My menstrual cycle hates me and, honestly, the feeling is mutual. It’s like some ever-raging civil war, my body the battleground. So when my period vanished – retreating, surrendering, laying its weapons down – it felt like victory. I was triumphant.
After a disastrous experience with the pill, feeling like an entirely different person, terrifyingly out of control, I’d sworn off hormonal contraceptives for life. So when my cycle began to disappear of its own accord, it felt like I’d found some cheat code. This awful, horrible, debilitating cycle could be bypassed.
My body had called a truce. All I had to do was satisfy its terms. Over-excerise. Overachieve. Under-eat. The Oxford lifestyle was all too perfect in enabling this. When you’re constantly running between a lecture, a tute, and the library, it’s easy for your health to take a backseat.
It didn’t seem overly worrying when I missed my periods in Michaelmas, or when they’d come a few weeks late in Hilary – it was like a white flag being waved, unblemished, a symbol of peace. But control and collapse are scarily similar. What I thought was a victory, a symbol of my newfound productivity, was instead verification that I really wasn’t okay. On the outside they looked the same, to me and to everyone else. I was on top of things, controlled, disciplined.
I’ve been trying to soothe the conflict within me, not by choosing a side, but instead trying to find some semblance of harmony. Trying to work with my body, not against it. Giving it the rest it needs, taking breaks, eating nutritious (albeit, predominantly pasta based) meals, and finding control in things that prevent collapse, rather than facilitate it.
It’s hard though. Really hard. For someone with the propensity to overthink, there’s a distorted comfort obtained from self-sabotage. I could run away from the feeling of never having done enough. By reminding myself of 3 A.M. library stints, or mealtimes forgotten in place of an extra half hour of reading, I can fend off the incoming minefield of thoughts saying I haven’t worked hard enough.
But I’m learning, gradually. I’m realising strength doesn’t lie in sleeplessness or starvation but instead in softness, slowness, simplicity – in letting your body be a body. Beautiful and bright. I realised that every time I lost my cycle, I was losing more and more of myself. As I try to form one unified frontline, not fighting against my cycle but embracing it, I’m able to unearth a version of me who is whole, not divided in conflict or at war with herself.
There is so little education on women’s health, but by looking into cycle phases, and allowing my body the support it needs to function as it should, I’ve noticed such a difference. I know in my luteal phase I am pretty useless. That I’ll likely be found curled in a ball, sobbing, angry at everyone and everything. But then in my follicular phase, I’m productive and hopeful and confident. Instead of trying to fight against my body or punish it into submission, I’m able to schedule in accordance by embracing it in all its messiness. I organise deadlines so they fall when I’m able to best work towards them, make sure I plan in enough time to go a bit slower when my body needs it.
Of course, the issue with this is that life isn’t always the most accommodating, especially as a student. I don’t get a whole lot of choice when my busy points are, when I have exams, or how things are paced. Everything is incessantly intense. As much as I want to slow down, to work with my body, it feels more natural to keep up with the workflow by pushing my health to the outskirts. Oxford prides itself on its supposed eight week terms (questionable once you take into account 0th week and 9th week exams) – yet across those eight weeks, I only really feel like me for three or four of them. That’s under half.
It’s a lose-lose situation. I either disregard my body’s needs, push myself until my body surrenders, or I try and orchestrate a union between my body and me, ultimately ending up forever behind and wishing I could be normal, for once.
The problem is, I’m already normal. Or at least this issue is. I have no grand solutions, other than to say that everyone who menstruates is trapped in this same cycle. The greatest rebellion you can show is forgiveness. My body will never be linear, constant, or easily contained. But I’d rather have it this way than be so worn down it falls out of its natural rhythms. Like the moon, the tides, I’m learning to love the ebb and flow. Even if the system seems built against my health, I can choose to thrive, accept that I belong.