That night, Jose and I are spent an hour and a half on the phone.
He sends my flowers the very next day.
I promptly friend zone him and continue on with my life, unphased by our conversation.
It's a new day, over a year later. The sun is shining yet my head feels cloudy. My heart races for reasons unknown to me and I suddenly hate everything and everyone around me. It’s as if a demon has navigated its way inside my body, using me as its host. I ache from head to toe and I’m spontaneously miserable. My once bubbly personality has all but disappeared, overnight. I think along with it, went my will to live.
I recognize that sensation immediately. It's PMDD coming to sink its teeth into m existence.
Not this shit again.
I'd give just about anything to be rid of the impending sense of doom that has shackled itself to my mind.
Over the next few months, I become desperate to not feel this sensation, so I begin to try every distraction that I can possibly think of.
First, I try to drown myself in sin. When that doesn’t work, I try to drown myself in religion.
When neither of those work, I try filling my late nights with copious amounts of alcohol.
Part of me knows that alcohol isn’t the answer, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to have it answer all of my questions. One gulp at a time. It’s the only thing that helps when I get like this.
Little by little, over the couple months, everything seems to be simultaneously falling apart.
Work. Home. Friendships. They all start to take a hit as I climb in and out of my depressive state. I start avoiding my old friends and begin making room for new ones, just so that no one knows me well enough to know that I’m lying when they ask me how I’m doing.
My phone dings.
It’s a text from Jose.
“How about letting me take you out on that date now?”
Ugh, I groaned.
I hesitate before answering. We hadn't gotten super close, but close enough that I didn't want to mess it up with some short lived fling.
This mother fucker is really trying to ruin our friendship.
“Just one date and then I’ll leave you alone,” he messages again.
This guy is persistent.
I roll my eyes again, but this time, I smile at his persistence.
Restless, full of stress, and needing a distraction, I decide to give him a yes, but with limitations in place.
“Ok,” I agree. “But on one condition. Promise me that we can still be friends when this inevitably gets weird.”
“Deal,” he agrees.
What’s the worst that can happen?
“Not tonight though. Next Saturday. One date and that’s it.” I say.
“Where would you like to go?”
“How about downtown?” I suggest.
“Works for me. I’ll pick you up Saturday,” he promises.
Before I know it, we're married.
The next few years are filled with new jobs, baby snuggles, and newly wedded chaos.
And of course, plenty of PMDD melt downs.
If one I'd known how much worse it was going to get before it got better.
