Blood and Life and Death

I got my first period after I had already started having sex at the age of 15. (I thought that maybe I got it just moments after, but it turned out that that was just ruptured hymen blood.) I envied the other girls their training bras and period-talk, their whispered confessions of cramps and blood-stained panties, their furtive tampon smuggling.

When I did finally get it, my father gave me a dozen white roses to celebrate my metamorphosis from girl to woman. (Ironic, as I was no longer white-rose-pure, but you don't tell your dad about the first time a boy makes you Kraft Dinner and then takes you into his dark basement bedroom in the middle of a fine summer afternoon and fucks you (twice) in his unmade bed between boy-smelling sheets.) This gift from the most important male figure in my life made me thereafter think of this blood not as a thing to be whispered about and hidden, but as a gift to be disclosed and celebrated. Shared, even.

Being rather of the more responsible sort, I went immediately on the pill. For the last 25 years, I have had a four-and-a-half day period with light flow and minimal cramping, possibly a mild headache, a marked tendency to be induced to tears during long-distance commercials, and the increased desire to consume foodstuffs of the cocoa-bean variety. I knew that other girls' periods were not nearly as kind as mine: terrible tales of gut-wrenching cramps that made gym class impossible and Midol or Tylenol necessary in order to bear the week of horror, flow that arrived unexpectedly during swimming lessons or band practice or math tests,  periods that came only once every few months, and then with a vengeance. I was lucky. I was grateful (or as grateful as a teenager unconcerned with mortality and the mysteries of life could be). I came to count on her timely arrival as a sign of anatomical mastery: the dissembling hormones had done their job and no embryo had taken up lodging inside my uterus.  

And now all that has changed. My body has decided, after so many years of benevolence and submission, to rebel.

I began waking up at night, my t-shirt soaked with sweat. Is my duvet too heavy for the season? I wondered, as I changed my top and stuck my feet out from beneath the covers. And then in the middle of the afternoon, that first rush of heat out of nowhere. God, is it hot in here? I need to open a window. I must have been over-exerting myself. But in the recesses of my brain, the dim thought that maybe this was it, my procreating years were nearing an end. Impossible to imagine when one is under 40 with no children. Forcing me to ask myself if I actually want to have a baby, now that I have almost missed my chance; the typical human response of wanting something only when you can no longer have it. (I have reviewed and found my decision to remain childless acceptable.)

Despite the warning signs, that first unexpectedly heavy period took me completely by surprise. Cramps that made me bend over in pain, clutching my belly; clots like pieces of liver, wet and slippery, sliding into the toilet with the bright red rush of blood. I wondered if maybe I needed to go to the hospital, I was hemorrhaging, I was dying. I asked advice of friends on the internet, I googled, I learned the word perimenopause. (They make sure to tell you what will happen when you first start bleeding, but no one really talks about what happens when you first start to stop.) I mentioned it to my doctor, who told me I was too young for menopause. My body begs to differ.

I can only hope that this process will be swift, that the menstrual goddesses will relent and be kind to me in the ending as they were kind in the beginning, because they sure are being cunts right now. For the past few months, my uterus has contracted and expelled dark fist-sized clots of uterine lining like pumpkin flesh and seeds being scraped clean with a dull spoon and then ripped out by handfuls. For the first time in my life, I have had to buy super absorbent tampons and overnight maxipads with wings. I have bled through denim. I have stained the sheets. I have had post-period spotting of up to a week. I have had headaches for four days that no amount or kind of drug can cure. I will miss you, blood-friend, but let's make this quick, okay?

So this is undeniably it: the beginning of the end. It's a strange thing to come to terms with. The girl with the bouquet of white roses is inside me still, but so is the dried-up old woman with jowls and saggy breasts and laugh-lines. I can see her there, just around the corner. Blood and life and death.              

January 26, 2014

Ryan and I are celebrating 20 years of being Holly-and-Ryan today. That's a lot of years, man. So I thought I'd share some of the things that I think make our relationship as great as it is. (I'm going to do it in a list of 9, obviously.)

1. We sleep under different blankets.
2. We watch television and movies together so that we can laugh at the same things, and get teary at the same things, and be scared by the same things, and discuss interesting motifs and imagery and symbolism and character development.
3. We have sex regularly.
4. We are intellectual equals.
5. Once a week I go out dancing and he does whatever it is he does when I'm not there (I suspect video games and masturbation).
6. We go on road trips together, sometimes really long ones that also involve airplanes and learning how to say "I'm sorry, I don't understand" in different languages.
7. We share our evening snacks with each other even though neither one of us really wants to.
8. We have the same decorating style.
9. We enjoy playing cards and board games together, although he usually wins.
10. I find something else to do when he is watching football, and he finds something else to do when I am podcasting.
11. We thank each other when the other person makes dinner.
12. We stand in front of bands together, and sometimes we DJ for each other, and we turn the stereo in the car up loud enough so that we can't hear each other sing.
13. It bugs me when he drinks orange juice straight out of the container and when he flicks his toothbrush, and it bugs him when I over-react to an unexpected eight-legged presence, but we know that those things don't really matter.
14. He opens my nail polish bottle for me when I have screwed the lid on too tightly, and I pluck those weird errant back hairs for him.
15. We put up with each other's mothers.
16. When we go out for dinner, we share dessert.
17. We sing terrible duets for cab drivers when we are drunk.
18. We would rather spend money on books and music and travelling than on a big house filled with lots of stuff, but we wish we had a pantry and maybe a pool.
19. We never got married.
20. We always kiss good night.

So much for 9.

Love always,
Holly xo

Panic

I was awoken this morning by a frantic scratching sound that I could not place. It sounded like the cat had somehow fallen into the bathtub and broken her back legs so that she could no longer jump back out again. I ignored it, but the scratching continued and I was forced to drag my sleepy ass out of the toasty warm bed and out into the cold air of too-goddamn-early. (It was just before 8 a.m.)

When I checked the tub, it was bare. Hmm, I thought sleepily, scratching my head. I then used my  Sherlock-Holmes-ian powers of perception to deduce that the noise was coming from behind the stereo stand, and lo! there was the cat, madly scratching the wall in her attempt to extricate herself from a decidedly tight spot. I shoved the speaker away from the stand and the cat came scrabbling out. How'd you get back there, goof? I asked her, stroking her fur soothingly. My hand came away wet. What the hell? Her tail was soaked in a liquid that, upon further inspection, seemed to be urine. You fucking PEED? For fuck's sake.

I peered behind the stand (which, incidentally, weighs about a million pounds, give or take a pound or two) and there, sitting in a substantial puddle of what I now knew was indeed urine, was a small paper ball, which at least explained her desire to squeeze her chubby cat butt back there. I knew I could not just leave a puddle of pee behind the stereo stand even though all I really wanted was to climb back under those toasty covers, so I woke Ryan up and we hauled that heavy motherfucker out far enough away from the wall that I could get back there with cleaner and paper towels and remove the offending fluid.

The cat appears to be none the worse for the experience, although the paint job is ruined because of her panicked scratching. (Nobody goes back there except the cat, so I guess it doesn't really matter.)

So here's my question: why do we pee when we are frightened? Do we just lose control of our tenuous hold on maintaining bladder function when faced with the thought of her own imminent demise? Are we ridding ourselves of excess weight in order to better prepare ourselves for fight or flight? Silver lining: at least it wasn't shit.    

The Legend of Poopy Runs

"Daaamn, girl, you mean you ain't heard da Legen' ah Poopy Runs? Ah cain't recall da las' time I met someone ain't nevah hearda ol' Poopy. You bin livin' undah a rock dis whole time?"

I shook my head and grinned, knowing I was in for a yarn from the mostly-toothless old man known in the yards as the Train-Hopping Hobo. His skin was as wrinkled as the highway map scrunched in the bottom of my knapsack, and he gave off a nauseating odor of soap and sweat and rail stink.

"Poopy Runs useta be known as a tough woman, a rock-hard woman, y'unnerstand, but lately she bin gettin' soft. Real soft. Word on da street was ol' Poopy done los' her edge.  Time was when Poopy'd come bustin' out an' damn near blast a place tah bits, she got so much powah. She was the loosest ol' gal you evah seen.A goddamn firecrackah, ol' Poopy. She was always talkin' shit 'bout how she was gonna get it undah control, rein dem ol' urges ah hers in like a pair ah ponies nevah won a race." He stopped suddenly and looked at me.

"How ol' you?"

"Old enough," I told him.

He considered, cocking his head to the side and sucking on his diseased gums. "Nah, you ain't ol' enough. Jes' a kitten still, wet behin' the ears like yo mamma jes' finish cleanin' you up. Nope. You ride dese rails fuh a little longer, mebbe I tell you 'bout Poopy. Mebbe you learn a little sumthin' 'bout life and shit afore you virgin ears hear da legen'." He spat decisively into the railway dust at his feet.

"I hear dat ol' whistle comin' anyway. I gotta train tah catch." And as the locomotive roared by, the old man caught a handle, vaulted spryly into an open car, and was gone, leaving me with a loose, empty feeling in my guts.

I would learn the legend of Poopy Runs. I would go as far as it took. I had the bug now, and there was nothing to do but ride it out.     

John

I bought John a chocolate donut for Christmas. (He has no dietary restrictions, so it was okay.)

John is an old man with Alzheimer's and a broken hip who is stuck in the hospital until someone can find a room for him in a retirement home. He may or may not have a son who may or may not come to visit him on Christmas Day.

When I met John, he was sitting in a wheelchair in front of the nurse's station, wearing red non-slip hospital-issue socks. His old-man boobs were visible beneath the thin blue hospital gown, and his hair stood up wildly in long white wisps from his otherwise-bald head. My mother, standing beside him in her own thin blue hospital gown, introduced us.

When I returned with the donut and a black coffee for my mother, we made our way back to the room they were sharing on the ninth floor, my mother thumping along with her walker, me pushing the wheelchair. Like a gentleman, John invited me to sit down in the hospital chair that was shoved into the corner. I watched as he broke pieces of donut off and ate them. We smiled at each other. He asked me my New Year's plans, twice.

John broke through the fog for a brief moment. He looked around the room, and then he looked at me. "It happens to everyone," he told me urgently, sadly. "This..." And I looked into his old-man eyes and saw the young man there, and I nodded. "Yes."

Hospital rooms during the holidays. The passage of time. Illness and loneliness. Donuts. Death. It happens to everyone.

Minutiae

On a windless winter night, with the world tucked snugly in under a duvet of snow (not a blanket, blankets are wool and scratchy and Hudson's Bay-coloured), I lie awake, thinking of moving the furniture around. It is, of course, 3 a.m. (Isn't it always?)

The night pulls me when I should be sleeping. I have things to do tomorrow (go to the gym, paint my nails, wash the floor), but I can't stop thinking about moving the furniture around.

I slip out from under my duvet (not of snow, this one, but some sort of synthetic material that makes me sweat if I don't stick my feet out, a dangerous prospect since the cat is fond of chewing my toes in the morning), ease the bedroom door mostly-closed behind me, pour a tall glass of cold water, and stand in the middle of the room, surveying.

There is nowhere for anything to go that is not exactly where it already is.

I'm going to get rid of those vases. There are five of them, the kind of thin glass that comes with a florist's bouquet. There has never been a time when I have needed five cheap glass vases. I also have too many decanters. There was a time when decanters were all the rage, apparently. I could probably use a decanter as a vase, should the unlikely occasion arise that someone brings flowers that don't already come in their own cheap glass vase. 

It's not moving the furniture around, but it's something.

I often find myself searching for things to get rid of. Old lingerie, expired medicine, socks verging on holes. Exotic condiments used once for a recipe and relegated to the back of the fridge. A lipstick that makes me feel old or ugly when I wear it, a bottle of thickened nail polish. People, sometimes.

I have a secret I can't tell anyone, because if I tell you you'll think I'm the worst kind of person. But I wonder if everyone possesses this secret, and we're all walking around keeping it because we're afraid that everyone else will think we're the worst kind of people. I'm not ready to tell anyone yet.

So instead I will lie awake at 3 a.m. and find things to get rid of and try to move the furniture around.
    




 

Riot On

Let's riot on together, baby. Just you and me and this strip of asphalt in the dark. I'll put my bare feet up on the dash and you'll put your hand on my bare thigh and we'll drive, baby, just you and me, into the black. I'll check my lipstick in the rear-view mirror but we won't look back to see the lights of this two-bit town wink out behind us like an old cigarette butt tossed to the curb, we'll just drive, baby. And we'll play some rock 'n' roll music, turn it up to drown out the noise of the engine, noise of our hearts. And we'll think divided thoughts as the broken lines zip past like years, and we'll remember, baby, you and me and all those moments that link us like this network of asphalt we're driving down in the dark.