I maybe went on a Twitter rant today.
I don’t get dislocations, but damn, this really sums up some stuff far better than I probably could.
i feel like i experience something like this with endometriosis. its been getting worse and worse every year, and now it starts hurting 10-13 days before my period. i start getting pains, and my emotions start crashing, and i look at this app i have and yep. 10-13 days til it starts. added to the time im actually bleeding, thats 12-16 days of mounting pain every month. i took panadol from age 13-19, naprogesic from age 19-26, and now neither of them work any more. got prescribed voltaren by a doctor, but that didnt really help. now i just take whatever i find in my bag of pain medicine and make a wish.
the first day is always the worst. thats true for a lot of people regardless, but most times if it happens on a week day i have to figure out whether to call out of work. at this point, its either call out every month and lose all my holidays, or just accept that its a normal state for me and function through it.
and when i absolutely cant go, and do have to call out, i feel horrible and worthless for not being able to function through. because it happens literally every month, i now struggle whether i have the right to be in pain so often. (plus a lot of other gendered things, i think – when im stressed and in pain its very easy to feel crappy about illogical things like how im letting women down as a living cliche who cant work because of my reproductive system)
and like the original poster, people dont see it, so its hard to talk about it. i think with period related pain theres a particular layer of assumptions that get made too, since normal levels of period pain is also a thing… if i tell someone who also gets periods, i often worry they will compare it to their own period pain and judge me for being weak. and im worried about the majority of cis men judging me for having periods in the first place, let alone talking about it, let alone not being able to handle it.
callanswall 