Cycles

periods, life, death, parenting, fascism. this one's got a little bit of everything.

It’s day 3 of my cycle, which means it’s time to give my succulents their plant food. I’m supposed to do this once a month, and it seemed poetic to time it around my menstrual cycle. I’m just a girl, standing in front of you, asking you to please hang on because there’s a metaphor in here somewhere. Probably. Let me know if you find it.

Last week I was miserable. The luteal phase zapped my energy, the Big Sad was Bigger, and the fluctuating hormones caused a fibromyalgia flare up. Everything hurt. Every joint felt (feels) like fire, and it’s only now starting to ease up slightly as my estrogen levels rise again, which has helped my energy levels some, but not a lot, because my thyroid is basically dead.

I have Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism and the medication I’ve been taking for 5 years isn’t working, which I’ve been saying— for years. Despite this and despite being symptomatic, my primary care doctor has insisted my levels are fine. I finally saw an endocrinologist last week and she strongly disagreed. Praise be.

I feel both relieved and enraged. I’m grateful to finally be on the right track to getting the support my thyroid needs, but I’m also so angry that I’ve had to beg for nearly a decade to get someone to listen to me.

Yes, I’ve tried losing weight.

No, sleep doesn’t help.

No, it’s not my anxiety or my period.

Yes, I drink water.

Admittedly, I probably don’t drink enough water because I so rarely get thirsty that I end up watering myself weekly like one of my succulents. I’m joking. Mostly.

I’ve had painful and semi irregular periods my whole life, followed by 3 years of unexplained infertility, and in that time, no one thought to check my thyroid. Like my thyroid doesn’t have a direct impact on my reproductive system. Why am I, the patient, having to explain this to a medical professional? For 16 years, they’ve shrugged their shoulders and asked me if I’ve thought about birth control, even during three long years of infertility. Are you fucking kidding me? How was that supposed to help me when I was trying to get pregnant?

My 4-year-old has been asking me a lot about the life cycle lately. It started with plants and what they need to live, and then evolved into animals and what happens when things get old. She’s been asking a lot of questions about death, the great After, souls… she asks things like: Why do things get old? Why do old things die? Are you going to die, Mommy?

I try to answer these questions with gentle truths: Living things age over time, and eventually get old. When we get old, our bodies start to have a hard time staying healthy. Yes, that’s why Great-Grandma has a lot of doctors. When our bodies get old and wear out, our souls, our true selves that live in the very inside of us, move on to what’s next. Yes, one day, Mommy will die, but hopefully not until you are old and Mommy is really really old. You don’t have to worry about that for a long time. I’m not planning on going anywhere, and I’ll never really leave you. Even when my body is gone, my love will still be here.

I keep telling myself that aging is beautiful, and I do believe that. It’s evidence of a life lived. But it’s also unsettling to notice your mother’s skin taking on the same velvety texture you remember from your grandma during childhood. It’s unsettling to know you’re the same age you remember your parents being, and to remember how fast it all went by. It’s unsettling to watch your grandparents age and move on, to watch your parents care for their own, and to know you will be their caretaker next. I feel like I just had my oldest, and she starts kindergarten next year. My youngest will be 3 in six months. If 4 years has gone by this fast, 40 will go by in no time at all. I’ll be 29 in a few months. 30 is just around the corner for me, and I feel like I just turned 18 a couple years ago, not over a decade ago.

Time goes by so fast, and I know that my children will be grown so soon. I feel so much guilt that these precious years where they are so little have been overshadowed by so much trauma. I grieve the plans I had, the way things should have been. Also, can we as a collective stop telling moms these are the best years of their lives? Maybe this is true for some, but even for me, who loves young children and the baby stage, all this does is make me feel bad for not enjoying it or soaking it in enough. For being exhausted and touched out. For having to spend so much of my energy healing from abuse, navigating chronic illness, and surviving day to day as a solo mama that some days I feel like I have nothing left over… and then I feel guilty, because these are supposed to be the best years right? You’ll never get this time back. They’re only little once.

All of this is true, but even without the domestic violence, a system that is designed to keep you locked in poverty, and being on the verge of WWIII, parenting is hard and you’re not going to enjoy all of it.

That doesn’t mean you did it wrong. It means the system is designed to make you feel like you’re failing, because no one is capable of being everything and doing it alone, or even with a partner. That’s not a failure on your part, that’s on the corrupt systems designed to keep abusive men in power.

I’m at a weird place in my life where I’m parenting young children and also navigating post separation abuse and a fascist government that literally wants my children and I to die.

This big ugly bill? It’s going to strip away my access to healthcare. It’s gutting SNAP and WIC, programs that help keep children fed. It’s going to blow back on Medicare, cause tens of thousands of deaths, and take us back to 1930s Germany. All for what, another tax break for the ultra wealthy and to give 45 billion tax dollars to the fucking Gestapo and their concentration camps?

I’ve never been more ashamed to be American than I am now, and that’s probably the only thing in this essay that isn’t a cycle. I have never been proud to be American. Maybe it’s the autism/hyperempathy, maybe it’s the intolerance to fucking bullshit like racism and hate in the name of heritage and history and systems that are designed to exploit the most vulnerable. I don’t think I will ever forgive the people who allowed this horror story to come to fruition. I don’t think I will ever stop being ashamed.

I pray that this horror story is a blip in the cycle and that justice and compassion prevails. That we can take back our country from this evil regime and that freedom and justice for all actually means all this time.

With love and sacred rage,

Sarah