Hormonal Than Thou

Maybe you’ve already noticed that I’ve been gone from my blog for almost a month now! Come to think of it, I only have one entry for June and that was just to remind my readers that the missus is still online. I haven’t died (not yet). Being gone from the blogosphere this long is definitely a record for someone who lives with her laptop every day. The Tagalog slang words “windang” and “ngarag” would not even suffice to describe what happened to me the moment we entered the month of June. I just didn’t fly off the handle… I really snapped!

During the 1st week of this month (when classes began), I was in a manic rage. The smallest things irked me. It was as if an evil version of me took over my body and cried my eyes dry, screamed my throat hoarse, and just choked my heart and soul. My mind went totally blank one specific day and with my eyes blurred in tears, I hailed the cab, sent a text message to Joseph saying I want to be away from everything, and just took off! The sky was in its grayest gray and my spirit felt as ashen and burned out. The cab driver asked where to and I just said, “I don’t know manong… far away…”

At that time I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I was extremely sad, quasi-suicidal, and ultra-sensitive that I ridiculously cried at every HBO movie that was on… even “You’ve Got Mail!” Looking back, I can now qualify that the reasons for my breakdown were a lethal combination of so many things happening at the same time in that dreary gloomy depression-perfect weather.

There was the stress, frustration, anger, guilt, disillusionment about the church’s commemorative book project that I was heading… Financial pressures and expectations from our families… Our nervous pending 1st bank loan application as husband and wife… Kean coming back from Davao and starting Grade 1 on a very early 7AM class (which meant I had to get up at 5AM to prepare his breakfast & baon; wake him at 5:30; get him all ready for a measly hour that speeds by like a flash of light before his school bus picks him at 6:30!)… And then of course on top of waking up way too early is losing a lot of sleep over my work (as a freelancer, only one principle holds out: no project – no pay)… Worrying about my husband’s growing dissatisfaction with his career… The sad bed weather… Cabin fever… Lack of “actual” human contact… Desensitized by hollow cyber communication… and most of all my HORMONES!

The epic saga of my hormonal battle lives on. After taking some time off from the stressful and expensive fertility treatments late last year, my doctor put me on my hormone treatment again a couple of months ago to stabilize my hormone levels since I’ve been missing my periods again (not due to pregnancy, sorry to disappoint you). The treatment’s supposed to impede my weight gain too. This is all too technical, really. Explaining how hormones work in lay terms is too tedious because nothing is really cut and dried in defining these conditions. A lot of women don’t have troubles with their hormones at all while some just flip out – Example: Me.

I texted my doctor a days after what happened to me that horrible week. I knew I had to consult her because right after the height of my hissy fit, my long overdue period finally came. I knew right then and there that my train wreck episode last week wasn’t JUST about the immediate crises in my life and the dark clouds up above –my hellish hormones did some major damage.
She told me that based on my latest hormone tests I am vaguely somewhere in between having some premature ovarian insufficiency (or premature ovarian failure) and polycystic ovarian syndrome. In very loose simple terms, it means that my eggs ain’t growing and my pituitary gland and hypothalamus are not in synch which in textbook terms gives me symptoms of extreme PMS which could lead to early menopause!!! Huwwaaattt! This even makes me worse than my mega-moody mom!

Anyway, that’s the scientific explanation of my recurrent bi-polar tendencies. While I was in that cab, curling myself warm in an old cardigan (the first one I could pull out of my closet as I was rushing to flee from our apartment), staring irately out the windows as we drove past Gretchen, Angel, KC, with their sucked-in cheeks matched with either stoic looks or dolphin smiles, I thought everything around me just looked grating. I was so antsy that day that I couldn’t even resist e-mailing the management of this chi-chi restaurant at Boni High Street to nitpick at their grammatically-wrong electronic flyer which my inbox received that morning. It said, “… it’s our 2nd Year Anniversary!” to which I replied, “I am concerned that a high-end restaurant like you would be careless about your marketing copy. It’s supposed to be just ‘2nd Anniversary’ and not ‘2nd Year Anniversary’!” I know it was entirely not my business. In fact who cares about some ridiculously pretentious expensive restaurant who doesn’t even know basic grammar? Well on that day I cared. I cared because I wanted some sense of order and control in my very chaotic world. Sigh…

So there I was – crying inside a cab going to nowhere. And then suddenly God spoke to me. While we were crawling on EDSA, my cab driver was actually reading the Bible! Wow, that was a first! Have you ever seen a cab driver do that? It was rare indeed. My husband was calling me. His text messages were pleading for me to come home already. I caught a glimpse of the verses that the driver was reading. He was on Colossians, and my eyes landed on the words “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh to them.” I knew it was God telling me to go home to my husband, and it was an assurance that despite what I did that day, Joseph would understand and his love would just overflow for me because no matter what happens, no matter what I’ve become that day, he still loves me because he promised to do so right before God.

So I asked the driver to turn around, and the moment I got home, my husband greeted me in a warm bear hug and said nothing but, “I LOVE YOU!” We prayed together and I just felt truly blessed for having him as a husband. God really gave him to me ‘coz I couldn’t imagine any other guy capable of handling ME.

June is almost over. With fervent prayers, I survived. Now, my body clock has finally adjusted and in fact I even wake up a minute earlier than my set alarm. Kean and I don’t recreate WW3 during mornings anymore. The commemorative book is finally on its way to the printer. A new career prospect is presenting itself to my husband (please pray with us about it). The weather’s still crazy but my hormones aren’t anymore. The hormonal Jill is trying her best, by God’s grace, to be holier than that Jill who flipped out early this month. Pray. No more preys. Amen.