Unquiet
Things

As a human of a certain chromosomal combination and a certain advancing age, my body is doing weird things, which often means doing more or less of what it should.

Take my period, for instance. Ever since my first onset of menses at the tender age of ten (and what a shock that was, nobody prepared me for the fact that it could last three entire months) my menstrual cycle has been what you might charitably call “unpredictable.” Less charitably, you might call it “completely unhinged.” After those initial ninety days of wondering if I was dying, my exceedingly awful male doctor put me on birth control pills to regulate things. Thirty-nine years later, I’m still on the pill, my uterus still chaotic.

For most of those decades, the pharmaceutical intervention worked well enough. Monthly cycles that arrived more or less on cue, lasted a reasonable amount of time, and then politely departed until the next month. But bodies can turn on you in an instant! For the past six to eight months, my period has decided to freelance. Spotting when it’s not supposed to, showing up fashionably late or scandalously early, generally behaving like that friend who says they’ll be there at seven and rolls up at nine-thirty without explanation.

The practical solution was simple enough: light pantyliners, all the time, just in case. Because there’s nothing quite like discovering your body has decided to redecorate your underwear AND your sweatpants while you’re standing in the ten-items-or-less line at the grocery store. So now I’m constantly prepared, like a very well-padded Boy Scout.

Between the practical preparation and the daily inspection of said pantyliners, I started noticing patterns. Not timing patterns – my uterus has clearly said “you may fuck off entirely” to all that – but actual visual patterns. The shapes that small drips and drops and globbets of blood make on thin cotton padding. At first, it was idle observation, the kind of thing your brain does when it’s bored. Like finding faces in clouds or animals in doctor’s office wallpaper – that human compulsion to find patterns and meaning in random shapes. Pareidolia. But then I started paying attention, really paying attention, and realized this felt different from seeing an Abraham Lincoln-rabbit hybrid in a cumulus cloud. (I don’t know how it feels different, exactly? But it does?)

Today, unmistakably, the small spot of blood had formed the shape of a sword. Not a vague, “if you squint real hard and look from the corner of your eye” sort of resemblance, but a clear, defined blade with what looked like a simple hilt. Sharp. Purposeful. Impossible to ignore. I wanted to snap a photo and include it with this post, but better-Sarah, classier-Sarah thought “um yeah maybe not.”

So! Welcome to my accidental practice of what I’ve decided to call playtexomancy: divination through menstrual blood patterns as captured on pantyliners. It’s probably not what the ancient oracles had in mind, but they didn’t have to deal with irregular periods and modern feminine hygiene products.

The sword, though! Did you see what I included in the “What’s In My Bag” post from the other day? If not, take a look! That felt significant in a way I couldn’t dismiss as pure pattern-seeking. Swords cut through. They defend. They represent clarity, decision, the ability to sever what no longer serves. And here’s my bod, in the midst of god only knows what all hormonal confusion, apparently offering me a symbol of cutting through uncertainty.

Is this ridiculous? Probably. Am I reading meaning into random biological processes? Almost certainly. But I think it’s oddly comforting and fun to find messages in the chaos; it’s a way of discovering my own patterns when my body has abandoned the expected ones, of paying attention to what it’s doing in a curious way instead of just being frustrated with it. Maybe it even connects me to something larger and more mystical during a time when my body feels completely unreliable, even if – especially if – those messages are materializing on mass-produced sanitary supplies.

Humans have been seeking signs in blood for millennia. I’m just upgrading the ancient practice with leak-proof technology and wings for extra protection!