My Real Personality

I remember seeing a greeting card once where a cartoon woman, lamenting the true nature of the monthly feminine monster said, “My biggest fear is that PMS doesn’t exist and that this is my real personality.”

It’s a genuine fear.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t get a heads-up that my “friend” is coming to visit. One moment I'm fine and the next I'm doubled over in pain and begging someone - anyone - to get me pills, a hot water bottle and something (anything) that contains whiskey, honey and lemon.

And so it was this afternoon. At lunch, after a shopping trip to Helen Bateman in Edinburgh, it started. We were sitting in a restaurant waiting to order and I started to feel funny... that special kind of funny – my stomach started to hurt, only it wasn't my stomach exactly, it was just south of that and it’s not so much hurting as it is aching, dull and constant and making me feel more ill at ease than sick.

That’s how it makes me feel – uncomfortable in my own skin, aching in places where the pain doesn’t actually exist, overly sensitive (sound, movement, everything) and I really, really need to be under a comforter, out of the way of everyone with a woobie and a drinkie. The confined space of an Audi A3 is not the place to experience the height of your PMS throes.

I tried willing myself to sleep (it worked when my mother took me to the drive-in to see Blacula when I was a very small child). I tried turning off the radio, but then I could actually hear the husband rustling in a plastic bag retrieving and chewing his Haribo Tangfastics (which, strangely, didn’t bother me when I was helping him eat them on the way up). I tried staying awake with the radio on and watching the road, but then I could feel every, single movement of the car, fret about the curves and how severe they would be before we actually took them and make them into a bigger deal than they actually were. And this is from someone who does not get motion sick. Mind you, all of this was happening in my head since I wasn’t saying it out loud for fear of sounding like a neurotic, overly-sensitive nutter who also happens to be experiencing period pain.

The husband didn't seem to be properly sympathizing. It's because boys don’t go through things like this. I wish they did. If men experienced PMS, it would be legal to take ketamine and drink in the car once a month. And it would be a paid day off.