All women will bleed, 

everybody will poop, 

only men will fart.

-A non-serious, amateur haiku by Jamie Pitts

Mah Mah Mah My Persona

Lately I have been unleashing various personas as a way to build confidence and face the terrors, risks, and uncertainties of my wild, wild life. These characters range from my entrepreneur/vendor market persona – Green-Eyed, Tie-Dyed, Badass B, or my workout persona – Lean, Mean, Beer Gut Machine, or my writing persona – Delores Pitts Claiborne (that one is a bit spooky and potentially misunderstood – aka a perfect fit).

Meet the Pre-Menstruating Monster of Jellybean Village, my newish persona who skips to the pantry for candy after scarfing down an unhealthy lunch full of carbs, covered in grizzly mud, blood, and guts, clothed in a tattered patchwork sack made of bits of stretched out Old Navy dresses. Screeching, screaming, and snarling like a chained-up prisoner, emitting a strong scent of hot-flash boob sweat and her children’s dusty potato chip farts.

Normally I would invite my personalities over for tea and crumpets or use them to fuel the fire to my Richard Simmons-style of motivating, but this terror I would rather shove in a closet or suffocate with a pillow stuffed with dry dog poop.

A tornado of irritability and senselessness, a tsunami of anxiety and overthinking; she takes it all too personally (even the compliments). Out of her mouth seeps a dark brown, liquid that reeks of herbal remedies holding a natural but not guaranteed promise to make the bad man go away.

Ask that dirty diamond how her day is going and you might not see tomorrow. Offer her condolences for her mishaps and fear for your fingers.

But I can handle the intense emotions, I mean, it’s only three to five days per month…totaling to only 36 to 60 days per year of feeling out of my body. Not bad, right? Guys in the back, piece of cake, am I right?

Piece of cake, right?  Right, guys?!  Everyone went a bit silent there…you all alright?  I am going to be ok, aren’t I?

Aren’t I?

Tell me, baby, what’s your story?  Where do you come from and where you wanna go this time?

Back in my twenties, before the Jellybean Monster was born, prior to new years where children fill up both my dreams and my nightmares, I could expect much of the same thing every month – little to no PMS symptoms and a week after, a painful yet tolerable rollercoaster of blood-drenched sadness that branded my undercarriage. My dogs showed their appreciation and empathy by sticking their noses in my crotch and on occasion performed a ceremonial humping session, creating a mini-parade as I paced around the house. Life was normal.

After birthing a potential genius and selling my boobs to kid #1, my bloody valentine came back with a vengeance, beginning months before WebMD predicted it would, bringing with it a crimson river so wild only Kevin Bacon’s character would be brave and evil enough to cross. I practiced concealing my Active Bitch Face while a tiny mining man wearing spiked shoes went traversing across my uterus for what felt like weeks, swinging a mallet at my organs, the sound reverberating back as a mighty cramp rocked longer than the Freebird solo; my face was stoic and my body showed no signs of weakness.

Years later, I birthed another damn near potential genius and sold my boobs to kid #2 for a discounted price (they were used cars, after all); I gritted my teeth and bared down as I prepared for the aftermath of the thunderstorm. Bring it on, Uterus Tommyknocker, I can take you and your fierce punches. But the long-haired, leaping gnome who incited a gong bang of resounding period pain had fled, replaced with a diagnosis of the H, the P, and the V, the kinds of the highest risk, scoundrels from the deep unknown. HPV arrived and forgot to take its bags upstairs to its room, instead the purple, overweight troll overtook the living room, lounging on its cushioned recliner, shoving its face with popcorn-sized bites of overgrown precancerous cells, crumbs dive-bombing off of its zit-mottled face as it shouts “Cervical cancer is coming to get you!” Normal worries like maintaining my identity after dying a maternal death or learning deep breathing in order to survive my toxic workplace were replaced with worries for my life and upcoming hospital appointments. I was assured by doctors in the workplace that cervical cancer was basically non-existent in the U.S. Now quit your bitchin’, get your cervix clipped and zapped, and return to your fifty-hour workweek, please.

Instead of dying (until the day when a bus comes and plows me away out of nowhere, Final Destination-style), I chose to have the necessary operations to correct my cervical situation. Throughout the months of procedures, which I dubbed “the year of the vagina,” I endured “snips” of tissue from my cervix (think large fingernail clippers and all they ask you to do is cough while they clamp down and snap), sessions where my cervix was blotted with vinegar (I got the pleasure of watching the procedures on a screen while not getting numbing medication because “the cervix doesn’t have nerve endings and does not feel pain”), cauterizations to stop the bleed from said procedures, sharp shots to my cervix (they literally told me to breathe and it would be ok. It was not. Tommyknockers Revenge Part III: Wrath of the Needles), and a special, one-of-a-kind visit where the doc sliced into me like a loaf of Velveeta using a zapping tool reminiscent of Dr. Who’s sonic screwdriver (he said it wasn’t sharp and told me not to worry because I had gotten the shots and shouldn’t feel a thing, right? But the sound, oh, the sound…) in which he removed a thumb-sized piece of my cervix and assigned my body the task of regrowing a crucial piece of the baby-making instrumentation that is my reproductive system. It was gross to say the least.

Months later the HPV mummies evicted the tomb and I am proud to say that I am pre-cancer free (for now).

Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby, and I’m a monster on the hill

But after earning my Vag of Honor, cutting myself off from birth control and pills, and feeling like I made peace with the womanly world of periods, the Pre-Menstruating Monster of Jellybean Village came crashing in like a tornado made of black souls holding hands and performing a monthly seance, causing a mismanagement of my temper, emotions, and dark feelings. 

This monster arrived with it all – profuse crying because my husband forgot to throw my bra in the laundry, a struggle to comprehend simple statements, an urge to take everything incredibly personally, a suspicion the world hates me, an inclination to scream or break down into tears when someone asks a simple question like, “How is your day going?” or “Do you know if we have any apples left?” or “Can you help me tie my shoes?”

The monster could also shapeshift and disguise itself as bland, excited by nothing and dulled with everything.  A still moment; a “gray day,” as Dr. Seuss says; depression, as the two male doctors once said to me as they encircled my personal bubble after a staff meeting where I openly cried when my ideas were shot down by a corporate leader, another type of dangerous monster, the physicians telling me I was depressed and needed to get help, not even bothering to ask if it was due to my dying dog or poisonous work environment.   

I used to rely on self-medication I guess I still do that from time to time.

As I come to terms with my self-diagnosis of depression, anxiety, and other mental stifles, I reflect on how to resolve these extreme dives to the valley beneath the sea.

Use birth control? Only if I want to almost get cancer again.

Take pills to resolve my undiagnosed depression? After inquiring with other female warriors, I find this to be a go-to for many. I do not knock this option as I have never tried it and cannot diss a perspective I know little about. I hear it makes you feel controlled in your emotions, which could be good yet scares me as I try to use my feelings to create, innovate, and evolve. I also hear the happiness tablets are a bitch to get off of, and this mother ain’t got time for that.

Be naturally happy?  That seems too hard, I’ll pass.

I want something else to get me through this semi-charmed kind of life.

Instead of being normal and calling up the doctor, I choose to be stubborn and go medication-free with the exception of herbal remedies and epidurals, form positive habits, exercise on the regular, ask for forgiveness from my husband, and query friends what they do to help mitigate the hairy, pimple-covered, rage-filled ogre inside of them. Will it turn out in my favor? Who knows, but at least I have less medical bills and am using the time I would have spent in a doctor’s office to write this boring blog.

While I am over here getting a nose-invasion from one of my dogs because I laughed too hard, pee came out, and now they think I am one of them, please contemplate sending over a suggestion to help a mother out. 

What are your tactics on surviving the mountainous PMS symptoms? 

Have they gotten worse as you have aged or have you made peace and grown to understand your monsters? 

How have you overcome?   

And if you are PMS-free person of any background, type, or nature and want to help but are not sure how to do so, here is some advice – tell us PMS-plagued folks it is going to be ok.  Tell us we are doing a great job.  And tell us that everyone has those days where they feel like going Carrie on the world, where they feel like a commercial about puppies is grounds for sobbing like someone watching the Green Mile for the first time, where they feel like sadness is inevitable.  Because misery loves company, but it also loves comfort and acquires ambition from relatability.  

Let’s defeat the monster together or at least learn to live with it better. And once we do master its finicky ways, we will be riding that slide all the way to menopause, where we face new unknown creatures attempting to gouge out our eyes and steal our sanity. Oh, to be a WO-MAN, human, or someone who bleeds.