Parting the Red Sea

Every three months I turn into a different person: A giant green monster full of pent up aggression, just like the Incredible Hulk. It used to be every single month, but now I take birth control that gives me my period only four times a year. Let me tell you, I will never go back.

We all get the telltale signs of PMS... tender breasts, bloating, increased appetite for sweets.... But my biggest sign is not what happens to my body but what happens to my mind. All of a sudden I'm convinced that my family members are talking about me behind my back, saying what an immature person I am. I'm convinced that my best friend has found a new best friend and is only talking to me out of pity. I'm convinced that I am completely and utterly alone in the world and that no one can understand me and that no one ever will. The image that comes into my head is that all of my loved ones are on one side of a divide and that I am all alone on the other, and that these people couldn't cross the divide even if they wanted to, and I convince myself that they don't.

Instead of wallowing alone in my self pity I reach out to everyone in an attempt to reconcile what is not broken. I write long emails, then second-guess myself and write even longer ones to make up for what I've said. Then I'm not convinced that those contained what I really meant to say either, so I write and write until I have talked in a circle and then I am REALLY convinced that I've blown any chance at keeping those I love in my life, so I say even more.

My friends and family have become intimately aware of this pattern and know not to take it too seriously. They even actually don't seem to mind it but accept it as part of my lovely personality. However, in the dating world such paranoia does not go over well. No one wants three drunk phone messages in the middle of the night asking you to love me (or to at least just give me sex if not love), or to be chased down the street by a lovesick me with bags full of groceries as you pull away unknowingly in your pickup truck. Ironically, my problem isn't actually paranoia -- the problem is paranoia that I have paranoia. Or it's paranoia that other people will think I have paranoia. It's this feeling that they will see the "real" me, the one lurking under the surface, or that the one lurking is the fake me and that they will mistake it for the real me. It all creates a cycle in my head that I cannot break until the "crimson wave" stops and my serotonin levels rise again.

I write about this on a fibromyalgia blog because FM and PMDD often go together. In fact, many of my issues, however seemingly unrelated, can be traced to the presence of my FM. It's nice to have something to blame it on, or at least attribute it to. Luckily I have a roommate now and a plethora of women's advice books, all of which help me to curb my incessant texting and emailing of potential love interests during that tender time of the month. Luckily I'm on enough medication that only half of my brain is convinced at the moment that my best gay friend is leaving me for another girl while they sit with a bottle of wine and laugh about how boring I am. Only half of my brain writes this best friend letters of concern. The other half keeps this half from writing twice as many, and the friend himself seems as unfazed by it all as he was when he met me seven years ago.

Ever since I started getting fibromyalgia flareups they come during my period like clockwork. I'm sure being stuck at home with a fuzzy head doesn't help the paranoia about paranoia. But at least I get to stay home and watch girlie movies with a box of Kleenex, crying over lost love, found love, and the elusive creature that will hold me in the middle of the night, on my side of the great divide.