Danya Watches Sad Shows The Day Before Her Period
I’m the only girl in my house. Most of the time I don’t like being outnumbered, but once a month I get to use my reproductive-organ power to be left alone. The boys don’t ask any questions. I make a vague statement, like “I’m having some lady troubles” or “I think my period is trying to kill me” and they immediately go into hiding.
I like to use this time to lay around and watch television. This is something I do almost every day anyways, but I feel less guilt since my body is actively trying to lay an egg. The x-factor in this scenario is my hormone imbalance causing me to feel feelings so hard that I either weep or become irrationally angry. I know I can’t watch hard-hitting news stories or serious documentaries for risk of tapping into my irrational anger, so I prefer to watch only soft, human-interest stories that will make me weep alone in the guest bedroom.
When I was a SAHM, nap time for SJ would always collide with Oprah. Heaven help us if I was premenstrual and Oprah had a guest who organized a program for prison inmates to rehabilitate pit bulls as the inmates gains skills to help them re-enter society (“They are both feeling love for the first time,” I sobbed) or a couple who was able to move past infidelity and build a better marriage (“They just worked so hard to forgive each other,” I would wail). The catharsis of the good cry usually gets me to a functional place and I am able to return to my normal mood for when I lay around and watch television.
I made my menstrual cycle announcement to my husband on a Tuesday afternoon while he worked from our dining room/home office combo. He backed away slowly. I knew I had full reign of my life for the rest of the day.
Once in the confines of the guest bedroom I queued up a guaranteed tear jerker I had been saving for a while: “A Star is Born.” The Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga one.
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
The movie opens with a Neil Young-esque looking Cooper with a fist full of pills about to perform for thousands of devoted fans. Oh man, I thought, this is gonna be an ugly spiral. Perfect…. There was a soulful rendition of “La Vie En Rose” that gave me chills, then a heart-warming scene where Gaga punches a stranger in a bar. Our hero (Cooper) administers first aid in the form of a bag of frozen peas for the throbbing hand of his new lady love after she threw the punch. (Danya Note: Has anyone ever actually eaten a bag of frozen peas? I feel like they are only ever pictured as a make-shift ice pack in movies. And I don’t like peas so I can’t vouch for whether or not they have ever been eaten).
The only time I ever felt rage was when Gaga hesitated to be pulled onto stage to sing the song she and Bradley Cooper wrote in the grocery store parking lot while icing her hand. “Bitch,” I thought to myself, “you’ve been wanting to be a singer and here is someone literally rolling out a red carpet and you are standing stage left acting like you don’t want this!” For the record, if I ever get a break like that, I would shimmy onto the stage totally ready to get famous. I just don’t understand these people who act like it is such a daunting task to be universally adored. That was also my beef with the movie “The Princess Diaries.” Anne Hathaway was all, “woe is me! I can’t believe I have to be a princess!” If those people show up on MY doorstep to tell me I am actually the heiress to a kingdom of a far off land, all I can tell you is I would swing the door open and yell, “Where have you people been? I’ve been waiting!”
But once my rage subsided I was left to just fall to pieces over this ill-fated love story. There were a few moments during the movie I thought maybe Cooper would dry out at rehab, but as the story continued I knew our hero was in trouble. I cried for the last 20 minutes of the movie. I know that much time was left since my cries were getting stronger and I didn’t know how long I could sustain that rate of tears before getting a migraine. So I needed to know if I should pause for an Excedrin.
Once the movie wrapped up and the quilt on the guest bed was damp from my tears, I was able to continue my afternoon of television watching at an acceptable hormonal rate. Below is a list of sappy movies/TV shows you should view while on your period:
Beaches (movie): Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey have a complicated life-long friendship. Someone dies at the end and it makes you want to throw up it’s so sad.
This is Us (TV show): The episode where Randall’s biological father dies made me cry so loud that it was a distraction to my family.
Ghost (movie): Saw this for the first time when I was in 4th Grade and I could not get my sobs under control. Yeah, I was waaayyy too young to be viewing this.
A League of Their Own (movie): If you don’t burst into tears during the locker room scene where the messenger brings a letter and Tom Hanks has to tell the nice lady her husband died, you are basically a war criminal.
Dead to Me (TV show): All the plot twists and turns and a dark, humorous look at grief make this a must-binge show and a reason to cuddle up with tissues and Advil.
