The experience of a PMDD Episode

I stopped taking my medicine cold turkey three days ago. I am sitting in a conference room with my cohort-mate on a Monday afternoon at 11am. It is a holiday and the University is closed so I had to use my swipe access and hard key to get inside. There are no windows here and the lighting is dull. It feels stale in the room, but the palpable sense of productivity and progress makes it feel bright and energizes me. My phone lights up with a text from my best friend, her name in my phone is “Honey Bun”; she is sharing all that she has going on today and the errands she has to run. She mentions that her car might be dying and that she will likely have to get a new one. I am moved at this moment. This is a big deal. I am instantly flooded with memories of her hysterically crying on the cream-colored couch in the dimly-lit living room of my mother’s house. She is crying about her father—the car was his. It is a piece of him that has been so important to her over the last 10 years since he died. Another memory—this one is of her keeping the bumper of her car when she had to get it replaced because letting it go was too painful for her.

I am transported back to the present moment in the stale conference room, and I respond to her. “Oh, are you running all of those errands with Donovan and your mom?” asking her essentially, in this monumental moment, who are you including? Regardless of her response, the answer is not me. What is this feeling? I am not sure, but it does not feel good, there is a light gnawing in the pit of my stomach. She responds, “Some of them!” and leaves it at that. I tell her that this conversation is activating something in me and that I have to talk to her later. No response.

I process this experience with my cohort-mate. I explain my hurt and my frustration at the situation. “My best friend is in a situationship with someone and they say they do not believe they are good for each other. My wife and I were building a friend group with them, but they decided to disband it because they wanted to create boundaries in their relationship. However, every time I talk to her, they are together. They go on movie dates, they go on dinner dates, they talk all of the time, they just moved to a new city together, they live 4 minutes apart…. does it make sense why I am upset? Am I in the wrong?” She tells me it makes sense, and her assessment that the reason they disbanded the friend group is because they do not want my wife and I to be able to have an opinion. She believes that they want to live their lives without being accountable for the things they said. This makes sense to me and my emotions begin to rise. I am disappointed and sad—I feel that my friendship for the past 10 years and support through so much around her dad means nothing. I feel that Donovan is the only person she cares about; I am deeply hurt. I hurry through my work and make plans to meet next week. I go home to my wife and reflect a bit more.

The next morning, I wake up anxious, per usual, and send a hasty text before I even get out of bed. I tell her that I am realizing this is not our season to be close friends, that I still love her, but I do not believe we are supposed to be so connected in this season of our lives. My wife wakes up and I read my message to her. I am processing my emotions and becoming visibly and audibly enraged. She calmly asks me if I have taken my medicine today. I tell her “not yet” and then I take one small blue tablet with seltzer water and swallow it in front of her. For a millisecond, I remember that I am in the luteal phase of my menstrual cycle and PMDD is in full swing, but in the blink of an eye that understanding leaves me. I walk out of the door and go to work.

As I await her response to my message, I am hoping that she will reassure me, and ask me what makes me feel this way. She doesn’t. She tells me that she has a different perspective, but that she understands and respects my decision and that she will not explain herself. The gnawing is more painful now, and I lose my breath for a moment. I am longing to be loved and I am longing to be chosen, but I am not. I feel unworthy, unimportant, inadequate, and rejected. These feelings build slowly from the gnawing pain in my stomach outward until they consume every corner of my mind and I can no longer focus on anything else. I instantly remember a conversation she and I had during my last episode where she made an executive decision to end the friend group. “I did not say I am making an executive decision. I said I think I am going to make an executive decision. You still have a say and can voice your opinion.” She wanted me to fight. She wanted me to disagree. She wanted me to express that I did not like her decision and be open to a conversation. However, at this moment, she is not doing that for me. Rejection and abandonment take the place of the gnawing, and I am filled with tears.

I cannot remember what happens next. My memory comes back as I am walking down Baltimore avenue hand-in-hand with my wife, hoping my surgical mask will cover the tears pouring from my eyes. We are walking to the gym to get my mind off of the hurt and emptiness I feel. I send another text to “Honey Bun.” I tell her that I hope she experiences the same hurt and sadness that I feel, and that she too gets rejected by her best friend for a secret romantic relationship. I block her number. The sidewalks are crowded and I am testing to see if people will move out of the way for me, because the research says they won’t—I bump shoulders with a few people. I watch as a slew-footed woman in kitten heels walks extremely slowly in between two men. I wonder if they are professors. They are taking up the entire sidewalk. I pivot quickly to get around them and speed up to get past them. I am irritable and annoyed.

We arrive at the gym and use the elliptical and lift weights. I am shocked at how much better I feel after exercise, and I am no longer crying. We begin the long walk home and I begin to process ending this friendship because “She never cared about me anyway.” I think to myself, “Should I delete her thread?” but that seems like a huge step because our messages go back several years. We arrive at home; I relax into the evening with my wife and have a few hours of respite from my racing mind. We watch television and snuggle on the couch and there is a fleeting sense of peace. Finally, it is bedtime, and I hope tomorrow will be better.

I awake before my alarm at 5am. My heart is pounding and my breathing is shallow—nothing out of the ordinary. The thoughts about “Honey Bun” are instant. “Delete your thread,” “delete your emails,” “delete your shared notes,” “delete google docs”. I am laying in bed with the white light of my phone shining bright on my face as I try to keep still so I do not wake my wife. I navigate from Gmail to the notes app to google drive to messages, back and forth as I search her name and delete the evidence of our friendship. I delete calendar invites that include her and am sure to select “notify” each time. I do not delete the thread. I do not delete pictures. I log in to google docs and begin deleting resumes, cover letters, applications, research papers—every writing project I have edited for her since 2014 when I created this email address. I arrive at a document titled, “Perceived Frenemies”—this is a chapter from a book she began writing years ago. It dawns on me that this chapter is about a situationship she was in in college and the friendship drama that it sparked. “I wonder what she wrote?” I think to myself. My body has calmed down but my mind is going a mile a minute. I read through this chapter as if it is an acceptance letter to college, my eyes hanging on every word, completely enthralled by what is on the screen before me. I am in shock. I wish she was reading this. I wish she could speak to herself and take the advice that she once gave to others. I get to the end and make a comment with about 3 sentences. One comment turns to 14 and 14 turns to 25. The words flow from my fingertips with such ease. It feels empowering. With each sent comment I get a rush. Ninety minutes later and I begin experiencing regret. “Why did I spend so much energy on that? She doesn't even care about me.” It is 7:30 in the morning and I am more awake now. I go and delete my comments one by one, but I remember that Google sends an email with each new comment. I sift through my own emails to confirm. She will see my comments. I get out of bed. Swallowing the small blue tablet marks the start of my morning routine, and I go about my day as usual.

I am at work sitting in my office, and I feel a familiar sensation in my body. My period has begun. Damn. I am flooded with guilt and regret and wondering, “How did I let this happen again?” I go to my coworker’s office and retrieve an ever-so-familiar, Always ultra-thin pad in a bright orange wrapper—I slip it into my back pocket. I reflect on how unsustainable this is and consider going home to get my menstrual cup—I decide against it and walk to the restroom. The thoughts are racing again. “I cannot believe this happened,” “I should not have stopped taking my medicine,” “why is this my life?”

From that moment on, I experience what feels like every emotion imaginable. The empty feeling fills my heart and the regret consumes my thoughts. I reach out to her via text, and she responds at 4:44pm and says she needs time and space to process. I endure the silence for a week and then I begin having dark and sad dreams about her. I awake from a nightmare about her at 4:44am. I text her again. No response. I FaceTime her. No answer. I wonder if the suicidal thoughts won, if my best friend is no longer among the living. I ask my wife to check for signs of life on her Apple Watch activity app. 12%—she is alive. I text her again, her response says she still needs time to process and has not decided if she will forgive me and be my friend or not. I burst into tears. I try to go to work but I leave after three hours. The grief is so heavy that I sulk in bed for an entire day. I do not eat or drink, I simply cry and mourn the loss of one of my dearest friends. The rage crops up and I send angry text messages to her blocked number. I unblock her. I block her again. I move 147 photos and 20 videos of she and I into a new album titled “Trash”. I delete her number. I delete our thread.