, on February 27, 2012
Actually, she’s wearing white pants and as anyone knows you can’t have your period and wear white pants at the same time. Or ride white horses. Or play tennis in a white tennis dress. I’m guessing she’s the girl whose babysitter showed her Jaws at age 5.
“Hormonal” is not generally seen as a compliment. And yet, I’ll be honest, I am. Some girls seem hardly affected by the monthly ebb and flow of the Crimson Tide but me… well, let’s just say that ancient cultures would have worshiped me because of how obviously I follow the lunar cycle. Sure I get all the usual PMS crap like cravings (for like two weeks, so basically half the month I’m fighting sugar), bloating, moodiness and cramps. But I have some weirder symptoms. It took me until I was 30 to realize that the day before the Crimson Tide flows in that I have a serious “everybody hates me” day. And I mean serious. I cry to my husband that I have no friends. I tell my sister how nobody cares about me. Then I go on Facebook and cry over statuses as benign as “had eggs for breakfast – thanks for the recipe Jill!” because clearly Jill is sending out recipes to everyone but me which probably means they’re all having brunch right now and nobody invited me. The next day, without fail, Aunt Rosie comes a-knocking and I want to smack myself. It’s gotten so bad that I actually have a calendar alarm set up to remind me not to send any ill-advised e-mails for those couple of days.
The problem is that it all feels so very real. Even though it happens every month or so. (My cycle isn’t super regular which adds a whole other level of difficulty to this puzzle!)
But the most interesting symptom I have is a hormone-induced stupor. For 20 days of the month I am a writing machine, coming up with posts, working on my book, doing research, conducting interviews and enjoying every second of it. (Eh, mostly.) But then something happens to my brain and I go into this mental fog. Everything is hazy. Writing feels impossibly hard. Heck, even calling the store to order my son’s birthday cake (no, I’m not making it – hush, do you not remember what happens when I bake?!) feels insurmountable. Parent-teacher conference? I have a 3rd child? It’s not flip-flop weather?! Wha…?? I can’t remember a dang thing. It’s like depression, a stroke and a Baldwin family reunion all in one.
So what do I do? I work 10 times harder because now it takes me 10 times as long to get anything done. This necessitates staying up until 2 or 3 a.m. to finish tasks that ought to be simple but feel like eating peanuts with chopsticks. The lack of sleep then necessitates OD’ing on sugar and dark chocolate to keep moving. Then I feel compelled to hide all my crazy feelings because I know they’re crazy and I don’t want to vent my spleen all over people which turns me into an emotional volcano. That only erupts inwards. (What does “venting one’s spleen” even mean?! Weirdest idiom ever. And second grossest visual.) And the best part is that it happens about every 30 days! Yippee!
Basically everything sucks for those 10 days but then all is happy hyper-achiever again. It’s a weird roller coaster. A friend recently asked me if I’m bipolar. I was like, “No, just bimenstrual. Which might be the same thing.” I was relating this to my sister and bemoaning my hormonal fate when she said something profound. “Maybe your period is trying to tell you something.”
“Excuse me? I am not on speaking terms with Mother ‘you want to complain about fair, I’ll show you Somalia’ Nature.”
“Well you should start talking to her again. Because I think she’s smarter than you think.”
“How can she be smart when she makes my life absolutely miserable for 1/3 of every month??”
“Maybe she’s not trying to make you miserable. Maybe she’s trying to make you rest.” I harrumphed while she finished. “You are so go-go-go all the time so maybe your body is telling you that it needs to rest. Mentally and physically. You’d probably be happier if you just stopped fighting it and took a nap.”
Well, huh. My little Earth Mother sister might be onto something.
Historically in many cultures women were given a break during That Special Time.
While sometimes women were just forbidden from cooking or having sex or doing other “wifely duties”, many cultures gave a special power to a “moontime” and gave women extra space and reverence. But either way women were generally expected to be different during their periods. It was normal to not be your normal self.
This is a far cry from what is expected today. We’re free to make jokes about Shark Week or Chocolate Bloodletting or whatever but aside from Middle School gym class we’re absolutely not allowed to use it as a legitimate excuse. PMS is seen as a weakness, something that needs to be fixed, covered up or ignored – a disease even.
Every time I talk about my horrible hormones I have a few people tell me to try the new birth control pills aimed at PMDD (pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder, i.e. the PMS from hell), like Yaz or Yazmin. I’m definitely not opposed to pills and if these help you then I couldn’t be happier for you. (Truly: I’m not trying to tell anyone that they shouldn’t take these pills or that they’re bad.) But when I went to my doctor and she gave me a prescription for Yaz, I never ended up filling it. The side effects felt too scary and I already have an IUD for birth control so the risk wasn’t worth it for me. And I’m not going to lie: there was an element of not wanting to pathologize something that is completely normal. Just like we’ve forgotten what real boobs look like (hint: they don’t always point straight forward), society has given us amnesia about what unmedicated hormones do. They fluctuate. And that fluctuation has effects.
Periods can be indicators of so much more than fatigue. If you lose your period it could be because you’ve over-exercised (ahem), dropped your body fat too low (learned that lesson), have an underactive thyroid, are overly stressed or even have cancer. If your period is irregular it can be a sign of fibroids, nutritional deficiencies, stress and (again) cancer. If your period is excessively heavy then you could possibly have polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, are overly stressed or (you saw this one coming) cancer. Us ladies are fine-tuned machines and perhaps our menstrual cycles are the canaries in the coal mines.
In the end, I can believe my body tries to slow me down once a month. Heaven knows I need it. But I still hate the inconvenience, the mess, the cramps and especially the brain fog. I also hate how it feels trying to live in a society that expects women to be on a perfectly even keel 365 days a year. Where’s Beyonce when I need her??
Have you ever felt like your period was trying to tell you something? What other normal female (or male!) things has society pathologized? Do you do anything special or different during your Card Game Where All the Suits Are Red? Should I rethink Yaz/Yazmin??
P.S. Thanks to some previous tips from you guys, I’ve started taking a magnesium supplement and I think it’s helped a ton with the cramps. I do 250mg a day until the week before my period then I up it to 500.
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This post is from staff writer Sierra Black. Sierra writes about frugality, sustainable living, and getting her kids to eat kale at .
Since the housing bubble burst, many Americans have found their finances underwater. They’re paying on homes that are worth much less than the mortgages against them. More than a few have chosen to walk away from these debts.
Called a “walkaway” or a “strategic default”, deliberately defaulting on your mortgage is becoming more common as the real-estate market continues to struggle. Some experts believe that as many as 20% of homes currently in foreclosure are the result of walkaways: people who had the means to pay their mortgage but chose not to when their life circumstances changed and they found their homes unsellable.
Businesses walk away from bad investments and debts like this all the time, but for an individual to do it takes guts. There’s a huge stigma associated with walking out on your mortgage. Americans feel that there’s something morally wrong with not paying your debts, even when those debts are astronomical or unfair.
As Matt Taibbi puts it in his new book :
When you meet people who are losing their homes in this foreclosure crisis, they almost all have the same look of deep shame and anguish. Nowhere else on the planet is it such a crime to be down on your luck, even if you were put there by some of the world’s richest banks, which continue to rake in record profits purely because they got a big fat handout from the government.
That’s why one banker CEO after another keeps going on TV to explain that despite their own deceptive loans and fraudulent paperwork, the real problem is these deadbeat homeowners who won’t pay their…bills. And that’s why most people in this country are so ready to buy that explanation. Because in America, it’s far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it.
Whether or not you agree with Taibbi’s take on the mortgage crisis, you’ve surely seen that look of shame on the face of anyone you know who’s lost a home to foreclosure. Despite of the social pressure to keep making payments, though, thousands of borrowers are defaulting. The rate of walkaways went from virtually nothing in 2007 to nearly a fifth of foreclosures today. That’s a huge increase.
[Article Continued Below..]
What Happens When You Walk Away From a Mortgage?
Given how many homes are underwater these days, it’s probably not surprising that I have a friend who is considering walking out on his mortgage. I get asked for financial help or advice a lot since I started this gig at GRS, but I was clueless on this one. Some quick math revealed that continuing to pay his mortgage makes no financial sense for my friend: The house is worth much less than he owes. He can’t sell it. He n it’s just
around his financial neck.
Still, I thought my friend must have other options, so I called up
Keith Gumbinger at . Gumbinger had some great suggestions for what to do when you’re facing overwhelming mortgage debt.
Gumbinger agreed that bailing out of a mortgage sometimes makes good financial sense & but the consequences for doing so are steep. “You can certainly walk away and let it go to involuntary foreclosure,” Gumbinger said. “That’s your ultimate hammer. But there are consequences in the rest of your life.” Walking away from a mortgage should be the absolute last resort.
Walkaways face some serious issues:
Your credit will plummet, making it tougher to get anything from a rental apartment to car insurance.
You’ll be stonewalled by the mortgage industry for seven years.
The mortgage company can come after you for the money they lose on your property when they’re forced to sell it below market value as a foreclosure. That’s the bad debt you were trying to walk away from, coming back to haunt you.
Before walking out on a mortgage, Gumbinger says you should call your mortgage company. Lenders don’t want you to default on your loan & and stick them with an unwanted house & any more than you want to destroy your credit. They’ll talk to you.
“You should be able to get a reasonable response,” Gumbinger said. This far into the mortgage crisis, most lenders have experienced staff people who do nothing but negotiate loan modifications, short sales, and planned foreclosures with their borrowers. They have clear processes to handle this type of situation. It won’t be fun, but if you stay engaged, you stand to get out of your mortgage with your credit in better shape than a foreclosure would leave it.
Gumbinger warns to carefully document the entire process. Keep notes of who you talked to, and get agreements in writing.
Loan Modifications and Short Sales
Before you call your lender, decide what outcome you’re after. If you’re looking to keep the property but can’t keep up with the payments, call and talk to your bank about a . There are federal and private programs to help troubled borrowers get their mortgages adjusted. You may qualify to have your
reduced as low as 2%, or to have some measure of your debt forgiven so that your monthly payments don’t exceed 31% of your income.
If you’re ready to walk away from the mortgage entirely and don’t want to keep the house, talk to your lender about a short sale. In a short sale, you agree to retain possession of the property, keep it in good shape, and sell it on the bank’s behalf. With the bank, you agree on a sale price that reflects the current fair market value of the property, even if that’s much less than what you owe on it.
Note: You probably want an attorney to help you with these negotiations.
Usually, a short sale agreement will have a two- to three-month time limit. After that, you and the bank can negotiate a “planned foreclosure” or “deed in lieu”. Instead of simply walking away and forcing the bank to take costly legal steps to repossess your home, you can give it to them. In exchange for saving them the hassle of taking it, they’ll go easy on you with the legal and financial consequences. Again, use an attorney to negotiate this on your behalf.
Any of these options should bring you a happier ending than simply mailing the bank your keys without a word.
“Because you’ve tried to do the right thing, it does preserve to a greater degree your opportunity to participate in the housing market in the near future,” Gumbinger said. Your credit will still take a hit, but if you do a short sale or planned foreclosure, you may be able to buy another house in two to four years. If you even want to. After being burned by the housing market, many people are happy to become .
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