Time of month

I am having the most painful menstrual period in my life yet.

My period started on Friday, the 1st. It was a week late. Not because of any guy, although Lord knows it wasn't for lack of trying. It was exhaustion that delayed it. Exhaustion from work, no less.

The week I was supposed to have my period, I had three straight days of seminar-workshops. On the third day, I was so exhausted from being on my feet the entire time, the veins on my feet looked like they wanted to jump out and scream bloody murder. And the strain was so awful. It's been a long time since I felt so tired, I couldn't get to sleep. Talk about torture. I so desperately wanted to sleep because I was so tired, but I couldn't sleep precisely because I was so tired.

So Friday of that week comes and I use a pantiliner, expecting to mess it up sometime in the afternoon. Evening came and nothing. The pantiliner lay there on my undies, clean as newly washed linen. It was so dry, it looked like it had just been pulled out of the pack. I went through an entire pack of 20s that weekend and the next few days following without a spot of blood on any of them.

Friday came and so did the blood. One week to the day, and the blood came trickling out.

For all the cramps I endured all through the week before, I would have thought that the blood would come gushing out, a veritable river of blood. But no, it would come trickling out in a slow, tortured ribbon of red.

And the cramps worsened, accompanied by hyperacidity causing bloating and sharp pains in my gut.

I spent the entire weekend in bed, twisting this way and that, looking for a comfortable position to at least curb the pains shooting up and down my front. I took anti-spasmodic and hyperacidity tablets like there was no tomorrow. And, to make matters worse, I was so hot for sex.

I kept fantasizing about Freddie: his mouth, his hands, his shoulders, his chest, those long legs, his hard body against my own surrendering softness. It's enough to drive any woman crazy.

Or crazier.