Periods, Hormones and Moods.

I’m warning you now, if you are male, or if you are adverse to hearing about that time of the month etc, then this post is definitely not for you.  

This is not a funny or light hearted post.  It’s not an uplifting, or happy post.  In fact, it’s not nice, period.

Each woman is affected differently to a certain degree. I know that there are a few who don’t seem to be affected at all, or can handle all of it and take it with a pinch of salt.  I am not one of them.  I wish I was. 

I don’t suffer too badly from pains and I know people who do.  I feel sorry for them, as I would for any innocent person who is experiencing discomfort but I have a feeling that it has to be easier to live with than the mental side of it.  You can take tablets that will rid you of the pain and have no side effects.

I am not trivialising period pain at all.  I am just trying to get my point across.  I suppose it works both ways and unless you have it, you can’t comment.

I go through stages.  I can be irritable, emotional, argumentative, forgetful, clumsy or mothering.  Mostly, I am ‘evil’ one to two weeks before my actual period. 

According to Him, I am, ‘horrible, over the top and not from this planet’.  He says that during that week, he can say one thing and I will take something completely unrelated from it. 

During ‘red week’ apparently I am distant and separate.  The following week, he says I am highly sexed and ‘all over him’.  The week after that, I am indifferent. ?!? Good eh?  

The weekly schedule I have, would suggest that I am only ‘normal’ for 1 to two weeks of every cycle.  The ‘time of the month’ has gotta be the least accurate name for it.  I remember being taught about this at school and the nurse said we would lose about one teaspoons worth at most and that it only lasts 3 days.

I can be filled with self loathing during, well, I actually don’t quite know when, in relation to ‘Arsenal playing at home week’, but I can literally hate myself.  I doubt myself,   shout and act instantly on irrational anger and then feel incredibly emotional and guilty afterwards.  It is not something I feel able to control really. I’m not as bad as some who go and cause physical damage on people and blame their periods.  Those poor women!

I get a real prickly rage in my arms and chest.  I grit my teeth and try not to get into conversation with anyone I care for, for fear of saying something hateful and then feeling overcome by guilt and bursting into floods of tears.  Embarrassing for all involved really!

The rage and upset is definitely the worst part of it.  I have suggested taking pills for it but oddly enough, He has talked me out of it.  So, I have never even enquired at the Doctors. 

I read an article a while ago where the woman who’d written it said something along the lines of, ‘stop living with it. It is your choice to do nothing about it when you know there are pills that can quash it. Therefore, it is your choice to be like it, stop moaning. That’s what I did and although I was apprehensive, I haven’t regretted it once’.

I don’t want to be reliant on anything.  I definitely don’t want to change my personality, or become a different person, (I’m thinking Jack Nicholson’s character after the lobotomy in ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’)!

I get head aches, sometimes feel dizzy, as though I am not focussing correctly and can’t finish things I’ve started, (apart from chocolate).



Hormones are such powerful things.  We're thinking of booking our holiday and I am desperately farting about with dates so as not to go when I am at my most ferocious or fragile.  I don't want to attract sharks either!

WOAH BODYFOOOORM !

  People trivialise the effects of hormones and men roll their eyes at women, using them as an excuse for being ‘difficult’, or ‘high maintenance’.  I bet if Hitler, Pol Pot and Genghis Khan had been women, there’d be a few historians and psycho-bods raising a collective eyebrow and giving a nod in agreement towards the probability that they were ‘on the blob’, during their worst acts of tyranny!

I met my friend Marie for a coffee the other day and as I walked over to her, thought how well she looked.  Fresh faced and apart from wearing a dodgy teal coloured jumper thing, (which I later questioned her about – helpful, I know), she looked younger and very pretty.  Her reply was that she felt awful.  She thought she looked like shit! For the next 5 minutes, I listened astounded, as she verbally destroyed herself.  Bearing in mind that this is the same Marie, whom I say should be a therapist.  A woman who is normally so together and so fantastic at advising others and also doesn’t worry about what others may think if she feels she is right, (and usually is), had just crumbled before my very eyes.

At work, we can usually tell when each other are hormonal.  My poor colleagues get the brunt of mine and I sincerely apologise to them for that.  I get snapped at regularly by them as well.

So, what am I going to do about it?   I don’t know.  I bought Agnus Castus and I think I felt a little more emotional whilst on it.  I take evening primrose sporadically and so I don’t think it’d be able to do its magic.

I have no idea what the best coping mechanism is.  Actually, I don’t want to cope with it.  I want to be rid of it.  I have had my beautiful babies and don’t want anymore.  I could have a hysterectomy!!! Knowing my hormones, I’d probably grow a full on pirates beard! 

So, come on, what do you do? How do you cope? Have any of you taken happy pills? Or do you have other remedies?  Is there some ancient pagan secret that can completely rid me of all the crap and make me instead feel like the sexy high priestess of womanhood and femininity? 

Let me know… Laters Blood!

Here's a couple of links you might enjoy

http://www.moodstr.com/

www.goop.com