Hereditary

I have a cousin who is crazy like me, but more on the manic side. I tend to live mainly on the depressive side of manic depression, a soft lump of sadness on the couch, gripped by the powerful undertow of absolute existential despair. Not so much these days (thank god). Anyway, our story begins way before I was taking mood stabilizers, when Celexa was crapping out on me and yet out of some kind of pharmaceutical devotion I continued to take it.

I needed a place to live at the time, which was contributing to my depressed state. After much himming and hawwing, my cousin finally agreed to move in with me in a new place. So far so good, she was away for the first month, which made co-habitating easy. Anyway, I was using her bed because I was dead broke, looking for a job, and needed to sleep on something.

Despite my flipping flopping gender identity issues, my period came along. Yes, it’s a crucial part of the story, so bear with me. I have been having my period for well over half my life, and while I know I should be expert at it by now, I am not. What can I say about the bloody tragedy that was one small leak for woman, one giant breakdown for friendship?

I spend about four or five hours trying to get the stupid stain out, but really, a futon is pretty much the same as a giant tampon. I mean, it would not budge. And I was depressed anyway, feeling crappier because my female troubles were now staining a friend’s bed. Later on someone told me I should have used a black marker to turn it into a ladybug. Or signed it.

I left a very apologetic note about the whole incident, saying I would buy her a new futon or a cover for it if she wanted, whatever, I just wanted to atone for my sins and move on. She came home and spazzed right the fuck out.

It all snowballed into a very dramatic exit where she told me a litany of things that were wrong with me and how horrid I was for bleeding on her bed she bought with her sex work money. There wasn’t really much I could say. She was so on edge, she even refused to let me put a loaf of bread on HER side of the cupboard. And when her cat killed my rat, she refused to believe me.

As you may imagine, she moved out of the apartment, very slowly I might add. She came in once a day for a week just to be intimidating and stompy while she slowly moved dishes into her room. One day it would be the soup bowls. Stomp stomp stomp. The next day cutlery. Stomp stomp stomp. And I thought to myself “Holy shit, what a freakin’ freak of freaks!” I pretty much ignored her by now because I didn’t want to be part of the bad blood growing from a single menstrual accident.

I told my good friend Maggie about it, she said “oh, she’s bipolar, she can’t help it.”

Little did I realize that within a few months I too would be a raving lunatic.

A side note: I do not trust two kinds of people, the kind that don’t have pets, and the kind that don’t have a bed with at least one menstrual stain. I don’t think it’s normal.