So what about those moments when I’m not quite trusting it? When stories in my mind/body start telling me that I’d better do something, I’d better effort, push, get on it?
Yesterday I was all bragging how I was riding out my menstrual cramps like a champ. Today I’m a little more tense around them, and I just popped to ibuprofen with my oatmeal. But you know what? I didn’t take any all day yesterday, and that was impressive to me. Trusting rest doesn’t mean deny yourself a little muscle relaxer when that feels in the flow.
Flow. Yes.
I’m standing in the kitchen in pajamas and flip flops, my oatmeal on the counter to my left, a towel full of hard cooked eggs behind me.
In my mind, there’s work to do. Don’t I have to do this, that or the other? They are not things I’m particularly excited to dig into. But I would be happy to have them done, so there’s the other side of things.
I’m not super motivated to sit down and do much while the referred pain is crossing my back, hips and knees. Often during menstruation, I get some nausea. I long figured it was from the Advil, but, having not taken any for more than 24 hours, I realize it’s just part of the deal. And it all passes.
I’m at a continual crossroads of: do I follow my head/body fear, or do I trust rest? And again, trusting rest isn’t always meaning be passive or sleep or whatever. I have an inkling to drive to a library today before five and check out a book even though I already have two checked out.
I would like to doodle with some strangers, but I don’t feel like it just at the moment.
Trusting rest is also trusting the cycle of menstruation. I can’t say what it means for men, like this. I can only speak for myself. When I think about my dreams: my meandering freedom (“25 cents,” as my friend Nino refers to it, and I love that) road trip, and then I have a big pang of a cramp and feel my back seize up for a while, that doesn’t sound fun at all. I remember years ago when I left my home in Ohio to drive cross country, solo. It was the trip that surely whet my appetite and never it never quite fully dried. I drove to St. Louis to stay with my [male] cousin for a few days, and while I was there, my period started. I remember my second night on his couch, or maybe third, having to sleep really still so as not to leak any blood on his sheets and furniture. I slept similarly last night, waking again and again to the feeling of blood coming out between my legs and keeping my legs close together so as not to bleed on the white sheets and the borrowed bed that I’m on.
After I left my cousin’s to continue west, I remember that first day out, I had really super bad cramps. I pulled over somewhere to use the bathroom and to take some ibuprofen. I may have bought it then and there. I don’t recall. No, I probably had some with me. I was prepared. But anyway. It was super uncomfortable and the pain shot down my legs which made driving a drag, and I was still in sort of urban/suburban St. Louis outskirts, so it wasn’t even like I was driving through the gorgeous wilderness.
But the thing about this discomfort is that it does, every time, pass. Even as I’m typing this now, standing in pajamas and flip flops at the kitchen counter (which, by the way, is actually a good height for me to type, and I may try this later when I write my 1000 – or more – words in that other doc . . . ), the pain is already settling down some. It’s not fully gone, but it’s relaxing.
What if menstrual pain is not so much about the pain itself, but is about the relief when it passes and how awesome that is?
And is there a way I can tie this back into what else is on my mind today? I don’t really want to talk about it (give more energy to it). My feeling, my instinct, is to rest, and see what happens. Contrary to what thought/feeling/fear might say. The rubber is at the crossroads. Which way will you go?
trustrest.wordpress.com 
