Hug a Crazy Lady Today (but very, very carefully!)

I sat down to write a completely different blog post today...but it ain't workin'. My brain feels like it's wrapped in cotton, my temples are throbbing, there's a relentless weight of worry in my chest and I am sad, deep sad. Why? For no other reason than the date on the calendar, and the corresponding hormones in my bloodstream.

PMS strikes again.

It's a funny thing, PMS. It's become a punchline, great sit com fodder...the bitchy, erratic, weepy lady complaining about how bloated she is, biting people's heads off, pigging out on chocolate. I hate those stereotypes. They make us chicks look weak and flaky. They minimize our power and purpose. Yet here I am, feeling shitty, craving sugar, the whole nine yards.

It seems somehow undignified even to talk about. I bet Grace Kelly never stomped around her house like a crazed woman, breaking into ugly tears when she tripped over an errant rubber boot. And Audrey Hepburn certainly never stood by the fridge stuffing her face with mashed potatoes and chocolate cake with animalistic gusto. There's something a little raw and unladylike about even admitting to the PMS...what's next? period talk? musings over menopause? someone saying the word "vulva"?!? .gasp.

But once a month like clockwork a cloud descends. Nothing feels right, nothing tastes right. I feel way more anxious than usual...that weight in my chest, like something very bad has just happened or is about to, makes me not want to breathe or move. I get headaches. I get sad, full of an inexplicable grief that comes from nowhere, but smothers my spirit as surely as if it were real. Through this I fight, not to snap at my children and snarl at my husband although all the breathless anxiety makes me brittle with impatience. I fight to carry on with my everyday duties, and even with the things that usually bring me joy, because everything suddenly feels devoid of meaning, pointless, crushingly effortful, laborious, empty. And I fight really hard to remember that this is in fact hormonal, temporary and not reflective of what's actually going on in my life or who I am...or I might sink under all the sadness and make really bad choices in what is usually about 4 days of madness (how much damage could one do to their lives in 4 days? I shudder to think.)

So really it's no joke. Not for me.

Although a little levity delivered just so, often helps. (I pity the fool who attempts an ill timed bit of levity with me right now though...you know the stupid condescending man jokes, or the even stupider, even more condescending bits of catty "fun" from the women who don't get PMS.) But careful jokes from a hormonally challenged sister sufferer are never amiss, or even a little entertaining distraction from a sympathetic friend or husband...given carefully...oh so carefully...

The post I was supposed to write today is in there somewhere, but it'll have to wait until the cloud lifts and I am myself again. In the meantime I'll either be at my art desk painting out all the crazy or face-first in the fridge. See you in a couple days.