Those five days

Happiness, the kind that has you twirling your way to the fridge, the kind that makes you forgive furniture that stubs your toe, the kind that makes you speak 10X kinder with the girl trying to selling you credit cards, that kind of happiness is where I stay 25 out of 30 days a month. This happiness requires no one. Although, good food is welcome to join the party and almost always is present.

Then there are those 5 days of a month. Happiness is paralyzed and needs crutches, needs the world to lift it up and spin it around . Those five days, when my ever so independent happiness gets tethered by a threadbare line to everything external, my house comes crumbling down in a heap and I am stuck beaneath the debris, struggling to breathe. The outside world, with its countless triggers, continues to spin the same record while I withdraw, slowly until I am piled onto my bed, under the blanket, with my head pounding, eyes swollen and heart racing. I come undone, held together only by social convention that demands I attend to work and weddings alike.

This is the time for my failures, regrets and insecurities to take out a procession in my honour. Mid-sentence, mid-meeting, mid-GMAT prep, my mind takes mini breaks to peek out of the window at the procession. It is grand. A car wreck you cannot take your eyes off of. I draw the curtains because hey! We got work to do. But the PMS wants what it wants. In flat 10 minutes, my mind and I, have our noses glued to the glass, watching, watching, watching… and its 07:00 in the evening.

The winter sky is awash with the bluest blue. It is a clear night. You can hear kids screaming on terraces, a whiff of incense floats, carrying with it something my mother mumbles in arabic, neither of us understand, we simply comply. A calm settles, with my eyes half closed, I drift into sleep. I can hear my mother calling my name, faintly, distant, her voice loses all urgency sieved through my slumber and I ignore her. The day ends and tomorrow is another day.

4 more days to go.

My doctor got the TL;DR version of this. “I get intensely sad, axious and angry 5 days before my periods. Please help”. I got a prescription for serotonin and advice to practice meditation and Yoga.

My office will get, “I am not keeping too well” email. That, is sad. It is sad 30 days of the month.