Heaven and Hell

Perimenopausal Camping

It’s dark. My freezing cold hands are covered in blood. I am standing inside the only bathroom within a mile radius. Two stalls. The only other person in the bathroom is a stranger to me. What she’s doing at the sink I can’t tell. She’s humming quietly and taking her time. A long time. I can only see what my headlamp is pointed at, and it has shifted to somehow aim downward and directly into my eyes. I dare not adjust it with the bloody hands that I try to wipe clean with mediocre toilet paper. Once I do adjust the headlamp, my attention is directed to the blood splattered floor. I attempt to clean it. The morning light will illuminate my desperate, futile attempts to conceal what could be mistaken for a murder. The wind billows in and I recall the warm coat I naively chose to leave at home. Another gust of wind makes me want to cry out to the stranger to please hurry putting on your concealer, or whatever, so I can wash the my bloody hands in solitude. As I wait, I become one with the wind and the bloody bathroom stall glowing in the light from my headlamp. Not in the metaphysical sense, but a literal frozen, freezing my butt off in time sense. Hiding in bloody shame sense. Waiting to emerge from my own private hell sense.

12 hours prior I was glorifying this trip. It was an adventure I could hardly wait for. An escape to a simpler life to mark the end of summer, before the rigamarole of school resumed once again. I packed with glee as I referred to the checklist provided by my highly-organized-in-the-weirdest-way husband:

-underwear

-toothbrush

-medication

-feminine products

I pulled up my period charting app. 13 days and counting. I thanked the maker and left the feminine products at home.

A four hour drive and two ferry rides later, we are hauling all we’ve packed to our walk-in camp site on a secret island. Yes, secret. Please don’t ask me to tell you where this secret island is. I am sworn to secrecy. Though, if you truly want to know where we went, you could easily find it with a little research. Also, I’d probably tell you if you asked.

A yearly mecca for my husband and I, this island is a place we willingly relinquished modern amenities for peace until we had our first child. Then diapers, biting flies, no phone signal or electricity startled my already neurotic self to a resounding NO whenever someone asked, “Will you be island camping this year?”

It had been 10 years since we last set foot on the island. With kids old enough now to swat their own biting flies, we returned with hopes that the island would be kind.

It took three trips with a cart from the dock to get all our supplies in. Once our camp was set up and it was time to relax, I was finally still for long enough to notice my period had joined us. I was hoping it was a fluke and would just go away. How could I be so wrong? I informed my camp mates of my misfortune. One happened to pack supplies, something most responsible menstruating women do. Not me, obviously. She handed me a small package and explained that essentially, it would take a self-gynecological exam to insert. It looked like a rubber ring with Saran Wrap on it. I’m not sure I ever truly figured out exactly how it functioned or if I installed it correctly. Every squat, cough or sneeze would dislodge it. But, it’s all I had until I could catch the next ferry off the island. But then the storm rolled in. Gales so strong the ferry would not be returning, the French couple camping across the way from us informed. We were stranded.

I consoled that at least I was on an island. Hardly anyone was there. I could hide in the shadows.

There’s another secret island I’d like to mention. It’s so secret no one speaks its name. It’s an island that holds an experience tailored to match each of its inhabitants differently, so no one can tell you anything about this island. No one will tell you. It’s for you to figure out alone. I watched my mother traverse this island from afar, never close enough to understand what she was going though. She would chase me away with knives. And, then there are the legends of the mothers before us who, once they reached a certain age, became angry enough to kill and eat the family dog. How sad. The suffering. Even I suffer now when I recall their stories. The island is called Perimenopause and it causes the body to lose its regulations in all forms, period being one of many. So in an attempt to not kill the family dog or chase my children with knives, I try to remain watchful. Not watchful enough, apparently. Not even the best period tracking app in the cyber-verse could’ve saved me from becoming stranded on an island upon an island.

The proceeding days brought rain, wind, and cold. Then sunny skies, crystal cool water, falling stars, magical sunsets. The kids ran off and I didn’t have to worry about them. Then, yellow jackets. One sting. All the while, I bled all over that island. And every time the ferry came, I never jumped aboard. The weather had transformed into paradise, I didn’t want to leave and waste a perfect day fetching a box of tampons.

A full moon rose above the water. The whippoorwill sang. Monarches danced through the rutabaga field. I slept alongside a chorus of night bugs on the forest floor, damp with pockets of dewy air lodged underneath the branches of trees guarding a brown sugar sand dune path that led to shore. Blissful. Not the frozen tundra of a bloody bathroom the trip had begun with.

The signs are obvious to me now that I’m back on the mainland of plenty of everything and all, fat with knowing what’s for dinner tonight in my climate controlled house, and it’s not dog.

-The box of tampons I left sitting on my dresser.

-The diva cup inside my cosmetics bag that summoned to me as I emptied the bag to make room for more suitable supplies. Who, but the lady in the miserable bathroom, puts makeup on while camping? 

-And then there was the last minute trip to the bookstore where I allowed my daughter to choose something to bring with her to the island. On the way out, she spotted a vending machine. There’s never a vending machine flashing candy or little choking toys that won’t persuade my daughter to ask for coins so she can buy. I had just received change. It was her lucky day. I taught her how to set quarters into the slots and push. Out popped a sticker titled: Mummy, with blood seeping out of her bandages. I laughed, “Oh, look! It’s the one you wanted.” We took it home and propped it on display. It made for a good giggle, at least for me, the only one who truly understood this dear mummy, in all her gore. Mummy was trying to tell me something, and I didn’t listen.

My son doesn’t want to return to the island. He could hardly bear to be away from internet connectivity, he claims. My daughter wants to move to Seattle, she stated, when I asked if she would like to camp the island again someday. My husband chuckles when I tell him the island was both heaven and hell for me this year. I can tell by the deeper groove in his worry line that the trip was hard on him too.

“You should write about heaven and hell,” he says.

“Then I’d have to write about my period,” I say back.

“No, you don’t have to,” he suggests.

But here I am, writing about my period. Unregulated and proud. The only loss to me is a few pairs of Hanes and a sliver of dignity. Another symptom of The Island of the Perimenopausal is lapses in memory. Perhaps that’s why I’m already planning next year’s trip back to the island, the hell of it already faded.