I haven’t slept in 28 hours. I’m sitting up in bed, my legs crossed, my left foot vibrating under my right leg, my arms bracing against my abdomen, kneading it in an attempt to push through the pain. I’m buzzing with all the caffeine I could stomach, yet the migraines are still pounding away at my temples, ringing bells behind my eyes, blurring my vision with each toll of pain. I feel faint, as if all the blood in my body was pooling in my pad. But I must stay awake. It’s that time of month again, but this time I need to stay awake, to see what happens when I close my eyes.
I haven’t been this awake since the first time my period struck rivers of crimson gushed onto the floor tiles of the locker room as I stood with locked knees, embarrassed as if the acrid blood was streaked across my cheek. I felt my basketball shorts and socks soak–
That incident was over a month ago. Well, here’s a thought. Found the rabbit hole again, so down I go.
I glimpsed the tail of a specter snake up my legs, where it coiled around my stomach, twisting my guts into a corkscrew like an inverted caduceus, causing me harm through hormones. My eyes rolled back, and it went red, then black. When I came to, my friend told me I had hit my head on a locker door and was knocked out for a week. She told me that I was covered in someone else’s blood, besides mine, but due to the publicity, that was a secret between her and me.
Get-well-soon cards were piled on my bedside, but written in them were taunts, the kids of school saying I shat through the wrong hole.
In this moment, I’m in agony; it was as if the ghost in my stomach was reaching up into my brain, pulling it into my intestines, the acid licking the base of my spine, burning the nerves in my back. Here I am, on my bed, shivering with adrenaline as I continue to hit my knuckles against one another, the dull throb of pain needling my attention for an instant, away from the pressure building inside my head, only for the blood to rush back to my head, a constant ebb and flow, teetering on the edge of sanity.
I have to stay awake. Though I can’t see them, the ghosts are all here, as if they were holding my hands, slowing the blows. You’ll get through this, the force grasping my palm says, giving it a slight squeeze. Then, we’ll go through you.
If I fall asleep, I end up covered in blood that isn’t my own.
A period lasts a week. What’s another 140 hours?