Maybe it's the hormone spill-over or something but in between sending hate mails to people I don't really hate and resenting my actions in general, there comes a time when I see my blood shed. A break within the break from normality when I'm reminded that- oopsie, we've got a bloody problem here.
I've gone over this for exactly one hundred months as of today. Ever since it started for the first time. The very bloody menarche. I'm no great with the biology of it but I really do try to rationalize the foul mood and the bad behaviour that stems out of it due to all this hormone curdling during one's menstrual cycle.
After every little girl's initial shock towards the blood, she learns to de-sensitize herself to it. She's conditioned to think of it all as "a natural process" and "it must happen" and "that's how it is". This mute acceptance and the ability to ignore the constant discomfort and pain is a skill that she must acquire. I was "gifted" with the ability to nurture a baby within me a little before the age of 12. Little girls these days receive this "gift" as early as when they are 8 years old (due to various factors and that's another story).
Have you ever stepped back from it and looked at it as something that is other than a necessary evil? Why the hormones? Why the blood-shedding? Why the foul mood?
What is it like for a woman to discover that her body worked for an entire month, gathering every particle of extra energy, consuming her nutrition to create a bed of blood in her womb for a life that never happened?
What is it like for a woman to know that it will happen again in another month's time?
What is it like for a woman to stand in her bathroom and look at the body she lives in and suddenly hate the ugliness of it?
How disorienting it must be for her- especially since it was the same body she admired just two weeks ago when she ovulated?
What is it like for a woman to lean against her bathroom wall, blacking out? What is it like for her to see her blood flow out uselessly? Her BLOOD.
I saw the tissue lining of my uterus leave me today- a soft blob with a semi-solid consistency on the bathroom floor. It was a part of me that was dead. It was a part of a prospective somebody that was dead. It had to go because it had hit a certain expiration date and my body could not afford to keep something stale inside me.
I know for a fact that my body made that blood bed with love. Biology textbooks call it the "placenta" but today, it looked like the neglected earth that was meant for the seeds of the future. And as I write this, my eyes foolishly fill up with tears.
It is in my nature to want to be a mother. No wonder my hormones protest when body isn't given what it wants. I am reminded of an entry from the Journals of Sylvia Plath. It goes like this:
There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it. I can feel it when I think of human beings, of the hints of evolution suggested by the removal of wisdom teeth, the narrowing of the jaw no longer needed to chew such roughage as it was accustomed to; the gradual disappearance of hair from the human body; the adjustment of the human eye to the fine print, the swift, coloured motion of the twentieth century. The feeling comes, vague and nebulous, when I consider the prolonged adolescence of our species; the rites of birth, marriage and death; all the primitive, barbaric ceremonies streamlined to modern times. Almost, I think, the unreasoning , bestial purity was best. Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.
Similarly, I see how evolution has streamlined us to modern times. I feel that the bestial purity was best. A nature versus nurture struggle happens between my head and my womb. I sit here, pajamas stretched taut against my cushioning stomach and curving hips. I don't feel fat. I merely feel domestic. There is some innate compulsion to reproduce that I cannot deny myself.
On the other hand, I know I cannot sit around wanting to be a mommy. I know I have an internship report to hand in. I know I have some assignments to do right away. I cannot want to be domestic when I have to complete my B.A, M.A, M.Phil and several Ph.Ds.
'What non-sense! Mother, it seems', snaps Rationality at me.
I cannot escape the holy trinity of Achievement-Fame-Fortune. I cannot plant my bum at home and be a woman.
An early menopause is required. Let's be practical, here. Nobody needs babies in this day and age. Nobody needs a man, either. And there are plenty of babies lying around to be picked up, already, right? Menstruation is SO three generations ago. Why hasn't evolution made it redundant, yet?
'Who are you kidding?'. the motherly womb clucks back. I think of my Prince-Charming-In-Shining-Armour-Holding-The-Door-For-Me. Of course, I need to menstruate! How else will I have Prince Charming's babies? A boy, a boy and a little baby girl.
But in one colossal blow, reality sets on my menopause. Dreams are shattered. Deadlines are set. I prepare for college and life in general.
I've gone over this for exactly one hundred months as of today. Ever since it started for the first time. The very bloody menarche. I'm no great with the biology of it but I really do try to rationalize the foul mood and the bad behaviour that stems out of it due to all this hormone curdling during one's menstrual cycle.
After every little girl's initial shock towards the blood, she learns to de-sensitize herself to it. She's conditioned to think of it all as "a natural process" and "it must happen" and "that's how it is". This mute acceptance and the ability to ignore the constant discomfort and pain is a skill that she must acquire. I was "gifted" with the ability to nurture a baby within me a little before the age of 12. Little girls these days receive this "gift" as early as when they are 8 years old (due to various factors and that's another story).
Have you ever stepped back from it and looked at it as something that is other than a necessary evil? Why the hormones? Why the blood-shedding? Why the foul mood?
What is it like for a woman to discover that her body worked for an entire month, gathering every particle of extra energy, consuming her nutrition to create a bed of blood in her womb for a life that never happened?
What is it like for a woman to know that it will happen again in another month's time?
What is it like for a woman to stand in her bathroom and look at the body she lives in and suddenly hate the ugliness of it?
How disorienting it must be for her- especially since it was the same body she admired just two weeks ago when she ovulated?
What is it like for a woman to lean against her bathroom wall, blacking out? What is it like for her to see her blood flow out uselessly? Her BLOOD.
I saw the tissue lining of my uterus leave me today- a soft blob with a semi-solid consistency on the bathroom floor. It was a part of me that was dead. It was a part of a prospective somebody that was dead. It had to go because it had hit a certain expiration date and my body could not afford to keep something stale inside me.
I know for a fact that my body made that blood bed with love. Biology textbooks call it the "placenta" but today, it looked like the neglected earth that was meant for the seeds of the future. And as I write this, my eyes foolishly fill up with tears.
It is in my nature to want to be a mother. No wonder my hormones protest when body isn't given what it wants. I am reminded of an entry from the Journals of Sylvia Plath. It goes like this:
There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it. I can feel it when I think of human beings, of the hints of evolution suggested by the removal of wisdom teeth, the narrowing of the jaw no longer needed to chew such roughage as it was accustomed to; the gradual disappearance of hair from the human body; the adjustment of the human eye to the fine print, the swift, coloured motion of the twentieth century. The feeling comes, vague and nebulous, when I consider the prolonged adolescence of our species; the rites of birth, marriage and death; all the primitive, barbaric ceremonies streamlined to modern times. Almost, I think, the unreasoning , bestial purity was best. Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.
Similarly, I see how evolution has streamlined us to modern times. I feel that the bestial purity was best. A nature versus nurture struggle happens between my head and my womb. I sit here, pajamas stretched taut against my cushioning stomach and curving hips. I don't feel fat. I merely feel domestic. There is some innate compulsion to reproduce that I cannot deny myself.
On the other hand, I know I cannot sit around wanting to be a mommy. I know I have an internship report to hand in. I know I have some assignments to do right away. I cannot want to be domestic when I have to complete my B.A, M.A, M.Phil and several Ph.Ds.
'What non-sense! Mother, it seems', snaps Rationality at me.
I cannot escape the holy trinity of Achievement-Fame-Fortune. I cannot plant my bum at home and be a woman.
An early menopause is required. Let's be practical, here. Nobody needs babies in this day and age. Nobody needs a man, either. And there are plenty of babies lying around to be picked up, already, right? Menstruation is SO three generations ago. Why hasn't evolution made it redundant, yet?
'Who are you kidding?'. the motherly womb clucks back. I think of my Prince-Charming-In-Shining-Armour-Holding-The-Door-For-Me. Of course, I need to menstruate! How else will I have Prince Charming's babies? A boy, a boy and a little baby girl.
But in one colossal blow, reality sets on my menopause. Dreams are shattered. Deadlines are set. I prepare for college and life in general.
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