Going Through a Bad Period

Every once in a while, the womanly-cycle thing does not go well.

The problem is one of digestion, I now realize. I get so hungry before my period comes, but if I eat too late, or eat too much at one sitting—or maybe if I eat salad and cereal and cheese and soup at 9pm, as I did yesterday—there comes a mighty problem in the dark of night. It has taken me to the hospital before.

I have forgotten it now. But there was some thought that Death must hurt more than this. There was some thought about choosing What Is, about being present Exactly Now. There was some thought that thinking this way indicates I'm neither completely “present”; nor am I dying.

Better to have one’s mind focused on the dharma than to be mindlessly writhing in pain, though.

The pain comes in 15-minute waves.

I throw up several times, cycling back through the meals of the day. Then I lose myself again, in the bathroom sink: nothing left but purple-red mucus and a single forlorn Tylenol wrenched from the depths.

After each round of vomiting, there is a reliable pain-free moment, a period of real calm. In that lull, I clean up, as peacefully and purposefully as I’d clean any sink. Find my way back to bed. And then I vomit again and again, heaving nothing.

In the next period of pain-free awareness, it strikes me that this might keep going on and on. That I really do need help. And yet, I do not worry. I know this must end. I do not consider the hospital. I do not call any of my friends in Portland.

I have kept a mantra in my heart all night, keeping close to me Tara, the Buddha who in her many color-forms bestows wisdom, or fearlessness, or protection. Her actions are as natural and decisive as a mother caring for her children. As I settle back into my cold bed, I speak directly at last. “Lady Tara, please help me now. If you can.”

There is the impression of whiteness. A vision of a benevolent face with a fluttering third eye mid-forehead. Black ringlets and silver adornments. But mostly those eyes. A slim hand comes out of nowhere, or its proximity. Within two minutes, I am asleep.

I wake three hours later, and feel fine. Rejuvenated, although a little cautious in the body. There is no pain or aching. Evidence of the night’s adventure is strewn all over my flat. The face in the mirror is unconcerned, if a little pale. In the bathroom, ground of memories, a stained, bloated Tylenol caplet looks back at me from the edge of the sink. Resting, too, from its trip into the depths and back.