How Not to Write
I’ve been writing this newsletter for over a year. The platform on which I do so emailed me a few weeks ago to ask for my address, as they claimed they wanted to send an anniversary gift. I obliged, and when it arrived, I opened the envelope and encountered a single tea bag. I shook the envelope to see if anything else would fall out, refusing to believe a solitary tea bag could be the gift in question. Even anthrax has resale value.
You may find this impossible to believe, but receiving a tea bag for my services from a venture capital backed company that makes $300m a year in annual revenue put me in a sour mood. I started this newsletter because I was tired of being treated poorly by corporations who exploited my labor — yet there I was again, negged by salaried Ivy Leaguers. They sent another email today, congratulating me on garnering over a thousand subscribers. This time they didn’t offer a gift.
My phone sent me a push notification on Thursday declaring “your period will likely start in the next 9 days.” It felt like a threat.
Today is Sunday and the period has not yet started but the bloat, the breakout, and the malaise has set in. Oh, and the ceaseless shitting.
Shitting and menstruating — name a more iconic duo. Why do they always come in, ahem, twos? I knew the answer at one point but forgot and choose not to Google it. It’s more fun to speculate, to wonder. Remember wondering?
I am inconvenienced monthly by the bloating and the breaking and the shitting, yes, but it’s better than the alternative, that being pregnancy, so I accept it, laying prostrate in front of the air conditioning unit until the worst passes. Menstruation, to me, has always felt pointless, as the purpose for its existence, that being the ability to create life, I’ve never had any interest in. Now it feels doubly pointless, as my body doesn’t realize the eggs it releases will never reach my womb, as a doctor used a laser to sever the Fallopian tubes that once connected the two. Menstruation, now, is a truly impotent act. It’s nice to know something my body doesn’t know, though. This is not usually the case. Usually it’s the opposite.
Getting sterilized was the best thing to ever happen to me, which feels gauche to say because it’s historically been used for nefarious purposes, but hey — as my grandmother reminded me when I told her I’d never breed, my body, my choice. There’s no future, may as well enjoy the present.
And anyway, it’s good to have an excuse — any excuse to not write, I will take. I know the root cause of sending women to menstruate in huts is misogyny, and I am decidedly anti-misogyny, but I am not anti-menstruating alone in a secondary location, devoid of obligations.
The argument could be made that not letting us menstruate in huts, and therefore giving us a free staycation every month, is a form of misogyny rooted in capitalism; forced production despite debilitation. I am willing to make this argument.
Having to write while menstrual feels like double duress; as a result, I have procrastinated to the last possible moment. I napped thrice. I took a bath at 5PM and immediately put the same fetid robe I had been wearing all day back on. I do not want to do this; I want to play bingo on my phone. I want to smoke a joint and watch YouTube videos made by children play acting as adults, showing off their interchangeable loft apartments filled with plants and mirrors and products designed to facilitate “self-care” purchased by their warpig parents.
My body, my choice, though, and I chose to do this instead, every Sunday, so I suppose I have to. If it sounds like I’m complaining, I am — if left to my own devices, I’d choose to do nothing, as anyone would. I am not unique in my desire to simply exist sans effort. I want to abstain from it all; I want to be alone, I want to live in an off grid single wide in the desert, I want to want and contribute nothing.
Not only is there no ethical consumption under capitalism, there’s no ethical creation, either. No matter what you do, someone else always reaps the dividends of your exertion, be it a social media platform generating ad revenue as a result of your viral posts or your boss buying a house in the hills with the money they’ve made from your subjugation.
This, much like menstruation, is convenient to use as an excuse for doing nothing. But the only thing that is stopping me, that is stopping you, from it is ourselves, and our contempt for both supporting a structure designed to crush us and a fear of, well, being honest. Not only have I become better at being honest, I’ve become better at writing since I started forcing myself to do this. That being said, I still hate the act thereof. It’s an inconvenience — I don’t know if you’re aware, but a new episode of 90 Day Fiance is actively airing right now as I type these words. Yet I’m writing them because the alternative is nothing, and nothing is stagnation. I bleed needlessly, yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m worthless.
Writing this every week is like pulling teeth. I’d rather not, which is why I do. This doesn’t mean I don’t care; rather, the opposite. It’s the caring that makes it difficult. And the difficulty, not a tea bag, is the reward. And so I thank you for making me do this.