I think there is a common misconception thrown around out there that women hate periods. In fact, we love them. How many times have I sat and prayed for a period? One little mistake and you spend the rest of your month ticking off the days on your calendar, hoping that it will come. It arrives three days late and you curse like a mother scolds an absent teenager – ‘where the fuck have you been, do you know how worried you’ve had me?!’
Well, in fact, I’m now a responsible adult, and usually there isn’t any cause for concern. I’m almost always pretty sure it’s going to come. But there’s always that doubt. Even when you know it’s absolutely impossible, you still worry. What if there has somehow been an immaculate conception? What if God has chosen me carry the next messiah? Men couldn’t begin to imagine the relief when that period arrives and we thank the lord that we are safe for yet another month.
So, the majority of women love their period, even if it is just to be sure that we’re not carrying the spawn of God. I guess the only women who will disagree are those who are trying to conceive, then for them i guess a period kind of sucks.
The thing about nature’s law is that technically, we are supposed to hate them, for the good of mankind. If periods were this fantastic time when all women were happy, the birds were singing, the sun shone and the housework did itself, everyone would want one – even then men. Who would ever want to become pregnant at the risk of sacrificing their period? So, dear gentlemen, next time you moan about a woman who moans about her period, think about it like this: If we weren’t on our period, we’d all be up the duff. Secondly, it’s not our fault, due to genetic programming, this is a time of thunderstorms, dragons and pretty much a time for you to fucking run, run as fast as you can, and hide. Because if there’s anyone who has pissed us off more than Mother Nature herself, it is you, the man.
Ahh that wonderful woman, mother nature. She had some twisted ideas that bitch. Lets raise a woman’s temperature by a few degrees, as if 7 days of bleeding wasn’t enough to deal with? Fucking great when you are already living in Taiwan in August, in a bedroom made of glass, working a job that requires you to wear sleeves and long pants. And long pants, what a wonderful invention, it’s not a crime to show your ankles and it’s hotter than hell out there, but hey let the women wear the trousers, the one thing the men are supposed to actually do.
So I step out in the afternoon in my western equivalent to the hijab and it’s 3pm, in Taiwan, so it’s time for the daily dose of torrential rain. The long pants are great, I mean, they act like fishing nets for the sewage floating by and you know, we have waterproof skin, but hey, let’s just wear material to soak in the pee. Well fuck you, I think to myself, and I go to seven eleven and buy a waterproof sheet/jogging suit. Bright yellow and plastic. Wow, if all my ex boyfriends could see me now, stood at the road side, a big, wet soggy, yellow ball, trying to flag down a bus and getting splashed with floating shit in the process. Damsel in distress? Nope. More of a human sponge. Sexy.
Fuck my life. These seven days I’ve had PMT to the max. I blame it on the fact that I’m now living with two other women. I’m absorbing their hormones. Our apartment has turned into a lair of pre-menstrual dragons. And the one week I have got the worst PMT of my life is the week when my marker pen leaks all down the front of my work blouse and none of my Chinese co-workers care to mention it to me. Also the week when I get bitten by around one hundred thirsty mosquitoes. As if I’m not losing enough blood already.
Sorry, I just have to interrupt the blog for a second. Panjita is boiling an egg in the kettle. What is happening to us?
Anyway, I finally arrived at work in my big yellow tent and it had stopped raining. My Chinese colleagues were all stood outside the front doors burning fake money around the ghost fire. For those of you who don’t know, it’s ghost festival.
Nicky, Amber & Rachel are stood behind a table, heads bowed, burning incense. They’ve laid out a banquet of various foods and beverages for the ghosts to enjoy in the afterlife. I try to look inconspicuous and shadily creep to the front door (I have a lot of work to do, and my crazy journey means I’ve arrived later than I had planned). However, I’m still wearing the sponge-suit and I’m everything but unnoticeable. The next thing I know, I’m part of the charade, mumbling something in Chinese along the lines of ‘enjoy your meal’ and sticking a burning stick into a can of cider. I am supposed to have my eyes closed but I need to open them, just to take a moment, look around and think, ‘fuck my life’.
That’s when I see them.
Their eyes are still closed and their heads are bowed, so I have a good few seconds to spot the marks on each of their necks. Red bruises run down to their shoulders – it looks like they’ve been whipped repeatedly.
Once they have stopped chanting their speech I turn to Amber and say ‘Who did this to you?’ After the day I’ve had, I’m ready to find the bastard that did this to them and fry his balls on the ghost fire. What kind of sick freak would do this to three adorable girls – perhaps his pen leaked onto his shirt and they didn’t tell him either? Still, try telling that to a (potential) feminist with PMT. I’m ready to hunt this sicko down.
‘Oh no, don’t worry.’ Smiles Amber sweetly. ‘We did this to ourselves’.
I look at her bedazzled. She still has that smiley expression on her face, staring at me with those googly eyes like everything is normal. It’s far from normal. I’m dressed like a giant lemon, stood at the side of the road waving incense sticks around, chanting in Chinese and throwing fake money onto a fire for the ghosts to spend in the afterlife, whilst you are happy to present me with blatant evidence of self-harm.
Did I wake up in a Dr. Zeus book?
Is Panjita now making a cup of coffee in the kettle she just used to cook eggs on toast?
It turned out, it’s not self-harm, it’s ‘massage’. I only know this because at work we have a ‘show, don’t tell’ policy and Nicky was very eager to show off her skills as a, err-herrm, masseuse. Apparently I had a lot of bad blood that needed to come out. This is what she told me as she repeatedly scraped the back of neck with some strange circular shaped tool. The blood was trapped beneath my head, causing me unnecessary stress and raising my body temperature. I wanted to assure her that I was having absolutely no problem with blood retention but she seemed to be having so much fun, and she was waving over the staff to come and see. ‘Ooooh…you are stressed,’ they beamed at me, hovering over the back of my head. I don’t know why, but they always remind me of the aliens from Toy Story. ‘Oooooh stressed,’ they said once again in unison.
‘Yes, my friends,’ I replied. ‘Stressed’.
And confused.
Incredibly confused.
Well, a few days have now passed and I think I’m finally over the PMT. Yes, it’s raining, but a man chased me down the street today to give me an umbrella. They’re not all bad. And the yellow suits are catching on. Yes, Po is now a fashion guru (see evidence of this below). *i have a great photo of me and a group of people in the yellow suits*
I am now beginning the mental preparation for next month.
1. No Po, you have not been selected to give birth to the next Jesus.
2. Hide an emergency packet of cigarettes and a jar of nutella somewhere in the flat, you’re going to need them.
3. Try to learn a bit more about Chinese culture, you can’t go around accusing innocent men of wife-beating before you know the full story.
I guess everyone deals with PMT in different ways. For me it’s a mixture of self-pity and man-hating. For Panjita it’s cooking a full English in random household objects. You have to ask yourself, what bizarre creatures we women actually are? Mother nature has a lot to answer for.
