My two period personalities…

Do you sometimes feel like you’re two different people?

I can literally feel my entire persona change depending on where I am in my menstrual cycle.

I’m writing this on Day 2 of my cycle - the second day of my bleed after a long (for me) 29 day cycle. If you’d met me three days ago, you would honestly think you’d have met my less favourable twin.

I was so antisocial that I went to a yoga class and sat curled in a ball while the regulars chatted around me as they laid out their yoga mats desperate to avoid eye contact and small talk conversation. I was so irritable that I fell out with my partner over a semi-used cleaning cloth that had been left out on the bench. I was so anxious and miserable that I couldn’t stop myself from crying feeling completely hopeless and without purpose.

Now I’m not going to blame ALL of this on my period.

I fully believe that my premenstrual phase, in particular, likes to reveal all of the things that I’ve kept bottled up over the rest of my cycle - the truth behind my feelings.

It isn’t always this bad. I’ve just been going through a lot lately - and that has been reflected in how I have experienced my cycle this time around.

I used to dread my premenstrual phase… because I didn’t understand it.

I didn’t understand it so I didn’t know how to support myself, I didn’t know how to ask for the support that I needed from the people around me or deal with the difficult conversations that I was suddenly being forced to have because I couldn’t quite keep my mouth shut…

I saw a really poignant quote on Instagram recently which was shared by Lucy Peaches but was, I believe, originally written by @nicolemjardim who sums up the premenstruum pretty perfectly:

‘Women don’t lose their minds when they have period-related irritability. It doesn’t lower their ability to reason; it lowers their patience and, hence, tolerance for bullshit. If an issue comes up a lot during ‘that time of the month’ that doesn’t mean she only cares about it once a month; it means she’s bothered by it all the time and lacks the capacity, once a month, to shove it down and bury it beneath six gulps of willful silence.’

Well… isn’t that the truth.

In my house, we call her Luteal Laura.

Luteal Laura is the Mr Hyde phase of my cycle - where evil likes to come out to play.

However, it is also the phase of my cycle where I have learned that I am a lot more introspective, reflective, creative and visionary. It is the phase where I often do some of my best writing - especially poetry - and it is where I usually find the most beautiful flow with projects I’ve been working on that have skilfully evaded me elsewhere.

As much as Luteal Laura is not the most fun to be around from a social perspective, I’ve actually started to really enjoy tuning more into that aspect of my cycle and my personality. I’ve always been more of a ‘go go go’ kind of extrovert pushing myself out into the world, doing everything all at once, never stopping to breathe. It’s actually quite nice to honour what my body needs and slow down for a while.

But then here I am on Day 2… Luteal Laura is LONG gone.

Someone else quite different has arrived instead. I don’t have a name for this aspect of my personality because, for the longest time, I thought that the version of me that I am here just WAS me and that I was very much not me when I felt anything other. 

I am still me at every phase of my cycle.

I simply have different wants, different needs, different tolerances and different desires.

It keeps things fun, if nothing else.

Literally as soon as my bleed arrives, I FEEL the shift inside of me.

I am lighter, more free - as though every little burden that weighed heavy on my shoulders has been instantly eradicated by the fluffy cloud of estrogen riding through me. I am instantly horny - which will only get more and more ravenous and feral the closer I get to the peak of ovulation. I want to go EVERYWHERE and do everything and I feel like I have all of the energy in the world to suddenly rush back out into the world and shout ‘HERE I AM’ as though I’ve returned from a retreat into the underworld.

Life begins to make sense again. The hopelessness dissolves away as though it was never there, as though it hadn’t been an all consuming presence mere days - hours - before.

I have to remember to stay slow, though, to avoid burning myself out.
To take a lesson from nature as she emerges from winter into spring - slowly and with ease.

There is no need to rush but there is an excited sense of urgency to make the most of this wonderful feeling as I become the more socially preferred version of who I am. The one that can have fun and laugh and make plans and actually stick to them. The one where I forget all of my worries because I lose myself in the busyness of extroverted life. I am out there - literally, emotionally, metaphorically. Away from whatever lurks inside. Hidden. Forgotten.

It’s been interesting for me to learn that I am more than just a one sided shape. That by tuning into my own personal cycle and rhythm that I can understand the depth of my true dimension and nourish it. That I can be whole and balanced instead of a mirage of who I thought the world might have wanted me to be.

There still seems to be so much stigma around the premenstrual phase because of what it stirs up and calls to and reveals and releases. I think it holds power. I think that’s why it is attached to fear and misunderstanding. But I am no longer afraid.

I hid from myself for too long and now I embrace both sides of my personality - every angle, edge, dimension and face - because they are ALL me.

I might not be so digestible in the days before my period but I’d prefer not to be simply swallowed whole.