The Five Stages of Grief (For Vagina Owners)

(Warning: this satirical article contains nothing but mentions of grief about women experiencing menstrual cycles. Enjoy!)

Denial

Even if you are as regular as a Swiss clock and you have the days counted down and your calendar has a circled day of when the USS Enterprise containing nothing but red shirts will land in your underwear, you will always be shocked when it finally arrives. This is especially true if it happens when you first wake up in the morning and you sleepily walk to the bathroom to do your business and find out that Mother Nature has visited you and boy did she leave a bitch of a message. For some reason our first thought is always to groan and go, “I can’t believe it!”

Anger

This covers a lot of categories because naturally your raised testosterone level will make your ability to tolerate bullshit pretty low at this point, but there are other factors involved as well. The timing is never convenient; as it will always seem to correlate to days you have a hot date or planned to go to the beach which conveniently has very few places to go for privacy. And let’s not even begin with the cramps you know are coming. If it arrived early and you didn’t have your pair of ‘period panties’ ready (which if you have never owned I suggest you get a hold of) then you have to deal with laundry, making sure you’re topped up with stain removers (blood is not easy to get out, ask anyone on death row) and your stash of tampons/pads/cups. We have all been there while out doing errands and you realize there’s a party in your pants (more like the prom when Carrie’s invited) and figure out too late you have not topped up your tampons and there’s no dispenser in the public toilets. Now you either have to get to the nearest convenience store or you suck it up and wad up some tissue and get creative.

Bargaining

Bargaining will usually take place before the period starts and usually for the following scenarios: to delay it or dispatch it sooner. Delaying it usually involves some of the examples back in Anger: you have plans and generally your period is enough of a nuisance on a normal schedule, never mind if you’re traveling, swimming, or attending a wedding (worse if it’s your own). Dispatching it to come soon usually involves a pregnancy scare of some kind. You know you were careful, you took your pill at the same time you always do, wore a condom, and maybe even got the implant in your arm. But there will always be a tingling of self-doubt about the accuracy of all of those things combined with the raw power of your baby oven. Because that is essentially what it is and was designed to do. Full-stop. I can vouch that even virgins think they could be pregnant when their period is late, the fear runs that deep. Being late is pretty much like riding in a fluorescent Jurassic Park jeep with Jeff Goldblum whispering, “Life…..finds a way.”

Depression

This is the moment when pretty much everything you have ever been sad or angry about emerges as somehow being connected to the fact that you have a vagina. It crosses your mind that this is not fair, that half the population will never know what it feels like to go through this every month and sometimes more. They will never have to go through the stigma of every time you show the slightest hint of being mad or passionate about something that it conjugates with your uterus shedding part of itself into your pants. This is also the time where men think that we are angry because we are on our periods. Well the jokes on them, we are angry all the time (refer back to “stage 2: ANGER” for more details)

Acceptance

And finally you just put on your big girl period panties, suck it up for the day and take some Motrin. Because what else can you do, aside from a complete hysterectomy, which I’m sure more women would for if they didn’t also have to put up with doctors who think they know more about what we want out of life then we do (which if it doesn’t include children will not really account for a fulfilling life for a woman apparently)

#period #vaginaowners #menstruation #whateverygirlshouldknow