When I was 12 I said, “I had my first period.”
Now at 52, I say, “I had my last period.”
I don’t know how I feel about it.
It’s not like I enjoy menstruating.
I hate it.
It’s a pain an annoyance an inconvenience an expense.
When first learned that I would get my period,
I had an innate notion,
A gut feeling,
That the fact that I had to menstruate and my brothers did not,
Was deeply unfair,
A grossly lopsided scheme by Almighty Decree.
I wondered if I really was cursed.
Then when I had my children
I felt blessed by my menstruation.
Yet the whole design still seemed fundamentally
Out of proportion, vastly inequitable.
I had to menstruate, monthly, for my
Whole Fucking Life
So that I could have 3 children?
A very short process in the grand scheme of things.
Forty years of menstruation for 3 conceptions
Seemed a little overboard.
Another proof that God had it out for me and
My Kind.
Now in my 50s, I approach menopause with an unexpected sadness,
Tinged with a nameless fear as I face its
Cessation.
I realize that underneath the bother, it meant much more to me.
It meant I was
Young Vibrant Fertile.
It meant I could
Engage in the consummate act of creation
It represented
Power.
But I didn’t really know any of this until I had my last period.
This pause in my meno means that I am no longer
Young no longer creator no longer sustainer no longer
Of Life.
When my period ends,
What power will be left me?
Where will my worth be?
Who will I be?
Youth Beauty Fertility
slowly
slip
away.
I want my estrogen back.
If not to give another being life,
than to give life to ME.
I have no tidy ending to this flow and flood
Of feeling and blood.
No summation no denouement
With questions
Unanswered I am propelled
By another immutable law into that
Dark periphery of bloodless women.
