The following is a guest post by the blgger Cheekyminx.
With her permission, several of her posts about PMDD are being featured on this
blog. To find out more about her work as a PMDD Advocate, please visit her
Facebook page, PMDD Life Support.
I've said I wanted to write about some
of the things that help me to cope with PMDD. Maybe another day. Right now,
NOTHING is helping. In fact, everything is just making it worse! I suspect,
hell, I know from reading the forums, that this is pretty common. Nothing
helps, at least it seems that way, and everything is an irritation. A speck of
dust in the wrong place can make me want to jump out the window. Yes, it’s
irrational. That’s kind of the point, and I don’t need to be reminded of
it… At least I have some control over a speck
of dust.
The reason nothing helps is because
nothing makes this chemical shit-storm of body and mind go away. It is still
there, demanding attention, making me behave in ways I cannot stand. But there
are things that do bring modicums of comfort. I can take a bath. Sitting in the
sunshine smelling the grass helps, too. There are also my standbys of yoga and
meditation. I would be lost without them, but sometimes, they aren’t enough.
Really, they’re never enough…not during PMDD. They just offer a bit of relief
and keep me as stable as possible.
The saddest thing may just be that so
many of us have to get through this pretty much unsupported and alone. Very few
people get it enough to be of help. The fact is, if you don’t have it, you just
don’t get it. This includes friends, roommates and partners who, needless to
say, have a very hard time of it, and often wind up making everything worse,
even if they don’t intend to. Even if it was me on the receiving end of this
phenomenon, I don’t know how I would respond. I guess it would depend on my own
mental state that day. Sadly, PMDD ruins plenty of relationships.
But one can dream that suddenly, it
wasn’t such a horrible thing for others to cope with…
Dream Sequence
I wake up and I can feel the stirring of
hormonal reaction inside my body. The good days have passed. Shit! Here we go
again. Two weeks until my period when I can think and act straight again and
not detest myself for having no control.
In walks my husband with a bouquet of
flowers. “Good morning, sunshine!” he says.
“Drop dead.” Shit, I think to myself.
Did that just come out? Oh, crap, oh crap, oh crap. I want to enjoy the
flowers. They are so beautiful. Please, please, please let me just enjoy the
flowers. How did he know how much they would mean to me? And yet, I can’t
express it. The only words out of my mouth are “drop dead?” What is wrong with
me?
“Honey, I won’t take what you said to
mean anything,” he says. “I know what day this is…um…I know any day now I’ll be
losing you for a week or two to that whatever it is…but I just want you to
know, I’m going to do everything I can to make it easier for you this time.”
Really? I think, heart melting inside
while I roll my eyes on the outside thinking of what a damned irritating
[insert cuss word] he usually is at this time. How does he intend to do that?
Go on vacation for two weeks without me? He would abandon me like that!
I go down to the kitchen expecting
crumbs on the cutting board, knowing I’m about to get all wound up, and what’s
this? The kitchen has been cleaned! I mean, really cleaned! The floor actually
sparkles. It’s a miracle!
“Do you want breakfast?”
“Just leave me alone,” comes out of my
mouth while "Yes, please make me your lovely eggs" never leaves my lips.
“I’ll make some eggs. If you don’t want
them, you don’t have to eat them. If you do, I’ll leave them here for you.”
Hmm…what’s gotten into him? I start to
think paranoid and judgmental thoughts. I just manage to hold back the bitter
words that want to exert my independence, “I can make my own eggs!”
“Oh, by the way, I know how much it’s
been bothering you that I hadn’t fixed that sink since we moved in two months
ago, so guess what?”
What? Another empty promise to fix
it…someday…next year? I’m biting my tongue because I KNOW I’m thinking with way
too much exaggeration. Words start leaking out…words I KNOW will only do more
harm than good…
“I called the plumber. He’ll be here
next week when you feel better.”
He… I can’t help but smile. The tension
in my body that usually just gets tighter and tighter is starting to untwine.
This is all getting to be too much.
“I also tidied my room just so you won’t
have to be repeatedly irritated by the disorder in there. I know it affects you
and makes things worse. In fact, I’ve decided to take care of everything on
this here list that I normally force you to tolerate and remind me of month
after month like I’m deaf. I may let things slide at other times, but I realize
it just makes things worse once your cycle again. Besides, it really is my
responsibility…”
Oh, my God! I just want to cry now. I
have to cry. So out it comes. I am sobbing uncontrollably. Great. Now he’ll
take it personally and the world falls to shit.
He doesn’t say anything. He gets a
pained look on his face…and then, it happens. Another miracle. He takes me by
the hand, leads me upstairs, and holds me on the bed while I finish crying. At
first, I push him away. I can’t bear to be touched. It actually hurts. But he
holds me even tighter. He isn’t trying to get me to stop crying, or offering me
Kleenex, or asking me what’s wrong. He’s just there. Strong. Reassuring. And I
feel safe for what feels like the first time in my life.
When I stop, I feel stupid. I feel
embarrassed. And I push him away. He doesn’t say, “I can never do anything
right.” He doesn’t throw up his hands. He doesn’t call me crazy or make me feel
worse than I already do. He just says, “Honey, I love you. I’ll give you some
time and space. I’ll go get some groceries because I know we are out of bananas
and chocolate…and frankly, that scares me right now.”
I want to say, “and we need lettuce” but
I can’t get it out my mouth. Why the fuck can’t he remember the fucking
lettuce? And then I cry some more, ashamed of my ridiculous thoughts but also,
feeling a strange sweetness inside. I think I’ll bake him some cookies.
I know. It’s just a dream. Maybe it is
too much to ask. Is it catering and kowtowing? Is it just too utopian? To
expect another person to be able to behave this way when faced with judgment,
contempt, rage, and the other unpleasantries that consume a woman in PMDD? Is
it too much to expect someone not to take such seemingly personal attacks
personally? To be able to be in our heads knowing what it is we need or want
when it is suddenly impossible for us to just speak it? To be able to set aside
their own discomforts with whatever has taken us over to wonder, my God, what
is it like for her?
I suppose so. People are people after
all. There no such thing as a Stepford Husband.
Then again, maybe this is all it would
take to change the patterns and break the cycles. Maybe, PMDD is a dis-ease in
consciousness designed to make us learn things we never would have otherwise
about ourselves and each other, given the compassion and support to get through
it. What are the lessons? If we knew that, we wouldn’t be going through it.
Maybe learning them would be the difference between escalation and management.
Or is it just spiritual bullshit to
think there are lessons. And even if there are, what if they aren’t being
learned?
If nothing else, maybe this little dream
illuminates the secret machinations of the very complicated and unsettling PMDD
mind.
I hope so.
Postscript: I shared this with my
husband who said it helped him understand me better. I told him I wasn’t going
to post it because it just felt too exposing. But then, on one of the Facebook
forums, I read a post from a young woman who had just had a blowout with her
boyfriend. She was so upset, and I could feel the shaking in my own body… I thought about what my husband said, that
this helped him understand. I thought about what he did for me after reading
this: fixed the sink, took me grocery shopping, didn’t walk away when I was
emotionally over-stimulated but held me instead. He just wants me to be happy.
Given a little information, he actually wants to put it into practice. So, I’m
getting over my damned self and sharing this now because it just may help
someone else.
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