I don't know who ever claimed or still claims that PMS is a myth, and I don't know why it's still a topic. You know it's a man who said that because I cannot fathom a woman not knowing what the rest of us are talking about. I swear, I never cease to be amazed with this natural phenomenon. Every single month for nearly eleven years now, and it's still an interesting and devastating topic for me. I tell ya, I don't know what I would have done if Playtex hadn't become one of my best friends on this planet.

I mean, everything swells and explodes. You pack on about 5 to 10 pounds of water weight, and you just can't suck in that bubbling gut if your life depended on it. My boobs are engorged by almost a whole cup size to the point where my friends comment, "Are you wearing a Wonderbra? Your boobs an enormous!" (I'm not really complaining about that part.) However, this acne is so annoying. It's the full-faced, deep-cheeked, slightly enough under the surface that you can't pop them away, but enough that they LOOK popable. (So gross, sorry, but so true.)

Then, there are the mood swings. Unpredictable, unnecessary, evil, exhausting mood swings. There's something that needs to be said to all you out there (males) who do not understand some things about your better halves, and are usually unsympathetic and unwilling to even LISTEN about it even though we are the ones that have to deal with it forever: our moods may swing and be extreme due to our raging hormones, our bodies preparing to drop a layer of our most precious organ tucked way up inside, but here's what you don't seem to get…THOSE EMOTIONS ARE REAL!!! I don't know how exactly guys begin to assume that because these emotions are induced a specific time of the month that means we don't really feel the way we are feeling. If we're really fucking mad at you, guess what? We really are fucking mad at you. It's not like we're delusional; it's not like we're not thinking clearly. We KNOW what we're thinking, and belittling us or dismissing our concerns that we bring up during the dark hours of the lunar cycle will only throw you farther into the dog house. If we're crying, guess what? We're really sad, and we will do drastic things when we're empowered by estrogen and whatever other pheromones are pumping through our blood.

You know what else is scary? We're contagious. Yes, we are. A menstruating woman is like the black plague, if one girl's got it, she can throw another woman completely off track and thrust her into her monthly internal dungeon of femininity without warning. Scientific explanation - basically, we have pheromones, these are hormones that we release through our skin that is odorless to our noses, but our bodies pick up on the pheromones around us, and we are tricked into thinking those are our own pheromones. Next thing you know, we're surfing the crimson tide without a suit.

I don't believe it's just contagious to us, though. You men out there, I've watched how you change when our bodies are flipping inside out, and this isn't because of just the mood swings. You all get PMS too, it's just the MS never comes.

I have to say, it is a fascinating concept indeed. I believe that PMS is the reason why women have a better grasp of the incongruence (is this the word I'm looking for?) between emotion and reason. Men often seem to "decide" how they want to feel sometimes. They have this ability to lie to themselves that we do not have. Unfortunately, this lying to themselves leads to just one thing - lying to us, and here we end up preaching, "All men are liars," when they didn't even know they were doing it. Why not? Because women have an active relationship with both our emotions and our sense of logic and rational. We are reminded every month several days before our periods that sometimes we are capable of feeling things that go against everything our minds command us. For example - a typical PMS moment of a woman crying. When asked what's wrong, she replies honestly and confusedly, "I don't know." She feels something true, powerful and strong, and though it's illogical to be so genuinely upset without just cause, she cannot deny the fact that she is miserable, even if there is nothing to be miserable about.

This lends to our open dialogue with ourselves. We cannot be hysterical every single month and not do whatever we can to figure it out and stop it. We cry and purge our every thoughts and possible explanations for the break-down. We go back and forth between what we "know" and what we "feel" and appreciate their relevance and sometimes complete irrelevance to each other.

The perk that doesn't actually feel perky? We understand ourselves a little better. We know how to bounce back from extreme emotional pain because our threshold has been pushed and stretched to enormous lengths and sizes with every miserable week of PMS. You ever notice how women can get their hearts broken and be able to get over it in a complete, thorough strategy? It looks disorganized, but it really isn't. It's a precise science whether or not we take the time to observe the obvious patterns. We dive deeply into our heartache, we collapse with self-pity, we mourn our loss, we wrestle with unjustifiable anger and jealousy, we rationalize why we are better off this way, we oscillate between emotions and reasoning until we get on an admittedly long, yet somewhat stable path to getting completely (or mostly) over the ex. We fall, we get up. We fall, we get up.

Men, however, tend to have a different pattern (so I've observed.) When a girl falls, she'll crash and recover, but when a guy falls, especially for the first time, he falls all the way to the bottom of the ocean and holds his breath down there for years to come if not forever. When guys fall in love for the first time, it's like they never get over it. That first love becomes THE love, and every girl to come will be compared to her. And when he gets his heartbroken, he is devastated to a degree quite unimaginable. He virtually crumbles. He is unfamiliar with this kind of pain. How he feels does not line up with how he thinks or what his buddies tell him he should be feeling, then he's left in this sort of limbo, this purgatory where he floats aimless not sure why his heart hurts and his trust is so broken as he's pulled out with his friends checking out hot chicks like old times. Aaahhh…women think. We know what it feels like to hurt and not understand it, we've grown to expect and accept inconsistency. We know that we can survive it. Pain and confusion are parts of our lives and physically represented to us every 28 days. It is no mystery, and we've learned that no matter how hard we bleed (figuratively and literally), we endure. Whole new world for you boys though, and I've got to tell ya, I'm not jealous of your position.

Here is where many, but I won't say all, men become heartless assholes. Sorry, boys, but you know it's true. After that first shatter, boys rarely pick up all the pieces. (Poor souls didn't even know they could break.) They don't know how to clean up. They resort to what they're used to - their left brains: mathematical, rational, organized. They never realize the power of emotion because they look away from its light and let it burn their backs. Emotion and all its glorious perplexity tickles and tortures the unconscious, and he moves on with a silent vow to never let that happen again. How did a woman get the best of him? He must have messed up. Next time, he'll leave her at arm's length and no one will ever get to him again. The "one" ruined him for all women to follow. Will he ever get his shit together and learn the beauty of vulnerability? We like to think it happens with age, but oh-so-many grown men have the emotional capabilities of a twelve year old, trapped in one of Holden's glass cases.

Truth is, we're all humans, and I firmly believe that humans, by nature, do not have complete control over their hearts. We are ruled by them. We are slaves to our emotions. What we feel has NOTHING to do with what we WANT to feel. You can't be in love with someone when you're just not. Time and trying does not change that. You can't be over someone just because you're tired of missing them. You're over them when you're over them, and it's not up to you to decide when that is. We can deny our emotions, or what I'm calling "personal truths," all we want, but if we don't acknowledge wounds, take proper care of them, and allow them time to heal, we will be left scarred, we may never grow back correctly. Repression is never a solution, and being 88 years old with a heavy heart and mouth full of words you should have said is not the way you want to end up. You will fester with regret. Sounds overdramatic? Call me when you're 88, and we'll see if it feels so ridiculous then.

It's about knowing yourself. It's not easy, and never actually fully possible because once you've finally figured out who you are, you've already begun to change. We are forever one step behind, but I find that to be better than years behind, or worse - a lifetime behind.

What do I suggest for men out there? Learn the art of wallowing. Note: I did NOT say to wallow. Wallowing has an art to it. It involves knowing when to wallow, and knowing when to stop. Ask any woman for help, she'll know what I'm talking about.

So, I guess all the bloating, acne, irritability, and general feeling of disgust is worth it in the end because I know something or other about the light and dark of everyday, and I'm think I'm a well-rounded person because of it.

I could do without the cramps, though. I learn nothing from them…