On the rag

eat your own placenta on ketamine

A therapist once told me that people are more in touch with their feelings when they’re on their periods. OTR (on the rag), my stepmom called it; her general crudity transcended her very American terror of human sexuality. The therapist, however, was significantly closer to the eat your own placenta on ketamine side of things than my dad’s ugly wife. She was my first healthcare provider who wasn’t completely hostile to transsexuals, so even though her yonic insight was not, you know, the correct way to help a trans person manage their dysphoria, the effort was appreciated. Not that my period gives me dysphoria, as I’d already informed her, but you try convincing a cis person that we’re not as grossed out by ourselves as they think we should be. Still, like the term OTR (one so opaque as to demand explanation, and therefore further engagement with the supposedly taboo topic), her period comment has stayed with me over the years, probably because I—like so many people—am attracted to the idea that there’s a “real” “reason” for the frightening emotions passing through my body.

Other than the inconveniences that plague everyone who menstruates, I don’t mind my period at all. (I’ll puke if I have to hold a purse or speak in a public bathroom, but the bleeding is fine, for some reason.) In fact, it makes me feel feminine in a way I enjoy, but lately that hasn’t been enough to outweigh the PMS symptoms, which are relatively new. Or maybe I’ve always gotten them, but didn’t notice before I was on hormones, since I wasn’t in the business of noticing anything back then. Or maybe they’ve just gotten worse with age—my sibling told me that’s what happens if you don’t have a baby, until menopause, anyway. I’ve already been through menopause (in the sense that my periods stopped for a calendar year), and plan to undergo it a second time because I’ve recently upped my dose again, in part because of this whole PMS thing, which is bad, if abbreviated (I don’t know how long it was for my dad’s now-postmenopausal wife because she was a bitch every day that I knew her, so who’s to say?). I would love to believe, like that therapist, that the paranoia, irritability, and Cathyesque emotional fragility (Ack!) all serve a biological purpose, or signal a cosmic rent in the pearly veil between our world and Theirs, or could at least come with some kind of silver lining. But I don’t think they do. I think we all just have sex hormones interacting with dozens of other hormones and that these interactions make us feel better or worse depending on who and when and where we are, and the rest is drag.

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