I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve felt awful, crazy, confused, been plagued with violent thoughts, and found that in a week or two I start bleeding and immediately feel better – and been surprised. Surprised that I’d been PMSing for 13 days (isn’t it supposed to be, like, 3?), surprised at how awful I felt, surprised that all that awfulness could have possibly been dinky little insignificant PMS. I’ve been bleeding for 15 years and still, it sneaks up on me, more often than it doesn’t.

Even when I’ve been eating well, even when I’ve been sleeping, even when I haven’t had anything particularly stressful happening in my life – half my month has usually been spent in crazytown.

As a woman, I’ve come to this fork in the road before. It’s well beaten and I can tell many others have passed this direction too. If the road had a sign post, it would probably say something like “On to a different Level” in one direction, and “Play again” in the other.

I’ve passed the levels “Birth Control” and “Androgen inhibition”, I’ve passed the “Antibiotic” level to deal with the cysts I develop on my face and many other levels in addition to these – and yet somehow, I find that I end up in the “Play again” level again, over and over.

My cycles have been historically difficult. From being irregular and debilitatingly painful, to excessive and often uncontrollable feelings of anger and depression, I’ve generally learned that the one thing I can count on is not being able to expect how my cycle will effect me or when.

I get ovarian cysts as well, so I’ve tended to watch for physical symptoms which are sometimes absent completely. Meanwhile I’ll be walking around my life in a 10 day anxiety attack that I have no explanation for. Irritations and small inconsistencies become major, deal breaking issues. I stop wanting to work, I am tired constantly, I am angry, I am depressed, I withdraw, I lash out, I’m tense and uncomfortable, I pick fights. And eventually, I destroy my relationships.

I’ve thought myself crazy or otherwise deranged for half of my life, and/or that the world is a terrible place full of awfulness and the people close to me are raging fuckheads. Until I’ve, often seemingly randomly, bled and thought “What the fu— OH. … ….. Ooohhhh…”. Then I get about 12 days of solace.

As I age, the pattern is regulating, yet I’ve still been living as though I have no indication of what’s going on or why. Does that seem sane to ANYONE?

It’s seemed ridiculous to me to ‘blame’ my problems on something so stupid and inconvenient. And in a sense, it is stupid to do that, cause I’m gonna have problems like anyone else whether I PMS or not, and I’ll continue to have problems after I hit menopause or have someone rip my fucking junk out of me.

However, with that stance, I’ve easily forgotten how susceptible the emotional body is to hormone changes, and how little control I actually have over it.

Maybe looking at the emotional more like the physical issues is what to do next. I can’t just glare at my guts, say “Stop cramping and hurting, you stupid whining motherfucker” and expect that to change anything I’m experiencing. And it took a while, but I’ve learned not to do that. I can put a heating pad on my stomach, and I can take pain killers, and I can take a bath, and I can ask someone to rub me – and sometimes I even do! And that usually helps. What reason is there, really, that I can’t learn to do that with my emotions too?

I’ve spent a lot of time, effort and money trying to figure out the physical issues surrounding my period, mainly the cystic acne because I think it makes me look like a real dumbfuck. And I’ve spent a lot of time gaining skills in dealing with life’s little issues, fixing the problems in my life and generally getting my shit together – but not this. This, I still think I’m supposed to be bigger than for some reason.

Well, I’m pretty sure acting like a fucking psycho and alienating my strongest allies makes me look like a dumbfuck, too. And I’m not bigger than the mechanism that drives me. I’ve gotta figure out how to be a part of this process rather than the angsty, reluctant observer.

Does the focus in my life have to revolve around my PMS? Yeah, for a while, I think it really does.

First stop – Maca.