I started this blog a while back, right after my trip home to Chicago, but never finished. With my computer on hiatus, it’s been fermenting until now. It may or may not have gotten a bit too rank and heavy, so I’ll do my best to post some innocuous Halloween photos in the next day or two to soothe everyone’s ragged nerves.
Ok, so Ima talk about my period and blood and female shit, so if you’re a squeamish “man” who’s too chicken to buy tampons for your girlfriend then you better check out now. Consider your sackless asses warned.
Now, for the rest of you…Look into my eyes…you are getting very, very sleepy…
I am slightly embarrassed to mention that my period took me by surprise at the Labor Day picnic I attended in Chicago this past September. Let me remind you all that I am 38 years old. Since I’ve only been getting my period every month for the last 25 years (that’s 300 chances to get it right, for those of you not standing by with calculators), it’s only natural and totally forgivable that I was not prepared and had to avail myself of the International Lady-Emergency Hotline to get straight (Martina to Katie to Heather and…SCORE!! And the crowd goes wild!!).
After 25 years of monthly spontaneous bloodletting, one might think that sooner or later one would start to run out of blood and that the “end” years of the Bleeding Game would result in fainter and fainter episodes of cramping and clotting. That over time, the quantity of flowage would be directly proportionate to the ever-lessening quantity of wishful eggs-to-be-released. That my PMS would infinitesimally dissipate and my menstrual discomfort slowly, but surely grind to a complete stop, to the strains of creepy organ music distortedly unwinding in a slow motion Merry-Go-Round nightmare.
But no. That’s not how it has been for me. I’m starting to think that Mother Nature, She’s got it out for me big time. I’m pretty sure that vindictive bitch wants me to give birth and She hasn’t exactly been a shrinking violet in letting me know it, increasingly making my periods heavier, longer, and harder to endure than ever. My period used to be a gentle little procreation reminder each month, a charming Victorian glove slap saying, You cad, you are wasting our time, but now it’s a back-alley beat down that practically leaves me in traction and only able to communicate by blinking. If I’m found soon in the bottom of a lake, handless and with my feet sunk into cement, you’ll know that only my childlessness is to blame, and Mother Nature is the culprit.
Because I’m the faithless traitor. The one rejecting Her simple fertility demands, the careless slut reaping all the benefits of sex with none of the penalties. The mocking vixen sitting motionless, watching all her freely-given figs wither on the branch.
And I have to admit, She’s starting to get to me. I feel like a POW caving under torture, giving not only my name, rank, and serial number, but also top-secret information that will breach every security device I’ve installed over the years to protect myself from motherhood.
After all, as my family and friends can attest, I have always loved kids, especially babies (sweet Christ, I could eat babies for breakfast every single day of my life and never tire of them). I met my friend Keersten’s new baby a few weeks ago and had to be physically restrained from swallowing little Elsa whole, booties and all.
When I met M. over 8 years ago, he made it very clear from the absolute start that he unequivocally did NOT want children. And in my not-quite-30-year-old-and-attitudinal state, I thought, “So fucking what, buddy? What makes you think I even WANT to have a kid, sheesh! And even if I did, what in the hell makes you think you’re such a great catch?!” (Ah, how quaint the beginnings of long relationships look through a telescope.)
I have been truly ambivalent about it for many years, unsure whether or not I should or should not have children. Struggling with massive self-centeredness and feeling unequal to the monumental task of raising a well-adjusted little person. Knowing that if I DID decide that I wanted to be a mother that it would mean leaving behind someone I love and disrupting my entire life.
Something that bothers me is this: Any idiot can have kids. The dopes, they’re not sitting home worrying about overpopulation or the sort of psychological damage they’ll inevitably inflict upon their children. They’re just out there breeding indiscriminately, instilling in their kids the same fucked-upedness that threatens to end our planet. It’s the people like me, people like my friends, people like you, who value education, the arts, critical thinking, who shun racism and homophobia and sexism and lots of other –isms, we’re the ones who NEED to be having babies. And I feel in some ways that my refusal to do so (and my friends’ refusal to do so; I have few friends with children) is a real dereliction of duty, a lazy shirking of responsibility to our race.
I thought I’d left this battle behind for good, consoling myself with the fact that there are LOTS of ways for me to have kids in my life without having to mother them, should I decide in the future that I need more shortie time. I am still of the belief that in the unlikely event I should decide to mother, I will opt for non-biological motherhood, since I get overwhelmed and sad thinking about the amazing number of existing kids who need parents, but don’t have them. I don’t have to squeeze a kid out of my vag to love it fiercely enough to kill anyone who tried to hurt it. My nephew and niece are living testaments to the truth of that sentiment.
Until recently, this has only been a philosophical dilemma, but lately I’ve been feeling like I’m engaged in an all-out monthly war game: Brutal, hand-to-hand combat with my own body. It’s pretty apparent to me that at this late date, neither one of us is going down without a fight.
