I almost missed the opportunity to remind my best friend
that to get back to my house she should drive straight onto the highway. The low ding of her blinker didn’t
register as incorrect immediately because I was too busy debating whether or
not to tell my husband the story…and we were a little high. My brain jumbled the panic for driving
in the opposite direction and its current conversation and I just blurted
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!” Had I been sober I would’ve perhaps said “Hey, silly my
house is straight!” or “Hey, is there something we need to go do before we go
to my house?” Instead I sounded
like a raging ungrateful jerk – she was, after all, carting me around. We had sold my car to afford the move
back home and coloring at my best friend’s house was the only activity that got
me out of my pajamas (and into yoga pants) and off of my couch (and onto
hers). “Oh dang good lookin’ out
B! I was on autopilot!” We laugh at her response loud and hard
before she flips off her blinker and accelerates toward the highway.
Anxiety is a funny little devil. Most of the time I don’t realize I’m feeling it until later
when I repeat my thoughts aloud to my mother, and she says something like “Oh
my Gawd Brittany you worry about everything!” in her thick Boston accent. She’s one-hundred-percent Italian, and
SHE worries about everything. I
recently tried to explain my anxiety to her like this. We were on our way to see Cinderella at
a theater in downtown Hartford. I
purchased the expensive tickets for us for Christmas; it was the only gift I
bought and I couldn’t afford them so they went on the credit card. The Broadway cast was performing and it
was “our” play, so I deemed the event worthy of going further into debt. We had left the house twenty minutes
later than we had planned so my heart was pounding. Every word my mom said on the drive made me jump. I counted the minutes to myself as they
appeared to turn faster on the car stereo while my mom kept saying “Brittany
calm down we’re gonna make it there’s no traffic. YOU didn’t get out of MY
showa ‘til 11:20. You need to calm
down.” I wasn’t actually saying
any words but I’ve been told I have a miserable skill of wearing all of my
emotions clearly on my face, without trying. When we pulled up my mom weaved in and out of people in the
busy parking lot and decided at least three times half-way into a space that it
was too small, only to back out and have a brief confrontation with another
vehicle vying for the same space, and move on. I wonder now if that wouldn’t really be a big deal to most
people, but it was taking all of my energy to not yell as I dug one hand of
nails into the door handle and the other grasped my purse tightly across my
chest. I decided it was time to
share my inner monologue with my mom, who was now sitting calmly putting on her
lipstick.
“There’s twenty minutes to the show Brittany! Jeez calm down it’s not like it starts
in two minutes.”
“Ok, well, you can be calm, but here’s what’s going through
MY head right now: what if we get stuck in the crosswalk and too many cars come
and we can’t get in on time? What
if we have to stand behind the closed doors hearing the crowd cheer inside and
we can’t go in until the end of a number?
The first song is my favorite song, what if I miss it? What if we have to use the restroom
before we sit down? What if
somebody is sitting in our seats and we have to get someone to help us sort it
out? What if there’s a huge lady
sitting in the seat next to me and I have to ask her to please stand up so I
can get by?”
My mom just laughs at me. When we’re safely in our seats after using the restroom with
fifteen minutes until curtain, my mom whispers “See, there wasn’t a huge lady
to get ova to your seat” and I realize how ridiculous those thoughts must
be. They’re thoughts that happen
nonetheless. Not much I can do
about it, although everyone tries to tell me otherwise.
So I’m sitting
in my best friend’s jeep feeling awful about how I snapped about the direction
she was driving in, which I’m sure she didn’t take as snapping and already
forgot about. These questions are rolling around in my brain as I’m deciding
whether or not to share our story from the day. I tell Victor everything. He’s my husband, so my assumption was that meant he gets to
know every detail of everything for as along as we both shall live. He often reminds me that he doesn’t
need to know how my poop looked or every time I farted. I once had a youth pastor who said he
and his wife had never farted in front of each other and I thought their
marriage must have sucked – there must have been something wrong with
them. My family shared everything;
growing up with three brothers leaves little room for grace surrounding bodily
functions. I had been making an effort
recently to walk a fine line in the things I shared with Victor. But this story was too good. It wouldn’t gross him out, would it? Or was it a sacred moment of sisterhood
that I should cherish? Would she
carry it to her grave, or tell her husband later? Was it even worth telling?
Men don’t like to hear about periods. I guarantee you could walk up to ten
men on any street in any city and ask them their thoughts on periods and the
answers would be a mix of “it’s natural, but gross” and “I don’t need to know
nothin’ about that.” My period has
been particularly mean recently.
I’ve been feeling like a 14 year old again – like it’s all a brand new,
awful experience except this time it is not an announcement of womanhood but a
cause for concern in my 27-year-old childless body. Last month I bled through three layers onto our bed
sheets. Victor just took them off
and brought them upstairs and my mom threw them in the laundry while I cried in
the bathroom. He told me it was
not a big deal, but I hated that I had no control over it and that it hurt so
bad. So today, in the middle of
coloring, I ran to the bathroom, used a sparse amount of toilet paper, and then
nothing. The toilet wouldn’t
flush.
“Uh, hey, um, please don’t go in there, but, I can’t flush
the toilet, what do I do?” She
told me the toilet was old, to just hold down the handle. I tried twice more while she stood in
the doorway; coming closer and saying “B just let me do it the toilet’s old
I’ll just plunge it real quick!”
No, no, no, no. I was
mortified. The blood was bright
and red and heavy and other than on sheets, no one but my mother had ever seen
it. Periods are a weird, awful
secret young women are taught to keep, reminded not to tell anyone, especially
not boys. Until we become
teenagers and realize we’re all on the same cycle and we can binge watch TV and
eat ice cream and cry together.
But even with the bonding of feelings and cramps, there are no visuals. We don’t sit around going “Wanna see my
tampon?” because that is gross and unnecessary and why would you do that? As all of this is exploding like
land mines I’m walking over in my brain she manages to push past me to the open
toilet bearing my shame. She holds
down the handle a moment longer than I had and it’s gone. I run into the kitchen and wash my
hands and try not to cry, apologizing profusely to a friend who has literally
held my hair back while I vomited, seen me naked, and gone to the bathroom in
front of me. She reiterates that
she gets her period once a month too, and she has it right now, and she cleaned
public bathrooms for a living, and “Shut up! Stop apologizing! I love
you!” in three identical
yells. Finally we laugh. We resume our coloring. We watch an episode of “New Girl.” She drives me home.
I texted her to apologize (again) a few moments ago. She replies that she forgot already,
and can we go to BJs together later?
The anxious nature I carry within me will probably not let me forget for
a long while yet. Last night I had
a dream that all of my friends were lining up to see what I had left in a
toilet, and in the dream I woke up covered in blood. I think about not sharing the story either because it’s
gross and no one cares about periods, or because people will just laugh at how
anxious and stupid I am about everything.
Then again maybe it’s not so stupid. Maybe I’m not the only one whose best friend had to rescue
from an ancient toilet mishap. And
maybe my anxiety is totally not stupid – it keeps me kind, apologetic, and in
most situations I’ve covered every angle and am ready for almost anything. Or maybe I shouldn’t apologize for any
of it at all. Maybe it’s perfectly
reasonable that I worry about missing a musical because someone may be blocking
my seat and it could take ten minutes to get by them, or that my girlfriend
won’t be able to look at me the same after she has seen my blood in her
toilet. I suppose it doesn’t
matter; whether it is reasonable or not to most, these worries will be ever
present, so I will choose to let them feel reasonable. They will not make me crazy, paranoid,
or “a mess” as my mother often puts it in her kindest tone. They’ll just be there when I try to
sleep, or read, or flush a toilet, or give my friend correct directions, and
it’ll all be fine.
