cravings for certain foods, chocolate being the most common. The most severe form of PMS is known as PMDD (pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder) and impairs a woman's ability to function in everyday situations such as home, work and social interactions. Research suggests that of the 80% of women who suffer from some degree of PMS, approximately 20% of these are PMDD sufferers.
There are many theories regarding the cause of PMS, one of the most well-known being a hormonal imbalance, but new research suggests that it can be caused by cyclical irregularities in the brain's neurotransmitters, particularly serotonin. By using phototherapy (exposure to bright light), which naturally causes the brain to produce serotonin, PMS symptoms can be decreased in sufferers. However, there are still numerous other possibilities and cures and the only way of knowing what is best for the individual sufferer is to embark on a series of suggested remedies to find out which one works. Taking Evening Primrose Oil may work for some sufferers, for example, whereas a simple change in diet may work for others.
To whatever degree a woman suffers, it is not pleasant, either for her or her family and it is a condition that deserves effective treatment.
Useful resources:
