My mother, a biology teacher by profession, showed me what a uterus looked like in a picture book on human anatomy. To my five-year old self, it looked like a sports trophy made of muscles.
On a March night in 2008, very close to International Women’s Day, my baby pink pajamas were stained reddish brown (a stain caused by turmeric and detergent, I’d assumed). My mother informed me that it was blood. I didn’t believe her; I had to constantly go check if it was really blood flowing out of me.
From what I had gathered, periods were supposed to come with pain—in your lower belly, legs, back, and sometimes even your head. That’s how my mother and a few of my friends described it. But I felt nothing. And I was told that they lasted for three to seven days a month. This, I would discover, was also not how it went for me. I bled heavily for the next ten to twelve days.
I had told my mother not to tell anyone I’d started menstruating. It felt like something too personal to share. But within an hour on that March night, I was flooded with calls from both my grandmothers and all my aunts. They all said the same thing: You are a woman now. You can have babies now. So, you must protect yourself.
All I could do was cringe and think of a shiny golden trophy that I was not prepared to receive. A happy women’s day to me.
Two summers into this life of pretending to be a woman, “the pain” came. At first it was dull, but then it got sharper, like tiny knives piercing into my back and lower belly and my legs. Oftentimes, it was unbearable and made me retch. I could smell my sweat and blood and feel my muscles clench. I knew now that it did feel like both muscle and metal.
At first, my mother said the pain was normal. But then, as it got worse, she took me to a doctor, then a few doctors, then many doctors. From age 13-17, the doctors’ appointments went the same way.
“She’s overweight.”, they’d say.
“She needs to exercise more and eat less.”
Then they would check my breasts, which were only breasticles then. And check me down there. This always made me want to crumple and hide myself into a corner.
“Everything seems normal except her weight. No thyroid issues either. The pain will go away after marriage, you’ll see.”
“But you should get an ultrasound”
“No cysts.”, at which my mother, a guilt-struck carrier of PCOD, would heave a sigh of relief. At least it was not PCOD. At least her daughter’s periods are regular and five-days long now. At least she won’t have to spend her life plucking stray hairs off her chin. So, my mother, with an “if I can do it, so can she” attitude, sent me to school even when I told her I could not even sit for long.
I always overbled through my white skirt uniform at school on those days. And to hide, I would park myself in an empty corner of the classroom, with my head down. Girls often took pity on me and walked behind me to hide my stain. Boys, who I assume didn’t have sisters, would point and ask, “What’s that?”
Some days, I would crouch in a corner of the perpetually stinky and dirty girls’ washroom and beg for the teacher to call my mother.
“Why do you come to school when you know you are sick?” they’d tut tut at me, unless it was a male teacher. The male teachers just avoided all eye contact and let me be. Somehow that was more comfortable than explaining to a female teacher that it felt like I was going to die.
At home, my father would say “Natok korona (don’t act dramatically)”. Even my mother could not fathom how or why I was in so much pain. Was it just an excuse to miss school? I wondered that too. Was I just a liar? Was I just extremely sensitive? Was I just acting? Was this even real?
I learned to separate my mind and my body. I learned to categorise everything around “the pain”.
Before pain: Finish revision for Monday’s test.
During pain: Lie down in a corner without muttering a sound and watch my body crumple up from afar.
After pain: Start with the preparation for the next exam befor my periods arrive.
Only after I left my parents’ home and ventured into university (where I shared a room with a friend), did the sanitary napkin ads on TV start making sense.
I would watch some of my friends suffer painful periods, but they’d still manage to attend classes, talk, eat, stand up. I always assumed that they hid their pain better. I was just weak. They were not. I was weak because I had always just pretended to be a woman, I was not really one. My soul knew that, my body didn’t.
I was an adult now, and now, I could choose not to go to the doctors anymore. I did not need to hear how overweight, grotesque, crybaby, or “normal” I was. I was done. My body and I went separate ways now. If bad things happened to my body, I would only be a bystander that had nothing to do with it. I only needed a few essentials:
1. A room all to myself so no one commented on me writhing in pain.
2. A trusty pink bucket that would catch my constant puke (which was bile). –a half-melted meftal in too
3. A bottle of water with ORS.
4. A forgotten packet of Meftal, which was useless as a painkiller.
5. And an image of life after “the pain”, which I would visualise through gritted teeth with a tiny smooth and cool amethyst tightly held in my palm.
It has been seven years since. I’m nearing my thirties, and now, I have to plan my life around “the pain”, more so than ever. No, being of “marriageable age” hasn’t solved the problem. Nor has marijuana, Zumba, running, dieting, losing weight, having sex, getting a nose piercing, buying crystals that help with pain, or learning how to belly dance. I now believe “the pain”, I don’t deny it. But I still don’t know if it is “real enough” to deserve a “loss of pay” leave. My friends who have seen me in pain urge me to see doctors, worry over me, promise that there are good doctors who would try to understand and take me seriously. I don’t know how it matters when I’m really outside my body during periods, floating, barely existing, not existing as a woman, nor a man, nor a child.
But my manager at work asks for a medical certificate to get one to two days of leave a month. By now, I have googled the term “endometriosis” to know that it could possibly be something I have. But then the detection process is very intrusive, and I’d rather not go get it checked. Because if it’s real, I don’t want it. I heard Marilyn Monroe had it. Sounds too glamourous for me.
But through the process of writing this down, I have come a long way in years. I now spend more time in my body, eat magnesium-rich foods before my periods, read up more about other people who suffer like I do, and paint happy uteruses on my sketch books. I have also managed to find a doctor that might try to understand. I now want to be able to express to the doctor without shame or fear. I now want to be able to visualise a life after “the pain”.
