I’ve been putting this one off.
Three girls stand beside me, clutching a flurry of snacks. Soda. Candy. Chips.
I watch as they cross the street in that skip-step sort of way particular to youth. Their long hair haloed in a downy glow. Keychains chiming against their backpacks.
I hope they have it easier than I.
I was sorta late to the whole thing. I got my period at 14. Maybe it was some quiet immunity to whatever we were all supposedly guzzling by the milk glass. Maybe the universe simply let me idle a few more years before the machinery kicked in. This is to say, I’ve spent approximately 1.6 million+ minutes of my life in the grip of PMDD. That’s premenstrual dysphoric disorder, for the uninitiated; a depressive condition cataloged in the DSM-5, brought on by the volatility of hormonal fluctuation.
Approximately 5-8% of women of reproductive age are said to experience it.
Each month, my body stages a week-long insurrection preceding the arrival of my esteemed crimson guest. As serotonin wanes, my mind’s inclination to revolt against its own design reaches new heights. The idea of pulling a Lisbon sister gleams brighter than before. My skin doesn’t feel right on my bones. Sweaters itch more. For reasons I cannot quite articulate, I’m seeing more dead birds on my walks.
Je suis moins que rien until the storm passes, like it always does.
Oct. 31st: I’m out of the thick of it now. A dull ache hums low in my abdomen. It’s a pain I nearly welcome, if only because it marks the end of another small, private war. The next two weeks will bring the usual recalibration: a more symmetrical face, an air of hotness, the clean click of focus returning. I’ll want to kiss and be kissed.
-
At this point, I’ll almost forget the girl who, just days ago, could hardly leave her apartment. I’ll almost convince myself I’ve outgrown her—that I can tuck her out of sight, that speaking of her serves no real purpose at all. But here’s the truth: for my own sake, I’ve decided to befriend her. And she shows no sign of going anywhere anytime soon.
I should be clear that she doesn’t resemble a friend in any conventional sense. Though she has a knack for punctuality, she’ll often forgo a hello—brushing past me at the door, landing on the couch with her shoes still on, as if she owns the place. And still, I swallow the reflex to push her back out into the hall.
I try my best to get her to laugh. To dance. I remind her to eat something green. To take a shower. To step into the sun. Because, for all the ways I can’t stand her, we come as a set. I need her to stick around if I’m going to make it to the part where I wear a white dress. Hold my baby. Plant hydrangeas in the front yard.
It took some doing and the help of medication to reach this version of things. For the better part of my teens, I tried to ignore her, act like I didn’t know her. And because I didn’t have a PMDD diagnosis until college, her faceless form was, in its way, accurate.
“You just have a bad case of PMS,” the doctor assured me, as if naming it settled the matter. I was prescribed birth control to “even things out,” no one yet aware that anything over 0.025 mg of estrogen would undo me. The result was predictable only in hindsight: weeks of shuffling through high school nauseated and painfully bloated, until the morning I tossed the entire pack in the trash after almost getting sick before first period. That was that. For a while, at least.
I didn’t deal with any of it until I was twenty, when push came to shove, and I realized I related a little too much to a Reddit thread on the subject. I was subsequently met with an official diagnosis soon after. Learning it had a name was both a relief and a bit of a cosmic joke. PMDD doesn’t have a cure. And the research surrounding it is just as threadbare as so many other corners of women’s health.
So, this is it?
Yes, this is it.
This is a conversation I had with myself in the early days of accepting what my life would look like. For a while, that realization felt like standing at the edge of my own story, looking down with a kind of stubborn dread. But then a good band starts playing somewhere, or a stranger does something kind without being asked, or the day is so sharply beautiful it stops you mid-stride. And you think I should stay to see what happens next. I don’t want to miss the good part.
Call this finality bleak or empowering. I need to believe the latter.
November 15th: I’ll be honest, I’m sitting in a hotel lobby now, trying to make this sound more palatable—something crafted to signal relatability on cue. Something that might soften the fact that this particular neurological tangle of mine will always be read through the fact of having a uterus, and the vocabulary that clings to it: “hysterical,” “too much.”
Still, the urge to insist I’m just like you—and you, and whoever else might be watching, so please don’t look at me that way—is its own shared human tic. A wish not to be dismissed, or feared, or misunderstood.
A way of asking, in so many words: Will you love me as I am, and not as I pretend to be?
And so it goes: my familiar friend will come knocking in a few days. But I’m not afraid. I know her rhythms now, even if she insists on getting a swing or two in before she leaves. I’ll do what I can. I’ll muzzle her bite in all the ways I know how and trust my mastery of grace amidst her company.
Because if I don’t meet her at the door with some measure of gentleness, who will? Because she is me, after all. Not the whole of me, but an undeniable part. A seasonal visitor with her own gravitational pull. A version of myself I have chosen to stop abandoning.
And maybe that’s the closest thing to a “cure” I’ll ever have.
Three girls stand beside me, clutching a flurry of snacks.
Soda. Candy. Chips.
I watch as they cross the street in that skip-step sort of way particular to youth—their long hair haloed in a downy glow, keychains chiming against their backpacks.
I hope they have it easier than I.