June Renew: Day Seventeen
I had this whole shtick written about how WordPress deleted the first entry I wrote about this subject, and how I had my suspicions it was going to go away, and how I couldn’t believe it and blah blah blah. I had all this stuff ready to go, but as it turns out, WordPress saved an archive for me. I wasn’t expecting it, but now the entry is back to life, if you care to hear me speak on this subject again. There’s still an important conversation to be had here, as something new popped up surrounding the cycles all women, yes, just women, experience.
My co-workers and I were walking to our morning meeting when I joked with one of them. “We’re part of the White Pants Club today,” I said, as we both were wearing white jeans. People in newsrooms kind of dress alike. We had a pair of interns who came in ever day wearing nearly the same thing. Anyway, another one of my colleagues said she was going to wear white pants that day too, “But that time of the month is coming.” I totally got it. Definitely don’t want to wear white pants during that. “And it gets worse as you get older,” I told them, “But thank God I still get it.” And I meant every word.
But then when I did get my monthly visitor the next day, like clockwork it is, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed to see it. I mean, I know there’s nothing stopping it from coming right now, but I was almost upset that, as a thirty-seven year old woman, there’s been exactly zero pause in the twenty-four years I’ve been getting it. That’s two hundred and twenty eight periods on the docket with no end in sight. I want to see the pause in it. I don’t want my uterine lining to keep falling out of me, saddened that no fertilization happened again. I know it sounds silly, but I’d like to see that pause in this miracle so another one may take place.
There are some things that are really only for women, just as there’s things that are only for men. There are some things only we’re gonna get, and they’re not. It’s like when I told my co-worker all about how bad I was cramping. She told me she understood, and one time had to run to the bathroom for ten minutes because they were so bad, and our male co-worker was like, where do you go? “Men don’t get it,” I told her. And that’s totally fine. But I think no matter who you are or however you see yourself, that feeling exists when you know it’s time to take the next step. Your body can tell you one thing, but your heart can tell you another. I’m glad I’m a woman whose body is built to create and hold life, and I have every intention of using it thusly. Men can get that, can’t they?