July 2002

July 1
(Warning! Girly subject)
If you haven't experienced the intense emotions that sometimes come with PMS, it's hard to explain how I've been feeling this week. It's not bad, just a little surprising. You never really expect it, and it starts affecting you before you really know it.

By the way, let me say categorically: it never affects my good judgement, or my ability to do whatever job I'm doing. This for the anti-women-in-battle people who like to think PMS-addled female fighter pilots will inevitably go crazy and crash in the ocean, crying hysterically and clawing their faces. Um, no.

In fact, it tends to heighten awareness, if anything, like adrenaline. It makes me super sensitive to the world, to colors and smells and my own emotions. At least, I feel that way in spells, which come and go. I'm prone to intense feelings of love, anger, joy, and sadness. Again, for those people who think is a mental illness, I am always in complete control of myself, whatever my feelings. I can choose to stand outside the emotions and control them, or let them engulf me.

I think a lot of women feel this way, but handle it differently. I think PMS gets its reputation partly from this. I mean, some women, a minority, are actually completely incapacitated by it. But most aren't. That doesn't mean they know what to do with the emotions they feel. I think sometimes women who normally repress the "unacceptable" parts of themselves...anger, bitterness, or just irritation..aren't able to resist those feelings when they get backed up by a hormonal surge.

And with the semi-mythic way our society treats PMS, it's supposed to be a time (along with pregnancy) when women can let themselves be bitches, or cry at movies, or generally express whatever they're feeling, because they're "weakened." The cruel irony is that many times those emotions are not "irrational" or "coming out of nowhere"; they're things that really do need expressing, and dealing with. Things that have been simmering a long, long, time.

So some women use PMS as a weapon, an opportunity, to get back at spouses or friends or family who have let them down in some way. Or they turn it on themselves, and let it lead to a real depression. But again, it's a choice at that stage. Not an illness in and of itself, unless a women wants it to be. Unfortunately, our culture encourages women to see it only as an illness, by discouraging real emotions the rest of the time, valuing "controlled" women who never express anger, or joy, or anything really in a strong way. "Too emotional" is an old accusation that sexist people throw at women, but it still causes pain.

It's a kind of anti-feminist feminism in a way, one that tries to make women follow the same emotionless, constrictive path we force on men. Ignoring the fact that this emotional strength, this rush of hormones that suddenly frees the constrictions a woman feels, can be highly liberating, even necessary. I have said and done things during PMS that I did not have the courage to do at other times; been more honest, more vulnerable, more passionate about my convictions. Surprisingly often, it's had positive results.

And it can be intoxicating to walk under the stars, or hear a song that you love, and have it shake you up emotionally. To look at a familiar lover's face and be amazed by their beauty. To cry, really cry, when you are sad, until you are empty and peaceful. To feel a rush of rage that makes you write letters to your congressman, or demand that your boss stop treating you unfairly. To tell a friend how much you love her. To not be afraid, of anything or anyone. To feel more alive.

It's not that I don't suffer some from my period. I've gotten cramps so bad I couldn't stand up, felt bloaty and tender and headachy. And the period itself, just seems so messy and inconvenient and inefficient. You'd think our bodies would come up with a better system. I could do without any of that, and I'll enjoy menopause when it arrives for that reason. I won't miss the visits from Aunt Flo.

Anyway, by that age, I plan on not needing hormones to be brave and honest. I look forward to being an irascible, embarrassingly plain-spoken old lady who doesn't take crap from anybody. And who still goes out at night to take walks under the stars.

July 15

I can't really explain it, but I dislike games, of all kinds. I don't know what that means about me. Fear of competition? Extreme unsociability? Hard to say. I used to like some games, like Trivial Pursuit and checkers. But nowadays, it just makes me jumpy when someone drags out a pack of cards or a board game, or starts talking about the latest release of Bonestorm.

It may be that I've become more sensitive to the fact that we live in a game-heavy society. Sports, of course, are everywhere. And non-athletic sports like video games, role-playing games, and trivia games have exploded, with new leagues and groups and websites and magazines all the time. And I just can't get into it. Because now things that used to be fun/weird stuff you did with a few folks are super-competitive. There's Internet leagues and worldwide ratings and magazines with tips on killing the wizard, and now I just don't care anymore.

Sports were bad enough in this regard; it seems like playing for the heck of it is no longer possible. At least if parents get involved. And now other games have had this testosterone stench put on them, this pressure to play hard and ruthlessly, and it just gets to me. Not that I think everyone but me is like that, but when I'm with people I don't know well, I'm always afraid that's how it's gonna be. Someone proposes a game of Jenga, next thing you know it's mock the losers with an endzone dance time.

I mean, games really are best when winning is not even important. When you're drunk and you keep getting stupid sports questions, or rolling a Yahtzee, or you can't get rid of the stupid two of hearts, and no one else's doing much better, and everyone's laughing, and no one really cares who wins. When it is most like Calvinball, actually. When rules are second to having a good time, and absolutely no one takes it seriously.

I mean, why on earth do we take this stuff so seriously? Why are fortunes and lives made and broken by a mere game? Why do we let it have so much importance to us, when in the end, all that really happened is that a few people wasted an afternoon chasing around a ball? Why do we give it this mythic importance, when every thing about it is made-up and completely unreal? Why do we think it's noble when a man spends his life perfecting the art of putting a ball through a string net? You can talk about hard work, and talent, and athletic beauty all you want, but in the end, what is it all worth? Is it enough of an art that it really enriches us?

I'm asking because I want to know. Because I can't see it. It's not that I would ban sports...just the opposite. I guess if I could ban anything, it would be a certain attitude towards sports, a do-it-or-die ethos that is, objectively speaking, ridiculous. Maybe even a little shameful, if you think of the resources spent on it. But fun, playing, teamwork, the sheer joy of running around and getting dirty, heck no. Those things are great. We do need those, I think. We don't have enough of them.