Bleeders

What if that feeling of deep sadness and superficial ‘look at me one more second and I’ll scratch you’ feeling right before my bleeding is not really about sadness, or rage, but rather about downward flow and heat?

Downward flow like water releasing from a seemingly clam lake into a loud waterfall. Like a tear rolling down a crocodile’s cheek merging into the river. A heat like a steady gas flame ready for liking a match. Like pressure in a boiling pot asking you to lift the lid so the steam can release and bite you in the hand.

For some probably utterly human reason these dynamic sensations want explanations for existing and calling them ‘sad about my current loneliness’ or ‘angry at his scolding look when I passed with my bike against traffic’ seem to make sense. Yet sadly, really, these namings make me forget how perfect the choreography of my hormones, my ancestral design, knows that the flow needs the push, needs the bitchy truth telling, needs the stillness induced sadness, the cramping to squeeze it out and all the rest of the host of torturous, or enlivening visiting sensations over the course of our bleeding years. All without my understanding, interference, or the recurring monthly, amnesic worry about this state of feeling being permanent.

At 48 I am lightly surprised every month to still experience the nipple pinch, dull pull and day of bleeding. No less by the moments within forgetting my agitation at everything, when I feel gratitude for this connection to creation, youngness at ovaries and a relatedness to all the other bleeders.

Maybe I’ll be sad when my rhythm changes, peters and eventually the last one happens, even though I love fake endings and a good last scene before the red curtain drops. My friend May tells me her encores of proper scratching and truth telling are still well and alive since the last bow happened. Mostly appreciated by the ‘no bull shit lovers’ in her circles she says and to her, a mostly welcomed wise woman perk in the continuum of our shedding and re-growing through the ages.