Blood! Gore! Fabulous Accessories!

In case it is not immediately obvious, this post is going to count as Way-TMI-Land to people who don't like hearing about periods. So, you know, read at own risk, etc.

Need something bright & colourful in your life? Then I strongly suggest you take a trip to etsy.com & search for "menstrual pads". Which is what I did this afternoon, and have had my mind blown by all the happy-fun-time-super-joy! coloured & patterned pads. Mushrooms! Polka-dots! Tasteful understated florals! Accessorisation options!

So, I am thinking: it feels like I've moved on enough from The Great Divacup Disaster Of '05, and even the Traumatic Gushing Experiences Of '07 & '08, to consider going eco-friendly with the bleeding again.

I bleed hellishly, and horribly, and frequently in ways that are absolutely incompatible with existing in public while retaining a publically acceptable denial that there is blood gushing forth from my body at an alarming rate. I have been blood-splatter humiliation girl, and oh-holy-shit-I-am-so-sorry-about-your-chair/sheets/carpet girl. I have sprinted down the side streets of Newtown with crimson gushing down my legs, thinking jesus fucking christ it's day 5 this is not fucking fair. And I have been all of these things in my 20's, rather than my teens when I could possibly have brushed it all of as just being clueless (although I was never clueless in my teens- I started bleeding age 10, by 13 I knew what was what, pretty thoroughly). It's just that things got so much dramatically worse around age 24 or so, it was like being caught out as a kid with a brand new bodily function and no idea how to manage it, all over again.

So since the crimson tide became a regular crimson fucking tsunami in my life, I've been a bit busy just trying to figure out how to manage that, and I gave up on the whole eco-friendly bleeding products thing. The Divacup didn't work for me, and I didn't have the time/patience/initial outlay to figure out another solution that also might not work, so back to the hideous, plastic world of disposable things it was. And not just any old disposable things, cos I am beyond the capacities of modern tampon technology. No, it was a sad return to the hideous world of attachable pads. Which are fucking gross, and insanely wasteful, and have glue on them which stick to my pubic hair, and AS IF you need extra eye-watering painful moments in the middle of an eyewateringly painful period!

But, a couple of years later, I feel like I've kind of got it under control. A little bit, at least. I am no longer surprised by the amount I bleed. I have some faint confidence in being able to handle it. And I fucking hate wearing toxic, plastic, irritating imminent-landfill in my knickers. And I have been spending a hell of a lot more of my time with hippies, which means that rad-pads/lunapads/moonrags/whatever are as much a part of the obligatory "Gah I'm Bleeding Offer Me Sympathy" round-tables that happen in all dyke sharehouses (well. All the ones I've ever lived in) as your usual, commercial, disposable options.

So, the obvious conclusion, I would like to invest in a set of cloth pads, and see how they are. And since they are such a fantastic cottage-industry dealio, they are available in about 10,000 variations of shape, layering, construction, size- and of course, fabric. I want one with rockets, and one with tentacles, and quite possibly one on which I will embroider bloody, melodramatic lines from poetry:

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;"

Unfortunately I probably won't be able to buy any til I get back to Australia, unless I find a local Berlin craftster making them, because I can't get parcels mailed to my Berlin address. But if anyone Aus-side knows of good non-online suppliers, let me know.

(this lovely illustration comes from Mari-Chan, and features on at least one stylin' lady I know's tampon case)

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Addendum, some time later: I am finding it strange to exist at once in the laissez-fair, anti-shame world of the hippy menstruation crew, which tends towards a particular relaxedness about human blood- natural process, hang onto the pads and chuck them in the wash later, never mind the occasional blood-stains on the sheets, etc- and also in the "I cut people up and put needles in their skin for fun" crew, which is absolutely, obsessively, compulsively strict about the containment & curtailment of blood, once released. The happy-hippy-no-shame part of my brain is all "oh cool, you can get cute 'wet bags' to chuck blood-soaked pads into between washes", and the well-trained blood pervert side of my brain is going "OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU BE SO RELAXED ABOUT A CUTE ZIP-UP BAG FULL OF HUMAN BLOOD?". I have experienced similar cognitive dissonance in relationships, sometimes: there is When I Am Cutting You Up, which is all latex gloves + sealed containers for anything that becomes bloodied, and then there is when we are on our periods, which is all being mightily relaxed about blood on the sheets & sometimes each other. Hmm.