When I’ve eaten all the cracker pieces and am finally in the car, I discover that my phone charger is still upstairs and finally the waterlanders appear that have been burning behind my eyes since the duvet cover dilemma a few hours earlier. Fortunately, I took precautions (read: waterproof mascara). Whining – not a cute little tear, but long lashes and snot bubbles – I scold just about everything within my line of sight behind the wheel. Stupid car, raging weather, rocky chair, annoying advertising on the radio and much more annoying fellow road users. If looks could kill, anyone who looked inside my car to get a glimpse of the emotional wreckage behind the wheel would now have been nestled between six planks.
Arriving on location I put a smile on my face, I put a powder on my face for a slightly more neutral skin color than purple-red and I hold a cooling roller against my now swollen eyelids. When asked if everything is okay, I answer with a laugh that the pollen is in the air early this year. Confess that as a thirty-year-old woman I cried because my cracker broke, I think it is very sad. And yet it happens every month. I can’t enjoy the two days before and the first two days of my period. Headaches, back and abdominal cramps, a construction worker’s appetite and mood swings from I’ve got you there. And I hardly ever talk about it. Well, maybe with some good friends and (female) colleagues or relatives. But I’m certainly not sharing it with a stranger.
Stupid really, because if I had ‘just’ a headache or hay fever, I would tell you that too. And to what extent are ‘Sorry if I’m a bit sniffling, I have hay fever’ from ‘Sorry if I’m a bit absent, I’m on my period’ from each other? The only difference is that men do get hay fever, but no periods. I honestly think that if it did, there was something invented years ago to put things on hold until you start having kids, or at least it would be generally accepted to call in sick or working from home on the days when you can do little more than curl up in bed with a tub of ice cream and a pitcher.
But no, we continue to be difficult about menstruating. And that’s something we’re working on ourselves. Swapping tampons is suspiciously like a shady drug deal, women in tampon and sanitary napkin commercials frolic about as if they were having the time of their lives, and having a bloody conversation with your partner is too much information for many women. Too much information my ass. Periods are the most normal thing in the world and that’s how I’m going to treat it from now on.
In the evening I put my words into action. When I walk back from the supermarket, I am approached by a man who asks if he can not walk with me. If I ignore him, he continues irritated: „Oh, won’t you talk to me? Or do you play hard to get?” For a moment I just want to walk on, but then I turn around, I look at him and I say: “No, I’m on my period. And if you were once in a while, you’d understand why I’m not in the mood for your stupid bullshit today. Good evening.” I walk on with a chuckle. So, and now chocolate.