temporary insanity
a week of quiet violence, courtesy of my own body
Sometimes I feel like I’ve been pretending my way through thirty years of life. Wearing a costume that doesn’t come off : a giant sign on my forehead that says, “PICK A ROLE AND I WILL PLAY IT.”
The court jester stares back at me in the mirror, cackling at her own joke, but the audience is deathly silent, judging me from the safety of their seats, the lights in the theatre turned down and the spotlight burning only into my eyes. I’m spiritually and emotionally naked for everyone to watch, and the critics will give my performance one star in their reviews tomorrow : “Promised everything, gave nothing.” “An unconvincing act.” “A spectacular waste of an evening.”
It’s just a string of purgatories happening at once - my gnarly luteal phase has its claws around my throat, a sprained back makes turning over on the pillow result in chronic pain, and I’m waiting for an answer from somewhere I’ve sent an application to, so all my fragile self esteem is riding on receiving a yes.
But in the age of instant gratification, who loves waiting on transformation? I want to change my life into something unrecognizable, and all of it has to happen right now. I want greatness delivered to my door like an Amazon Prime package I ordered at 9pm from bed, with the promise it’ll arrive as I’m brewing my coffee the next morning. That’s not enough hours, so the respectable thing to do as a raging perfectionist is give up and do nothing.
The demons in my head are making it worse by not shutting up. They’ve called a meeting to discuss every mistake I’ve ever made and I’m at the head of the table, agreeing with their analysis.
I’m looking at my life as a series of misplaced bets in a Vegas hotel lobby, the machines glowing my shame back at me. I walked in with $100 and left with nothing. Every bet I placed was wrong, my judgement sucks, and I shouldn’t be allowed to play without supervision.
I’m standing in front of a mirror, looking at myself after a shower, all the lights in my room turned to maximum brightness. I’m going over my list of things I’d change, tweak, tuck, fix, prick, and tone before I can finally accept I’m pretty.
Being in the luteal phase is no joke. It’s -
a) Taylor Swift writing her own ego death that is This Is Me Trying.
b) Sylvia Plath sitting under her fig tree, unable to choose a fruit to bite into, but the waiting makes all the produce smell of rot and fall at her feet, unused.
c) Fleabag in that church, saying, “I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong.”
Except all three are happening at the same time, and all I can do is suffer in quiet violence as my own body produces a hormonal hellhole of hysteria. All I can do is wait for it to pass, as the priest promised, sans the guarantee that it will. He didn’t say how long it takes.
Please don’t tell me the magical cures - don’t you think I’ve tried them all? Played different music. Done a Billy Blanks taebo workout, throwing well aimed fists into the air. Eaten my way through every self help book. Filed away expensive hours of therapy. Bled myself dry into the pages of a journal until no space was left for words. Gone on a run that drives my heart rate up in the tropical downpour of my hometown. Gotten out of bed at 3 am to write out a life manifesto for a rebrand of my life. I’ve called a friend, taken every self diagnostic test on the internet, checked CoStar for signs of retrograde among the planets, tried to swallow the pills the doctors prescribe.
The dirty feeling persists, sticks to me like grime I can’t scrub off. It’s a hedge maze with changing paths, so I’ll never find my way out, no matter which direction I choose. It’s a phantom pain in a tooth that looks healthy from the outside. It’s a tumor that feeds off my insecurities, and it’s multiplying as we speak.
The call comes from inside the house - my hormones, pointing their well aimed arrows at me. I feel like a troll under the bridge, ugly and unlovable. It’s already a full time job to manage the curse of noticing everything, but during this week long window, every inflection is amplified against my will :
A change of tone can feel like the world ending. A loud noise will have me releasing the blood curdling scream I’ve kept trapped in my lungs. Stepping on the scale is a costly mistake I’ll make everyone regret, but I want to eat everything within my sight, and not move a muscle in my body. I want to cut everyone off and start a new life, but I am so lonely on my island of isolation. A grey fog of stupidity hangs over my head, so I can’t think objectively. I’m completely zapped of energy, devoid of worth, and perpetually annoyed at the impossibility of everything I attempt. Everything is tinged with a shade of deep blue sadness, and I shake in sobs on the bedroom floor when I hear Maggots for Brains by Olivia Rodrigo.
Then, late at night, a primal fear creeps in and paralyses me : what if this isn’t just a temporary phase, something that dissolves by next week? What if the luteal phase is just my worst self, projected like an X-ray against the bright white of hospital lighting? If the monster emerges from within me, if the call comes from inside the house, if all my flaws are obvious in my reflection…then isn’t the monster just…me?