Since moving to Riyadh, I have been having the worst PMS imaginable. It is unbearable. A week before my period I start to feel like I'm getting sick, like my stomach has been replaced by a bottomless pit, and am overcome by horrible feelings of being overwhelmed. Oh and let's not forget the extreme anxiety, the rage directed towards my husband, the uncontrollable crying, and of course how I suddenly turn agoraphobic. It lasts the entire week prior to my period and the entire 9 days of my period and it is pure hell! I have always had pretty bad pms...but this is just cruel.

I mentioned it to my mom, and she mentioned that it sounds a lot like PMDD...WHAT?! There's a name for this hell I have been going through? It's not just PMS?! So I look it up and it matches nearly everything I have, except in the symptoms they say it starts the week before your period and ends once your period begins...that's not the case with me. I have two weeks of pure hell...

Since researching it, I've also noticed that I have a tendency to become incredibly sad and miss a certain person a lot more than I normally do. And do incredibly stupid things...and act like I'm living in a freaking romantic drama... blah. Then when the two weeks of hell are over I sit in shame and just want everything to go back to normal...

:|

I found a group on facebook (thank god for facebook) and the posts were like I had written them myself. One was by a husband concerned for his wife and the way he described his wife it sounded like me...well almost like me...this woman obviously has more issues than just severe pms..or pmdd.

I took a deep breath and sent a post and asked if pmdd can be triggered by an emotionally unhealthy living situation...I should explain why I ask that. End of December, we took a family trip to London and my period came and went with none of the anxiety or other awful symptoms I have recently started to have. Then the next month, back in lovely Riyadh..all the symptoms were back again.

There was a resounding YES! If you have a stressful living situation then it can trigger PMDD. Great! Just fucking wonderful...how do I fix that?!

So I'll be doing lots of research and hopefully will be going to see a doctor in the summer....because I don't trust doctors here...majority of them are incompetent morons who would have had their licenses revoked if they worked in the States.

This past month many of my worlds have been colliding. Everyone seems to know everyone else...and that makes me want to sit huddled in a corner, hiding. I still remember the first time I realized how small the world is. I had just moved to Saudi Arabia, left my American world and friends behind and started at a new school. A few weeks in we were getting a new student...turned out to be a girl who went t my school in the states. Imagine my surprise! I was amazed..and thought it the coolest thing in the world. Then a few weeks later we realized a girl in our class was related to one of our mutual friends in America...again amazed!! Then a few months later one of my friends was showing me family pictures and I recognized a girl to be one of my younger sisters friends from the States. Turns out that was my friends cousin.

I held onto this story, and told it over and over again to anyone who would listen. It was my favorite story to tell, because I thought it was simply amazing.

So as I was saying lately this has been happening again..people I know suddenly knowing other people I know. This time around I don't find the smallness of the world amazing or cool...I find it suffocating, stifling, heart breaking.

I find myself having trouble breathing..feeling perpetually panicked..and I realize its because I keep thinking about how small this world is. I blame globalization, screw those people who came up with it. Everyone should have just stayed within their borders and minded their own business. Oblivious to what was happening in the world around them...that's the world I want to live in. Where there is no risk of my American friends knowing my Saudi friends. And when you travel, no one will ever hear from you again; unless you travel back or write a letter. I also hate technology. I always wanted to live in Jane Austen's time period...be Elizabeth Bennett, but I felt I could never survive without technology.

Technology, along with the shrinking world we live in, has been adding to the suffocating feeling. I hate it, so yes please send me back to a time where facebook, email, and whats app did not exist. Where instagram and its taunting pictures are not even an idea yet.

Then again, I think its age that makes the world shrink. Age and awareness or something like that. Which makes me come to the conclusion that death is indeed a blessing...however it can't come soon enough. First you must be tormented by life, until you are not merely wishing, but begging on your hands and knees for yours to be taken away.

This post was inspired by this random thought I had, and whats apped to my sis: As I age, the world which seemed big, intimidating, and full of hope begins to shrink.With each passing day, it shrinks more and more and I am finding it harder and harder to breathe. The world shrinks and I slowly suffocate...death is a mercy for people unable to cope in this shrinking world. Yet even death cannot come quick enough.

Where are you?

I am at the edge of a cliff contemplating staying or falling.
I am at a dead end street conversing with the fences and walls.
I am in an abyss, clawing, grasping, hoping for something to hold on to.

Where are you?

I am in the middle of a lake in a leaky boat.
I am drowning an an ocean of regrets and sorrow.
I am in a whirlpool, spinning, coughing, losing breath.

Where are you?

I am alone in a dark room.
I am crying for the past.
I am sad, lonely, lost.

You know how there are some books that start their chapters off with a relevant quote? Well a book I'm reading on and off does that, and the last chapter I read started off with this quote:

"When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable."
                                                                                                                   -Madeleine L'Engle

Now, I've never read A Wrinkle in Time. I tried..numerous times as a kid, and I tried even harder when my younger sister read it and loved it..but it never interested me. I was at a stage in life where I preferred mysteries and autobiographies. I know...what kind of kid prefers to read autobiographies?! Seeing this quote, made me remember the book seeing as it was said by the author.

When I saw this quote...it moved me. Lately I have been feeling lost, alone, confused...and kind of like a little kid playing dress up. I have no clue what I'm doing, how can I be a mother? How can I be an adult when I still feel so much like a child. So vulnerable. Reading that quote was just what I needed..because it's so true.

You spend your childhood feeling scared and unsure...knowing that once you get older you'll be invincible. You'll have all the answers....you get a little older and start to feel slightly less confident about knowing everything but are still hopeful that maybe you just need a little more time. Then you get married, you have kids and are faced with the harsh reality that no one gave you the answers you were supposed to get. And you realize that your parents who always seemed so on top of things are sometimes just as lost as you. And it's scary...

To be alive is to be vulnerable. I love it...and it somehow makes things better. I want to paint this quote on my wall..so that every morning I can wake up and see it. I know...that's cheesy. But whatever!

Also...I think I may give A Wrinkle in Time another try...I mean why not right? :D