Week 27: Period. Literally.

Fair warning: I'll be talking a lot about period, the red tide, aunty-coming, datang haid, 'lei-yeh', eeeyer or whatever else you want to call it. leave now if you get squirmish around blood. [bolded and in red to stress how serious i am]

[Edit 12:31 am Sunday - at the bottom of the post]

girls, don't you just hate it when you're about to menstruate? i don't know if this phenomenon is universal, but each time it happens to me, logic and reason is thrown out the door - and along with it, my sanity.

for a week prior to menstruation, i become highly stressed over the littlest things - like cooking, or sleeping, or work, or words. and highly irrational. and my head is swamped and done in by a thousand thoughts - all of which are unimportant and none of which i should be thinking about.

and just when i think my mood swings can't get anymore worse because they're already spinning at 153253249820634924320 rpms, it pulls a Large Hadron Collider-esque stunt ala 10 September 2008 and completes a full swing. and then my heart plummets because the vortex created by the swinging emotions draws my heart down down down into the pseudo black hole in my psyche.

and when my menses DO arrive (e.g. like, today!), my sanity and ability to reason and rationalise returns. yet, although i'm no longer a raving yet sullen (oxymoron) female, i am not happy! i hate getting my menses because my next 3-4 days is all but written off due to cramps and curling under covers. i have not met a girl who rejoices in getting her menses - however, do keep in mind that, being naturally introverted and suspicious about the fairer gender, i don't really meet a lot of girls anyway.

i can only think of two reasons why a girl would rejoice when she is menstruating:

1. masochism.
2. she is sexually active yet not ready to have kids.

i am hardly masochistic. i prefer to see myself as slightly sadistic or displaying schadenfreude-ic tendencies. but masochistic, i am not. when i am writhing in pain because my uterus feels obliged to knot itself up and rip itself out of my body already weakened by a loss of blood, i remember and think about that paternal sperm who carried the X-chromosome and not the Y, and i curse and swear. i do not revel in the pain as, i assume, a masochist would. instead, i pump myself with panadol and naprogesic.

and since i am not sexually active, i have no reason to rejoice and be thankful that my uterus will not be implanted by a fertilised egg when my menses arrives. hooray! yet another month saved! i think not. maybe, when i finally become sexually active, i might appreciate my menses abit more, but for the meantime, i can't think of anything except PAIN!

. . .

on a side-note, is that what's happening to our government at the moment? is it undergoing its own little pre-menstrual syndrome experience? because for the life of me, the decisions that they're making makes my irrationality seem like 500-page dissertation on the role of interneurons in the development of bladder control of neonates. something smart and sane and rational yet incredibly boring like that. my dissertation, not their decisions.

. . .

i have decided to share some delightful anecdotes of when i had my period. maybe then you can understand the infinite store of hate i have for it.

Anecdote #1.

when i was in early high school, i was at the peak of my period cramps. one day, the cramps were so damn bad, i actually vomited all over the school padang, in front of the people playing basketball AND the love-of-my-then-life, Chooi. fucking embarrassing ok? then my friends hauled me down to the public telephone booth to call my mom so that she could come pick me up (pre-handphone days). again, i vomited all over the ground near the booth. my friends decided i was in no shape to be holding a conversation and forced my mom's number out of me by sheer will. after the call was placed, they hauled my ass back into the classroom, where i once again vomited all over. however this time, since all my solids had been up-chucked in the two previous times, all that came out was water - thank god.

by that time, i didn't care about embarassment anymore, all i wanted was enough money for a sex change and hormone injections. everyone was staring at me like i had contracted some sort of disease and i fell asleep. then my mom came. hooray. i get to go home and lie down and sleep and drink sirap bandung and eat panadol while you guys have to sit through maths and moral and SEJARAH! fucking subject that sapped me of my life force (no la i just hate Form 5 sejarah oni).

Anecdote #2.

my family and two others (Ho and Wong...and Ho) went to pulau ketam for seafood cos apparently it's the shit there (LITERALLY HAHAHA OMG PULAU KETAM IS AN EYE-OPENER!). anyway, it was my first day and that's normally when my cramps are at their worst. i guzzled panadol for precaution but the long train ride to port klang and subsequent boat ride (foul air and rocking motion) was too much for panadol to handle. the moment i got off that damned boat, i hurled myself to the side of the jetty and upchucked my breakfast. then the exciting part happened!

for the first time i actually felt faint and blacked out - but not really blacked out it was more of like white-out. cos my vision slowly became brighter and brighter and finally i couldn't see anything except light! and i couldn't walk! and i was thinking omg damn cool i'm gonna pengsan first time WOOT! then my dad hauled my ass over to the restaurant and uncle fizzy hunted down panadol and pumped me full with it again. after which, i fell asleep and when i woke up all the seafood they were having were gone! what the fuck damn sad.

ok la enough suffering for tonight. seeing the amount of panadol i consume, i think i'm qualified to be a spokesperson for them.