What is it like to spend most of your life without a menstrual cycle and then get thrown into the world of periods later in your life? I’m 39, but I’ve spent most of my life without the chaos of these hormones. Learning to live with them now, is a steep learning curve. If you are going through it, you aren’t alone.
Periods and mental health – when you aren’t used to having them.
I’m not someone who likes bodily fluids or talking about them, so this writing has pushed me out of my comfort zone totally. However, as you get older you realise, you aren’t alone, and if it affects you, it may affect someone else too. I hope this blog piece might do that one day.
It’s been one of the most challenging weeks of this year.
Everything that I’ve tried to keep under control and not feel overwhelmed by rose to the surface and threatened to drown me no matter what efforts were made by my family. I just felt it was all totally over and out of control.
Depression
The darkness got worse and worse, and with it, the fatigue and the exhaustion, the combined fatigue, exhaustion, overwhelming depression, and anxiety. It felt as though I was going to be suffocated under a blanket of negativity.
A cycle of negativity
Everything I tried to do went wrong. Everything I tried to say came out badly. I felt broken, absolutely, utterly broken, and kept crying, crying, crying, crying. I was always crying, just crying. It was all too much. I was a failure. I was broken. I was back in that trap cycle of despair, knowing that no matter what I did, it wasn’t going to be enough and I wasn’t going to sort this all out and everything else in between.
A call from the blue
Then, out of the blue, a new friend messaged me. Far, far away in a different country, a different time zone and she asked how I was, and I know the set answer is, ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ Just tickety boo. It’s all rosy here in the pink. Tickety boo. But quite frankly, I just thought I couldn’t be bothered with the effort of pretending anymore. So I answered her honestly, not thinking that I’d get anything back other than maybe just some ‘kind’ of commiserations. And ‘it will get better’. Something along those lines.
But, lo and behold, from America, she rang me. Dear girl, she said, her wonderful, soft American tones dancing down the phone line, is there any chance that you could be near to your monthly cycle?
Periods are a new thing for me
I spent years, absolute decades, hating any talk of the blood that comes once a month to women. And yet, oh God, at the same time, I know that for all who get their monthly cycle, it is a huge blessing and yet at times for many an inconvenience or worse cause discomfort. We live in a world where many women are unable to conceive, and I was in that category for many years. My period stopped pretty much around the age of 16 and didn’t kick back in until about six months after my transplant. That period was, and I know I shouldn’t say this, really quite delightful Because I had none of the chaotic drama of tampons, sanitary towels, bad moods, PMT bloating. Well, there is a lot more, too much to list, let’s be frank. While everyone else had to plan their lives accordingly, I knew that I was in a safety net, so to speak. My system wasn’t working, and although I was religious about safe sex I felt relieved that if anything went awry I wasn’t going to end up with a beyond-impossible decision. (To keep or not.)
The caveat
However, every blessing and every joy does come with a caveat. Now, at the age of 39, (where did the time go?) I am faced with the mind-boggling extreme mood swings of someone catching up with their menstrual cycle. I notice things like cravings, but only in as much as that someone who is addicted to sugar might notice a more desperate desire for sugared treats. (Why are portion sizes so evil? Five hundred gone in a packet that disappears in moments.) Undoubtedly, my mental health dips at this time. But what I suppose, embarrasses me and I’m going to need to do some eft tapping on this, is that even with a lifetime of knowledge through reading and hearing of the experiences of others, I am often completely taken by surprise. How I can feel quite so dreadful every once in a while blows me away. Don’t get me wrong, I live with a host of invisible symptoms that would send you to sleep if I started listing them. But there is a darkness to the cloud that descends upon me. It swallows me, leaving me gasping for air, and hope.
A life with challenges
I have challenges in my life, which I live with due to an almost constant state of ‘glass half empty’ but what happens every once in a while with this hormone shift can knock me flying.
Surely you know when it’s going to happen?
Well, you would think I would, with the fact I do love lists and measurements. But truly, there is no real consistency to this as yet. Although the chunks of time seem reasonable between the monthly bleeds, there is enough margin of error for me to be often taken by surprise. Then when the blood comes, it’s often short and heavy, impactful on clothes and lifestyle and my mental health and mood.
What’s it like to be in this position of periods when you aren’t used to them?
So what am I trying to say in a long and roundabout way? Well, although most women may think that periods are the norm, there will be some for whom it’s not, and for those who then, at a later point in life, do end up with them. The combination of the blessing of their bodies still, being a childbearing age is countered by the awareness you are dancing at the door of never, because, quite frankly, you know you’d be an older mother. And if, like me, you still haven’t found someone reasonable, never mention the one you know you aren’t going to rush into anything. And as such, well, it’s borrowed time that you’re enjoying this blessing curse and it’s exhausting it.
The advice, I think that I would now give others who, like me, haven’t had this other teacher in their life all their life, and are now finding the sudden change rather challenging is as much as you can, try and see if a pattern will emerge. So that you can be forewarned and forearmed. To see if you can notice a pattern in terms of your behaviour so that you can realize you’re not going completely bonkers.
Do consider taking up a gratitude practice, as that will help on the days when it seems all a bit too much. And remember that, like so much in life, this too shall pass.
At least you can’t lose tampons inside you.
I have been trying to write this while being sick from the cold and being anaemic, with a low neutrophil level. And the result has been. Earlier today I had the exciting moment of removing two tampons at once, which was disturbing and yet reassuring that you can’t lose them completely inside you. So that’s an achievement unlocked. I’ve never done that before and now I’ve done it, I am much more relieved about the female anatomy.