Personally, my attitude towards my period has swung from one end to the other. It is messy and painful and inconvenient, it interferes with my mood, can make me more sensitive to smell and pain, usually makes my head hurt, and often makes my eyes extra-sensitive to light. All of these symptoms have been alleviated to an extent by being on the contraceptive pill, though Nordette, which was the first brand I took, didn’t seem to correct my mood swings to the extent that Estelle does, perhaps because the latter (a generic version of Diane) was prescribed specifically to treat my PCOS.

But somewhere in all of that, it’s also a bit of a relief to have it. I can’t really explain how that is. When I was on Nordette, I’d wait for my period as the one week per month when I actually felt normal and light again. The rest of the time, it was as if I was feeling my body through bubble-wrap or cotton wool – some kind of barrier that let me get a sense of the outside of it, but effectively locked me out of it. But I adapted eventually and then, when I switched to Estelle, things got much better. I got a lot of my old sensitivity back, lost weight, and the mood swings and cramping, which the earlier pill didn’t do much for, were reduced. They’re not completely gone and from where I sit, it doesn’t really look like they ever will, but they’re much easier to deal with now.

Still, when I’m under pressure or emotional stress, the prospect of having my period can be anything from depressing to frightening because I know how much worse it can make things. That’s why when, towards the end of September last year, I had something of an emotional meltdown, I decided to take my girlfriend’s advice and skip my period by continuing straight on to the next set of pills. And god the relief! Just by removing the specter of those first three days of swinging wildly between stupidly happy and suicidal, followed by approximately 8 hours of cramping, followed by another four days of feeling generally spaced out and scattered – everything else seemed to settle down a bit. I was still a wreck, but I wasn’t a wreck on her period, and that’s something.

But by the second month I think I was about ready to have my period. I felt blocked up and heavy – a bit like I used to feel on Nordette, come to think of it, so I went ahead and had my period. No spotting or other annoyance, no extra heaviness or extra lightness in the flow. Just your regular run-of-the-mill period. But I was curious about the heaviness I’d felt so I asked my doctor when I went in last week.

She told me that, first of all, there was no harm in suppressing one’s period with the pill (and that often it’s anemia caused by excessive bleeding that can be the real problem). But she did explain that the reason some women experience spotting when they suppress their periods is that, regardless of ovulation, the uterus is still programmed to shed its lining once every 28 days or so. If that lining isn’t shed as a period, it can sometimes ‘leak’ anyway because (excuse the complicated medical terminology here) it wants out. It also continues to get thicker, apparently – which would explain why I feel so ‘heavy’ at the end of six weeks on the pill – so letting it go isn’t a bad thing.

I think I can live with that. I don’t know if I want to make a habit of skipping every other period because I can’t see that it would really make a huge difference to my life. It would be more convenient, certainly, and I do relish the prospect of not having wild mood swings every single month (though this one has been relatively less extreme – I only cried once and that too during a semi-argument, not spontaneously). But for some reason I’m still not sure. It may just be habit. However lousy the process may be, I know it intimately, I know what to expect, and I know how to deal with it to a large extent. I also can’t help partially buying into the whole me-time thing – I like having time to focus on my own body, to listen to its bitching, and to do all the soothing things I usually do for it(most of which involve chocolate). And given that I have fairly light periods, anemia isn’t really a worry for me, so I can afford to have them monthly. But then I think of not having to sleep or walk around or sit with a pad on (tampons make me feel dehydrated) for six consecutive weeks instead of just three and I think, hm, there might be something to this after all.

But then she writes asking for words. After the years I have spent not speaking, spent smiling and nodding and looking away as quickly as possible to avoid seeing on her face that she knows, she wants me to give her words.

So I lied. I told her I didn’t have any anymore. Because in spite of all the words I want to cry and whisper and scream at her what would it be worth?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Despite that, if I wanted to talk to anyone about it, or even refer to it, I had to learn the secret code. Because, it seems, nobody ever really wants you to make a direct reference to the fact that you are, at that very moment, bleeding. So what do you say? Well that depends on where you are, how old you are, and what you need to communicate.

When I was in school and we were all terribly fascinated by what our bodies were doing, we had a whole ream of terms for it, some of which have origins that completely baffle me. ‘Chums’, for instance. Written, if I recall correctly, C.H.U.M.S. I have no idea what the word stood for, but no sooner would one of us start that she would pass around a note with the word on it. And we didn’t have to hide it either because none of the boys or even the teachers knew what it meant. Come to think of it, that might have been why it was chosen – it’s possible that it never was an acronym but just a random collection of letters designed to confuse those not in the know. Oh the coolth of it all.

A much older friend once told me that she and her cohort used to say simply that their ‘friend’ was visiting again. Similar to that was someone halfway between us in age who, instead of ‘friend’, would say ‘Auntie Flow’s in town again’. Usually serving as the butt of much gross-out humor, the poor old dear (and lending her services to my tagline, too).

I don’t know when women started referring to it as the ‘curse’ or the ‘monthly curse’, but I suspect it’s been around a while. As has ‘that time of the month’, which strikes me as quite wishy-washy.

Oh and then there was ‘Charlie’. I have no idea where that came from, but I think we all dreaded visits from Charlie back in the day. Does anyone still say that?

While I’ve heard some women use the expression ‘to be on the rag’, it seems to be used most by boys and men who seem to see its use as some proof of toughness. A bit like children or students who try to shock you by using a particular word or making a statement that they think is outrageous. Sometimes it’s cute, but mostly it’s just lame.

…so I Googled ‘euphemisms for menstruation’ and came up with 183,000 results. The largest number seem to be at Aunt Flow’s World of Menstruation Euphemisms. My current favorite off that list is ‘arts and crafts week at panty camp’. WTF? Anyway.

Nowadays, we tend to go by a certain metonymy – if I say I have ‘cramps’, it is assumed that I mean period cramps and that I therefore have my period and am dealing with its attendant crap. PMS is another favorite, though the ‘pre-’ seems to be optional. Like ‘C.H.U.M.S’ before it, PMS seems to work by drawing on that particular authority that acronyms confer on the user. Weilded properly, it has the power to excuse you from meetings, classes, lectures, work, family gatherings, and other social responsibilities.

But what gets me is the need for so many euphemisms. Is it simple circumspection, much like referring simply to going to the toilet (or bathroom for those who find the ‘t-word’ indelicate) instead of explaining what we did in there? (And even with that, there are degrees of information and differences in register. If you do mention it, do you go with urinate/defecate, pee/poop, piss/shit or something else? And do the registers for each match?  Does it matter?) But does the fact that menstruation is unique to women shift it from simple circumspection to silencing? Speaking euphemistically about something men and women have in common not just with each other but with most animals as well is one thing. Because we all share it and know it, we only really talk about it if there’s something out of the ordinary to talk about. Putting up barriers to speaking about something that happens only to women – that arguably defines arrival at biological womanhood? That, I’m not so sure about.

Tuesday the pendulum swung all the way back. When I left my partner’s place that morning, a thin, misty rain was swirling around the city, blurring its edges and making it glow. I walked home without an umbrella, enjoying the cold tickle of raindrops against my face and shivering a little when the wind blew. I considered walking around the block a few more times before I went in, but realized that, having just gotten over a cold, being out in the rain, however lovely and gentle it may be, was probably not a great idea. I continued to be ridiculously happy for the better part of the day and started to crash again only in the late afternoon when I was out grocery shopping with my husband. At  the worst point I felt like stopping right there in the middle of the supermarket and just crying my eyes out. Instead, I drank something way too sugary for human consumption and made it home just in time for the cramps to hit. My period put in an appearance just as I was about to go to sleep, which was annoying but, on balance, meant that I slept through the worst of it (I love you, paracetamol).

Wednesday was as lousy as I’d expected, with the usual complement of sore muscles and intermittent cramps, accompanied by the usual raging horniness. It always happens and it always strikes me as completely bizarre that I should be in so much pain that the thought of actual sex curls my toenails and be simultaneously completely unable to think of anything else. Go figure.

But at least that meant that by mid-afternoon, when it all abated, I wasn’t suicidal or homicidal, which made teaching and then attending a couple of readings that evening much easier. Plus I had a lovely surprise at the reading when an old colleague who I thought had left for good turned up. I don’t know her well – we just taught the same class for a semester once – but there’s something profoundly likeable about her. We caught up a bit while walking part of the way home and before we went our separate ways determined that we’d both be at the next reading, so that’s something to look forward to.

And today, as I said, I feel even more stable. I’ve accomplished a bit less than I had planned, but part of that is the fault of this blog, which is a good thing in itself, so I’m not very disappointed. I also just met the black labrador that my new office-mate is raising for the local guide-dog service and who consequently accompanies him everywhere he goes, including the office. Given how much I love being around dogs, I couldn’t have asked for a better arrangement.

I’m hoping today’s positivity will rub off on tomorrow. I’m near the end of this particular roller-coaster ride anyway, so things should be levelling out soon anyway. But it ain’t over till the next pill is popped so, until then, I’m not counting on anything.

Part of the inspiration for this blog comes from my partner, who recently decided to commit to writing a zine a week, bound by a few self-imposed rules. He’d been meaning to do this for a while, so watching it happen has been great. And the thing about being around people who are doing what they want to be doing is that it’s a bit of a kick in the ass to do it for oneself. I have a few other blogs, but with each I’ve run into a bit of a wall – some are too general, some are too personal, and some, oddly enough, are too much of both. On top of that, I’m supposed to be doing a whole other kind of writing effectively as my day-job anyway, so I rarely feel I have the space to write things that occur to me at random and don’t fit neatly into any of the categories I’m already dealing with.

Enter Periodical Writing, which will serve as a space for things that don’t seem to fit anywhere else, but which will also be bound by certain rules, mostly to keep myself going. These will be:

1. Write a minimum of a post a day from the Saturday I stop the pill to the Saturday I start the new packet.

2. No pre-written posts, though notes can be made during the month and expanded on at the relevant time.

There are only two for now, but I might add more if I find it necessary, or change them if I think it appropriate. Here goes.