Well, my dear readers, P.M.M. is a little acronym that I have concocted in my little pea-brain to help men understand why women are clinically insane slightly mental the week before Aunt Flo comes to visit.
Males, I'm sorry, I know this subject matter makes most, if not all of you, want to blow chunks. However, unless you are deciding to live on a secluded island with Gilligan, and kill off Ginger, Mary Ann, and the rich guy's wife (Why does no one knows her name?) then you're going to need some education on matters of menstruation. I promise, I will not get graphic... well, unless I start exaggerating... and there's a pretty good chance that will happen. Anyways, please continue to read until you feel cold sweats overtaking your body, at which point, you should step away from this blog, and go find a cool compress.
P.M.M. stands for Pre Menstrual Madness.
To call what happens to us women, a syndrome, is a little insulting, in my opinion. Only because the word "syndrome" makes most men feel that we can take some kind of magic pill, and our symptoms will disappear. I will reference the popular television sit-com, Everybody Loves Raymond...
Now, don't you men think that if a tiny caplet would solve all of our monthly feminine needs, that the creator of this medicine would have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize?! To my knowledge, this pill has not been successfully developed at this point in time.
Let's start at the beginning. Most of the time when girls get their first monthly visit, they are scared, nervous, and embarrassed, among many other emotions that can be very confusing to a pre-teen. I, on the other hand, had an out of the ordinary experience when that day came. I remember the day quite vividly. My family's washer had been broken, so my mother and I were preparing laundry to take to the laundry mat. My mother ordered me to use the restroom, as all mothers do before taking their children on almost any trip that may last for longer than a half of an hour. When I went to pee and discovered my new "development", I screamed at the top of my lungs. Now, for those of you who know me, you know that if I'm screaming at the top of my lungs, folks who live clear on the other side of town are wondering what the fuss is all about. My mom yelled up the stairs and asked why I was screaming. To her surprise, I burst out of the bathroom, grinning from ear to ear. I strut my stuff down our wooden staircase, slid down the banister, jumped about 4 feet into the air and landed by our front door, like I was Mary Catherine Gallagher.
I exclaimed, "I'M A WOMAN! YIPEE!" And then pranced around the rest of the day, proud of the sanitary napkin I had stuck to the inside of my panties.
Oh, how naive young girls can be.
That was before PMS made my average size boobs feel like they look like this...
And before my back felt like I had been sleeping in a medieval torture device for the past 23 years...
And before my perfectly healthy ovaries felt like a sledge hammer had smashed them to smithereens...
(Don't worry fellas, those are prunes, not real ovaries. But I'm not joking... imagine an organ in your body that feels the way prunes look. Now, do you understand cramps?)
What I would do to go back to the days when I boasted about my period...
Regardless, even through all the trials and tribulations of woman-hood... I'm proud to be a woman. I am not ashamed of my curves, even when I sometimes bruise myself on tables and countertops because I'm not used to the size of my childbearing hips. I like that I get emotionally attached to people and feel the need to nurture those around me. I love wearing heels, even though they make me want to amputate my feet the morning after I wear them.
I remember being in a class during high school and overhearing a conversation between a guy and a girl. The guy was a very light-hearted, fun-loving, happy-go-lucky person and I liked him a lot. The girl had a dark sense of humor, chains hanging from her belt loops, and 3 inches of black eyeliner caked across both eyelids. Needless to say, I never really related to her, with the exception of that afternoon. The boy, noticing she was in a fouler mood than most other days asked her what was the matter. She simply replied, "Well, if you really need to know, I'm bleeding to death." and turned right back around. That was literally the most eloquent and profound statement I have ever heard, in my entire life, hands down.
So, in lieu of her, I am still going to declare that I love being a female, periods and all, and I don't apologize for my bitchy-ness... especially not during the weeks I'm convinced that I'm bleeding to death.
