By Shrutika Yadav
“Red Wedding”?
“Monthly?”
Wait, is this about that Red Wedding from Game of Thrones?
Well, thankfully, the “red wedding” we’re talking about here doesn’t involve a brutal massacre (or surprise stabbings at dinner) even though it does come with its fair share of bloodshed, betrayal, and emotional devastation.
Welcome to menstruation: the recurring episode no one asked for, starring your uterus as the drama queen.
By this point, you’re probably in one of two camps: either mildly disappointed that this isn’t a passionate takedown of the Game of Thrones writers for robbing us of Catelyn Stark, or already rolling your eyes at what you assume is yet another “overdramatic, overstimulated” monologue about how unfair menstrual cramps is.
To the fair few men out there who dread that time of the month when the women in their lives begin a week-long saga of hair-pulling, aggressive rants, and emotional plot twists let me say this, from the depths of my hormonal heart: It’s not you. It’s me.
And on a sunny afternoon when the birds are chirping and my uterus isn’t waging civil war, I will look you in the eye and tell you how much I appreciate your presence, your patience, and your emotional survival skills. I will thank you for sticking around when everything I say sounds like a mix between Shakespearean tragedy and WWE smack talk.
But today is not that day.
Because on this sunny afternoon, I am deep in work, bleeding like a low-budget horror film, my back is screaming, my stomach is staging a protest, and I’m sitting in what can only be described as a crime scene that used to be a chair.
So, the one thing I kindly ask you not to say is:
“She’s just overreacting.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m fully aware that, gender aside, we all carry our own sorrows, each of us quietly waging wars within ourselves. But when the battle inside me shifts and a wall gives way, I bleed unwillingly, unavoidably, every month.
And on those days, when I can’t raise a white flag to the chaos in my own body, I only wish for a gentle “I’m here for you” (and maybe a bar of dark chocolate) to remind me that I’m not alone in this war.
Most of all, I hope it’s you, who doesn’t cave to generations of shame and silence. That you, of all people, won’t bow to the tired old standard that calls this natural, painful, powerful process “impure”. Because if I must endure the storm every month, I’d like to do so knowing the person next to me doesn’t see me as unclean, but as unbreakable.
The world is changing, and I carry a deep sense of pride in seeing my country slowly but surely move forward shedding layers of outdated shame and societal standards, one step at a time. Change is happening, and it’s leaving its mark.
But even in a shifting world, there’s often a small part of us tucked away in the corners of our minds that still holds on to what we were taught. The beliefs passed down through silence and side-eyes. One can hope that this part of us learns to fight back. Not loudly, maybe. But firmly.
I hope it finds the courage to look at the women around us moving through this natural, exhausting, red-stained phase and say:
What you’re going through is okay.
The pain, the bleeding, the fatigue it’s all normal.
It’s not shameful. You don’t have to hide.
Not in your room. Not in your pain. Not in your silence.
(The writer aims at creating awareness to deconstruct various social stigmas such as menstruation, mental health etc. in a humorous manner)