It’s Not Shark Week If You’re More Like Eeyore Than A Shark

The prelude to shark week is always a rough time for me. The standard PMS symptoms on an average scale would be an absolute delight to “suffer” from but, NOPE. I’m not that lucky. Not at all. I’m not even lucky enough to suffer from extreme cramps, because magical pills prescribed by a physician can make the pain tolerable. (Not that it’s lucky for anyone who does suffer from them, though. Don’t get me wrong there.)

Except for the obvious correlation between the loss of blood during menstruating and the bloody waters from a dying animal in a shark attack, there’s no other similarities between them. My Shark Week is more like Eeyore Week. It’s like my body decides to forego the bloating, the headaches, the cramping, and the irritability with a gloomy version of my Depression on steroids. There’s no avoiding it. No escaping it’s havoc and hell every month. For those around me, I am deeply sorry for all that I put you through during that womanly time.

While everyone else is holed up, curled tightly in a fetal position on their beds writing in pain, I’m doing the same, but for no other reason than my brain thinks it’s all just the end of the world. My feelings become hyperalert and overly sensitive. I take everything personally and overreact with full-on waterworks. My mind goes through some sort of grieving sensation, turning my perspective gray, everything is all doom and gloom. It’s like I’m thirteen and being shunned by my bff on the same day the boy I liked asked out the pretty girl.

When I get like this, I can’t bear to face even my children. I wish I could find a dark, but warm and cozy, cave somewhere far away from anyone who knows me and live anonymously in seclusion. The sound of my own voice is pitifully grating to my ears. Enough so, that I want to stop sobbing long enough to rage upon myself for daring to speak. Yet, I have to. There’s no running off into the safety of anonymity when Eeyore Week comes creeping in. Just for that, I sulk, instead. Another characteristic that aids in making me the farthest thing from sunshine, roses, sugar, and spice, and all those other damned nice things that I’m supposed to be made of.

My poor, poor family suffers. Miserably. They know that whatever it may be that they need from me, I’m going to turn it into a reason to cry until I hyperventilate. Or lose my shit completely like some crazy batshit dance or piano mom. Maybe even one of those spelling bee kid’s mom after they’ve needed up the easiest of beginner words from the pressure she’s put on them. I don’t want to be this way. Not for a second.

Nothing I’ve tried seems to help it much. Antidepressants only intensify what is already amplified a thousand times over. Anti-psychotics caused real psychosis and suicidal behavior. Anti-anxiety meds only turn me into an ornery bitch ready to snap someone’s neck. Getting through this week before my period is excruciatingly difficult, but I have no choice. I’ve learned to withdraw within myself during quiet moments and drown myself out when it’s chaos in my household. I get by with a little help from my own inner strength and the love for life and my family that usually is more than enough fuel to pilot me forward.

Plus, I countdown the months until I’m in menopause age range every night before I go to bed during my Eeyore Week. Only then will this damn crazy curse of a PMS finally be cured….. but, then again, who knows what the stars will have in store to replace the angrivation of this horridly dreadful aspect of my body’s twisted version of pre-menstrual-syndrome.

#SundayConfessions
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