Chronic Depression? I'll take two!

You will never know what violation is until you are a man who bleeds every month.

Every second I think about menstruation, every time I'm reminded of it, I have to bite the inside of my lip to keep from crying out at the injustice of it. It's worse than having breasts, worse than the sheer fact of having a vagina, worse than not being able to grow a beard or being taken for a woman no matter how hard I work at passing.

I've been raped. This is so, so much worse.

This happens every 28 days for four days. Lucky me, I bleed heavily. Even more lucky me, I get cramps to kill a small animal. To pile on top of that, I can't take painkillers unless I'm dying, because I become physically dependent on them. Oh, and I get fatigue, worse so because I'm a vegetarian and my iron level is already suspect, and I am intermittently nauseous. Poster child for Murphy's Law, right here.

The worst part of it is not the bleeding, or BEING A WOMAN, it's that it is never going to change. I am too afraid of surgery and needles, too afraid to tell my family, too worried that I will fuck up the body I have irreparably. I have a nice body. On a good day, I can admit that. It's not the body I want, but it's better than most people get, and I sometimes feel ungrateful for wanting to change it.

But on days like today, where I'm curled up in a little ball trying to stifle my cries of pain and violation, I'm more than ready to go to a hospital and demand they fix this shit.

No religion can tell me about Hell. I already know.

[End note: I spent a good deal of my Senior year of high school addicted to ibuprofen, because I have a bad knee and have a genetic predisposition toward addiction. Now that I'm off the stuff, I can't take it more than once or I go through withdrawal: temperature regulation problems, phantom pain. I know nobody ever sucked dick for Tylenol, but it IS an addiction and I'm suffering because of it, so all the "hardcore addicts" can shut their face if they don't want to take me seriously.]