At times, the thought of sacrificing my ability to have kids to have a pms-free and cramp-free life has flitted through my head. Of course, I know its nonsense. But just think about it, that's discounting so so many days of unnerving discomfort that I bet few other people would ever understand. Make that half of all human life, simply because they had the fortune to be born male. Make that another half of the women who have an easier time. So it's just the rest of us around who know the crippling, draining, mind-boggling effects the monthly cycle does to our bodies. It's not just cramps, also weird pressures, back pains, fake urges to go to the toilet, leg aches, diarrhoea sometimes... It isn't that bad when it's regular, but this time, when it was 3 weeks overdue, I could feel all the life and energy in my body being trapped in my cave of pain, stewing and simmering and taking its time to unleash its full prowess. The cramps started 7 days ago, it was the sort of pain that I thought heralded the release the very next day, but on and on it went. As the flow-date crept nearer I started to feel giddy and weak, and partaking in physical exercise made my muscles and stomach alike ache with the power of a powerful acid. Oh and yes, I'm also hit by the legendary mood swings sometimes. I would suddenly shout at inappropriate moments then apologize profusely, and in the last ten minutes I sat in solitude and just cried, a bout of tears that I knew scrunched my face into a pathetic, 12-month old baby state, finding solace in the groans that I couldn't help letting out. I read a passage of words and... cried. I thought of how it was already 4-odd in the morning and I'm no closer to getting to sleep, how it would be difficult cos it would still hurt even as I lay in bed. How much harder this pain would make my nightly battles in bed to fall asleep. When similar sufferers told me how unfair it was to be a woman and endure all this, I would always say that this makes us stronger, it invokes us with a power only we have. I really would like to tell this to myself too. I'm doing the best I can, applying heat externally and internally, avoiding the medicine unless it's really necessary. I guess I feel inadequate in many areas of my life right now, and writing about things really lets off the steam.