patch blues

Two or three months ago I got onto the contraceptive patch.
For the first three weeks, I was under the impression that this bumper sticker on my bottom was everything it promised to be.
No more excruciating period pains, I could indulge in condom-free shagging, I didn’t have to take a pill everyday.

That was then. This is now. You see, PMS for usually women goes something like this:
Little things tick them off. Grumpiness manifests into Psycho Bitch From Hell at the flick of a switch. Any small thing becomes a fuck-off al grandé thing. She suddenly hates her boyfriend because he told her she looks more flattering in the pants, not the dress. She suddenly hates her parents because they allowed her to be born. On a general scale, women during PMS behave a snitch more emotional, a snitch more irrational, (…) bordering on the tempestuous. For maybe four days out of the month.

I wish.

That was Peas Sans Patch. Peas With Patch inherently needs Prozac.
Something was horribly wrong.

It’s sometimes very hard being a woman, have you know. Hard for her and all those around her. It can be a real bitch being a bitch. This weekend, I was so depressed for the entirety of two days, I really didn’t know what to do with myself.

It all started at Linden Cycles on Saturday morning. I began crying in a bloody bicycle shop, where Smoking Legs and I were looking for brake calipers for the bike he is sooping up for me. I stared forlornly at bike shit and burst into tears. He dropped me at home and carried on the brake caliper mission alone, so that I could brew in my bubble of discontent in the safety of my apartment. Out of the public eye.

What happened over roughly 48 hours of Patch Induced PMS:

1) I cried during Herbie: Fully Loaded. A movie about a supersonic Beetle, not a movie about a thespian tragedy.
2) I cried while reading American Pyscho. Well he did kill a dog, which induced compulsive wailing.
3) I cried about the circumference of my thighs.
4) I cried about my wardrobe and having nothing to wear, which we all know is untrue.
5) I cried about my hair. (I am having a Bad Hair Life, and this is something I have chosen to accept, not cry about for as long as I live)
6) I cried about what I did wrong in my past relationships
7) I cried about if I'm good enough for anybody
8) I cried about the fact that Chad escaped twice from his cage this weekend and didn’t try to run away but rather sat chilling under my pile of handbags.
9) I cried about the said handbags.
10) I cried about my creative flair. Or lack thereof, following a bad bout of writer’s block post-holiday. With creative flair comes creative angst.
11) And when C and K came over for tea and cheered me up momentarily, I cried after they left.

My self-confidence was shot. I felt clumsy, pathetic, dumb, ugly, needy. That’s a lot to deal with there – and usually I’d never doubt myself so much. So this isn’t ordinary. I fully blame the butt sticker that’s pumping hormones into my blood stream. I feel much better today, even though the sense of forboding as I woke up this morning persists: meetings, meetings, meetings.

I have peeled it off and won’t be wearing one again.
Back to boring old moodiness and flaring up over nothing, thank you very much.