MENstration

The title was a warning...so heed it guys...because some things can't be unread.

Ok ladies. 

I realize as I get older my boundaries about sharing personal information have started to get a little fuzzier than they use to be.  I'm pretty sure by the time I'm in my 60's I'll be sitting around the Christmas tree with my group of friends at the retirement ranch discussing hemorrhoid treatments and the negative effects of having had my uterus ripped out in some menopausal hysterectomy episode.  I know that is my future because I was witness to that exact environment Christmas 2010 when I visited my parents in Arizona.  It's a fact we must accept:  older ladies think you want to know about their private bodily functions...well, older ladies and your lactating best friend.

I spent Christmas 2011 with my lactating best friend.  She's currently feeding twins and after 2 weeks being submerged in breast pump hell I can honestly say I had NO IDEA how totally and completely disgusting the female body is.

Now, we can, all six billion of us on this planet, admit that the female body is curvy beautiful and lady parts are a helluva lot more attractive than the train wreck men proudly lug around in their pants.  True fact.  But what men don't have to deal with is the surprising grodieness of living in a body that can morph into a baby making/feeding factory.  The horror of it all is mind boggling.  Don't even get me started on the depth of fear I felt when I saw what a breast pump can do to once normal size nips.  JUMBO GUMDROPS people, JUMBO.  Eeeeek!  I almost passed out.  It's just not right.

It's totally gross being female.  The first time the crimson tide came rolling in for me was the night before seventh grade started.  As if being an awkward adolescent with a perm wasn't bad enough.  Adding a bulky pad and menstrual cramps was the icing on the bloody cake.  Gross.  So in 2000 when I attended a conference where the most saintly OBGYN spoke about "the egg of the month club" and how it was possible to "turn your period off", I ran, not walked, to his office for a consult and a life time supply of magical pills.  I can say with pride that I did not have a period for eleven years.  Eleven BLESSED and pain free years.

But then Christmas 2011 rolled around and I totally forgot to take the magic pills...so of course, 10 minutes before I was to board my plane the crimson came rolling back in.  It took me a really, really long time to figure out what was going on.  When it finally clicked in my head I felt like I was reliving that horrid moment when my mom, with tears in her eyes said, "welcome to womanhood".  SCREW WOMANHOOD!  If losing a quart of blood every month is what it takes to be in womanhood then I want nothing to do with it.  Unfortunately I had no choice.  I was at Reagan Airport, with out a cotton boyfriend or surfboard with wings.  The crimson had arrived and there was nothing I could do about it...see, they don't sell feminine hygiene products at Reagan Airport.  So I rode home on a plane and a prayer that nothing seriously damaging would happen.  I made it.

Once home I dug through my first aid supplies for the cotton boyfriends and surfboards with wings I had stockpiled (in case I ever had a severe bloody nose or the need for an unusually large band-aid).  Those supplies quickly ran out.  Which meant I had to go to the store.

Painful.  I avoided that feminine product aisle like the plague as a teenager and young adult, and I felt just as embarrassed walking into it at age 36.  But here's the problem with taking an eleven year break from "womanhood"...technology just keeps chugging along.  To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement.  Tampons now have positive energy sayings on the wrappers and expand like flowers once you insert them into your vagina.  Flowers folks.  And maxi pads...what in the hell happened there?  I was around for the wing revolution of the late 80's, but when did they start adding breathing vents and high tech wicking material usually only found on Olympic athletes?  What's with the new shape?  They look like something I'd put in my shoes.  And WHAT IS WITH the homemade pad craze?  I mean SERIOUSLY?  Do people honestly wear handmade, blood appliqued pads that come with bonus suggestions like, "I like to use the blood-water created when soaking my pads to water my garden. It's a great fertilizer!"

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR MARTHA!  Put the sewing machine down and back away from the table.

You know ladies.  We could stop this madness.  We could all take those beautiful little magic pills and never have to choose between "pearl and plastic" or "glossy cardboard" applicators.  We could give engineers the opportunity to stop putting their time and energy into making aerodynamic pads that can absorb Lake Michigan.  We can live period and pain free. 

It's possible. 
It's beautiful. 
And in my mind, it's the way God intended it to be.
Thus I choose to be period free.

God bless America.