I've always had issues with self-image.Not problems.
Issues.
I grew up in a state of constant metamorphosis. Every year or so - from the time I was a few weeks old until I became an adult - I underwent reconstructive surgery on my palate, throat, nose, and upper lip.
(foster kids are kinda treated like guinea pigs.. but anyway).
I don't know what I would have looked like if I had been born without a defect, but judging by the bone structure and features normal-me left behind, I'm fairly certain I would have been beautiful. Strikingly beautiful. I know this. I will meet perfect strangers and they'll know it too, and they'll wince at me in pity, I can hear what they're saying in their minds, mostly because sometimes they say it out loud too. I know that look people get on their faces now, it's imprinted on my mind. It's not, "oh gracious, what a pity she's so ugly" but rather "oh sweet Jesus, what's wrong with her face, she could have been so beautiful".
It's not that I'm ugly. But that I could have been beautiful. Aesthetically perfect. But one little enzyme, a small shock to my genetic makeup, and this is what I'm left with: the asymmetry of a cleft lip and palate.
***
I will look in the mirror some mornings and I will see this beautiful self, this normal-me I left behind. Forsook. And she'll surprise me with her beauty, and I'll surprise myself with my own vanity. Such pretty hair, such pretty eyes, such lovely freckles, such fine long limbs, oh lithe and gorgeous and smart and sweet and beautiful me. Or sometimes, soaking in the bath, admiring my own body, contentedly self-centered, this perfect machine of sinew and skin and bone and nerves and blood and electricity surging with vitality. My beautiful machine. Me.
And I am proud of my self. And I'm vain. And I feel like God. And I understand.. that without me... my world does not exist.. therefore I am the most important being in my world.. and oh, oh fuck, holy shit, what an excellent being am I.***
Then some mornings I'll wake up and look in the mirror and I'm horrified at the grotesque élephante looking back at me, bale-eyed and purulent and I hate my self, I hate my body, I hate my face, my teeth, my skin, my voice, my hair, my fingernails, my jaws, my heart, my liver, my intestines, my colon, my uterus, my breasts, my brain, my soul, my behaviour, my family, my friends, my city, my country, my planet, this whole goddamn fucking galaxy, motherfuck, I hate it all.
***
So I got to wondering. Why do I feel like God some days, and the Beast on others? Am I manic? Do I have body dysmorphia? Am I anti-social? Paranoid? Egomaniacal? Is it environmental? Physical? Is there a pattern to it?
***
THERE IS.
***
So about 10 years ago, in my early 20's, I started jotting down the days I feel shittiest on a calendar. After a few months I noticed the first pattern: I seem to feel the shittiest 3 days before I start menstruating.
A couple of years after that I noticed the second pattern: I always menstruate every 28 days, without fail, unless I'm on birth control pills, which in my experience tends to disrupt my circadian rhythm.
By my mid-20's I was doing research on the menstrual and human fertility cycle and learned that almost all women on earth, regardless of geographic location or culture or government, have a natural circadian cycle of 28 days. As in, every woman on earth gets their period every 28 days, with very few exceptions (rare disorders or because they're on birth control pills).So I'm about 25 by this point, doing research on the human fertility cycle, and I now know two things: I feel like shit 3 days before I menstruate, and I menstruate every 28 days, just like all healthy women. I'd been tracking my daily behaviour and menstrual cycle for about 3 years at this point and I start to notice a third pattern: I always menstruate on the full moon, and sometimes I alternate and menstruate on the new moon, but either way my cycle, oddly, seemed to follow the lunar cycle.
I did a little more research and in the process I learned that the lunar cycle is also 28 days, which seemed far too coincidental to be chance. So call it a correlation: the human fertility cycle and the lunar cycle are both 28 days.
At this point in time I'm in my late-20's and I'm looking over my notes and calendars again and notice yet another pattern: I have one major behavioural change every 28 days, but I have another minor behavioural change right in the middle, around the 14th day of my cycle, so that I go through two significant behavioural changes every 28 days, alternating bi-weekly so that I have a mood swing every 14 days. Take March 2011 for example. There was a full moon March 19, which means I would generally experience a major behavioural shift 3 days prior to this, and subsequently begin to menstruate on the day of the full moon. Fourteen days later, on April 3rd, and the day the new moon, I would generally experience a minor behavioural change and depending on the season may or may not ovulate. And so on and so forth, every 14 days for the rest of my life, or at least in my childbearing years.
Lastly I found that sometimes my cycle switches when I'm living or working with other women with an alternate cycle, or if I'm visiting someone on an alternate cycle. If I spend enough time with them my cycle will switch and I'll ovulate on the full moon and menstruate on the new moon. Obviously, my cycle has the same effect on other women, so can cause their cycle to switch as well. If a woman is on the pill and their cycle isn't synchronized with the lunar cycle it throws my rhythm off completely and makes me feel ill. I will feel dizzy and sick to my stomach and generally irritable. Which is interesting and sounds like gravity sickness to me, but what do I know?
It also explains, perhaps, why women are so touchy with each other. If we knew how to express our frustration - if we even knew what was causing that frustration - we would probably all get along a lot better than we seem to now. Then we could just say, yo, I don't like hanging out with you because you're on birth control and it makes my body feel like shit because you're throwing me off balance, but it's not personal, I do like you as a person, you just literally make me sick to my stomach.
Harsh, huh? But true. And fair. And it's a shame we're not aware of these astrophysiological problems within our own bodies, nevermind between us, because when we don't know what's wrong with us we lash out at each other and this can ruin otherwise loving relationships.
Which is why I'm putting this out there.
To help people heal themselves and mend their relationships.
***
To sum up: the human fertility cycle synchronizes itself almost perfectly with the lunar cycle. I suspect that not only women but men are also affected by the same pattern, regardless of their fertility status. Meaning, we all have a natural circadian rhythm of 28 days, regardless of gender or age. I would even go so far as to say that the whole planet Earth has a natural circadian rhythm of 28 days. Also, it is possible to take medication to disrupt this natural rhythm, birth control pills being just one common example. Disrupting a natural circadian rhythm may cause gravity sickness, which is similar to motion illness, when a person's physical equilibrium is off-axis, like a planet or a ball spinning off-axis. Not only does the lunar cycle affect our bodies but it also affects human perception and behaviour, to the point where a human being can sometimes perceive two different people when looking in the mirror during the waxing and waning cycles of the moon. As such, the lunar cycle affects the visual cortex of our brains ("seeing" two different people in the mirror), and God only knows what other parts of the brain (pituitary, for sure, hypothalamus as well). I suppose a person could look up the list of symptoms caused by gravity illness and they'd probably match up pretty well with the symptoms caused by hormonal disorders. I leave that to you.
***
I'd always considered all of this lunar cycle stuff to be folklore, up until the point it clicked in my mind and I realized it wasn't lore anymore. I thought it was an old wive's tale, something dirty ol' wiccans and pagans cooked up to justify their naturalist lifestyles. But nope, it turns out the dirty wiccans were right. The planets really do have a direct affect on human behaviour, to the point where it dictates how many times we menstruate and ovulate every year, how often we can bear offspring, even how often we have sexual intercourse. It's nuts. Astronomy has a very direct impact on humanity.
What's scary about that, and the reason why scientists are so reticent to publish their findings in bioastronomy and biophysics, is because they can't control the planets. You can't control how many times the sun and moon and earth revolve around each other, or the gravitational pull of the other planets in our solar system, nevermind our galaxy, the Milky Way.Astronomy often makes scientists feel impotent. Powerless. What if a black hole suddenly appeared next to our planet and started swallowing us whole?
What, exactly, would we do to prevent it or save ourselves?
Not a gosh darned thing. We do not yet possess the power or the technology to control black holes and dying stars and whole solar systems. We can barely manage our own planet.
So it's equally emasculating and frightening to these same scientists and doctors when women come to them and mention that they think, they suspect, but they're not sure, what do they think, do they think the lunar cycle has an effect on their behaviour? On their fertility cycle? Are they connected in any way? Can they use this knowledge to prevent emotional outbursts, or miscarriages, or ovarian cysts, or cervical cancer, or any other common ailment related to their fertility cycle?
And that scientist, that doctor, 99% of the time they'll deny it. "There is no scientific basis proving biosynchronization between the planets in our solar system and human beings.. there have never been any conclusive studies.. yada yada..".
It would be so much easier to swallow if they just admitted they don't know.
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