The Hamster Wheel

I’m stuck inside a hamster wheel, downward and upward and around again. If my pace falters, I'm thrown off the wheel, out of sync, and still trapped inside a cage! Either I keep that pace and stay in the wheel, or I’m left stagnant and encaged, lacking control regardless. I suppose there is comfort inside the wheel, in knowing what each rotation should hold, yet that should seems to haunt me. 

The consistency in my month to month, knowing when I'll feel the extremes, whether that be hungry or angry, using it as an excuse to keep me sane, it sometimes soothes me. But that pressure, that pressure I put on myself when I'm not deep in those extremes, that certainly doesn’t soothe me. The week before my period (Luteal, PMS), I am a wreck, a loose cannon if you will, fierce and emotional. The week of my period (Menstruation) I soften, I treat myself with grace, I am lazy and indulgent and I bask in it. Those other two weeks though (Follicular, Ovulation), I have to be perfect. I have to perform for myself, I have to be ‘productive’ to earn the PMS, the period lul. That pressure isn’t sustainable…I wonder if it’s relatable. It often plays out that during Follicular and Ovulation, I do happen to be my most active and social and ‘productive,’ but god forbid one of those weeks I’m not. And that isn’t to say I am completely unproductive the rest of the cycle, but If I don’t feel motivated, I can just fall back on my PMS or period and not push myself. The lows are supposed to be low and the highs are supposed to be high. It’s practically scripted! 

How much control do I have over any of this? 

Now I know this is rooted in science, but we aren’t handed enough education about our cycles and hormones as women, so we must learn for ourselves. I have tried to learn by experience, month after month, clawing at patterns to keep me inside the wheel. To make it all make sense. 

The conversation around these roughly four weeks, four stages (Menstruation, the Follicular phase, Ovulation, and the Luteal phase) has become oversaturated and confusing, offering conflicting and I suppose at times reassuring tidbits about what each should entail and how to best tackle them. The little charts tell me I will feel most confident and beautiful during my Follicular phase, and they are right, but is that really alright? I am sick of a calendar dictating me so much and I want to understand the role of, without sounding banal, nature vs. nurture here. Have I programmed my body to follow this calendar in a way that leans into the extremes of my cycle even more, maybe because it is comforting to feel like I am controlling it in some way? If I stopped almost trying to conform in a sense to each of these phases and the symptoms attached, would they be less defined? For example, am I getting in my own way from feeling confident during my Menstruation? But if I try to ignore my cycle and I fall off the wheel, would I just be trapped in a cage, detached from my body, and even more lost as to how to move forward? 

Last week I was in the mood to go for a run on my period and then had the thought, oh I should keep it low intensity during Menstruation- is that really listening to my body or has this oversaturation around it actually taken control of my body? Although the increase in media and conversation around the female cycle is meant to support and normalize all of our rollercoasters, to validate us, we can’t let it trap us. 

I do still feel comfort throughout my cycle when my feelings match the symptoms of that particular phase, but I am going to try and fall back on it less. I cried for the entire week of the election in November and then got my period a few days later. I laughed and said, “wow no wonder I was so emotional,” totally invalidating my own mourning over the results. I was devastated, and period or not, tears were shed as they should have been. 

I can name countless examples when I either quickly blamed my cycle or was too hard or too easy on myself because of my cycle. Day 2 of your period is always going to be a ‘take it easy’ day, but if I also need a take it easy day during my Follicular phase, so be it. And if for some reason I’m not horny during Ovulation, I have not lost my sex drive. Patterns can be loose and chaotic. The control from the media and from my own mindset on it will just make me spiral. There is a balance between leaning into your cycle and understanding your cycle, without letting it dictate your week to week. We as women will never have full control over our bodies, and as much as that’s exasperated with the way this world talks about our bodies and treats our bodies and politicizes our bodies, what goes on in our own cycles can stay between our mind and our body and be something private that we can sort out within. There is some control in that boundary. Within that boundary, now I can make an effort to find my own balance on a smaller timescale- focussing on how I feel day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. I can find a way to stay inside the hamster wheel at my own pace.  

And when menopause hits?

When my pace inevitably slows, and it’s not that I fall out, but the wheel simply stops? 

Are we relieved of it all?

Are these phases just socially constructed ghosts that fade into our past despite how many years we were defined by them?

They no longer ring in our ear each week and wait for us to fulfill their prophecy?

So what does…

ring in our ears?

Or are we suddenly freed like men?