It started with [[heavier]] periods than normal.All around the world, one at a time, people began experiencing abnormal periods. They were heavier, longer, and with more clotting.
They weren't as painful, though. Maybe that's what stopped a lot of people from [[noticing]] at first.(set: $day to -1)It's an easy thing to ignore. Periods are unpleasant, but ultimately simple to minimize - pads, tampons, pain medication. Even those who usually suffered before or during found their suffering eased, and so life had a way of carrying on.
(link-reveal:"After all, it'll be over soon.")[
[[How we all took that for granted.]]](set:$day to it + 1)[[Just a few more days.|How we all took that for granted.]]
(if: $day is 3)[More than usual.](else-if: $day is 5)[Finally, should be over soon.](else-if: $day is 7)[Quite a long one.](else-if: $day is 10)[When did it start again?](else-if: $day is 12)[Calling a doctor seems like a good idea, but no one wants to be condescended to for exaggerating over a slightly longer than average cycle. Best to just wait it out.](else-if: $day is >15)[They run out of [[supplies]].](else:)[]It might not be the first time they need to restock, but at some point during that two to three week stretch, people notice. Those with the privilege or money (seq-link:"send messages","make appointments","wait for a proper explanation").
(click: "proper explanation")[PCPs, many men, see nothing wrong with their organs. X-rays and tests cajoled out of them reveal little to nothing amiss. If they don't like it, they say, hormonal birth control is always an option.
(click: "option")[Those who do see their periods cease. Likewise, anyone already on medication that prevents periods never see the changes at all.
[[But for the rest of us]]]]It was only the [[beginning]].In the coming days, there is a lot of speculation as to why people didn't notice until it was obvious.
(cycling-link:"Shame","Fear","Ignorance","Misinformation","Lack of Information","Medical Mysogyny","Consumerism","The Media","Big Pharma","The Government","The Shadow Government","Women Themselves","The Transgenders","The Woke Mob","Who Even Knows?")
It didn't matter. If you knew someone who menstruated, chances are their period has been going for almost a month now, and it showed no sign of stopping. Those who hadn't had theirs yet might have even heard what was going to happen before it hit them, but that was only because of the [[next step]].A post on a health reddit broke the silence. There had been posts, of course, about heavy periods, longer periods. Speculation abounded in places where speed, not quality, was the main interest of reporting. But who would believe them? Women all around the world, all experiencing similar symptoms at the same time? It sounded fictional, or worse, like mass hysteria.
(click: "mass hysteria")[This post was not the first about unusual periods, no. But it was the first to claim something truly strange — that their flow has become orange, first a reddish-orange that was easy to dismiss, but now the tint had become impossible to ignore. In addition to that, all the clotting they experienced has vanished, and the flow seemed more consistent, like the usual discharge one would experience when not menstruating. But heavier. And orange.
Reviews were [[mixed]].]There was a fairly solid split between people convinced there was something horribly wrong with this person and others calling it a simple troll. When asked about doctors, they said they couldn't afford anything unless it was truly serious. Their post history revealed nothing — it was a throwaway account, because they were too ashamed to connect this issue to their main account. At one point it seemed likely the mods would have to step in and lock the thread soon.
(click: "lock the thread")[Then people started posting in [[support]] of OP.]Cis women. Trans men. Non-binary, cis men, married and single, old and young, anonymous users — they had all experienced or knew someone who had experienced something similar. Posters from the previous weeks came back to add their support that the OP wasn't lying and provide their own health updates. Most disturbing is that the color wasn't consistent, but most other things were - regularity, consistency, cessation of [[normal]] menstrual symptoms. But then, what was normal anymore anyway? If so many people had this happening to them, maybe the strange fluid has become the [[new]] normal.The post hit Tiktok almost the same time as it hit Twitter. Following that, the news began to spread, slowly and purposefully, until everyone had either seen the stories, heard about it from acquaintences and loved ones, or experienced the truth for themselves. The news had no choice but to report it. After all, how could they let such a trending panic go uncovered?
From there, things just.. [[blew up]].[[Six months later.]]They never found a cause. Never stopped trying, either, but there were more important things to attend to. A panic-buy akin to toilet paper before the pandemic reached a small crisis and then resolved itself. Medical textbooks were being thrown out and rewritten. Pre-menstrual children had to face the terror of not knowing what these changes were and what they meant, and the world feared along with them. Puberty blockers became desireable, for some.
And now? Things were different, but they were also the [[same]].It was the first few months that were the most difficult. For those underprivileged, and even those of privilege, getting access to period products was challenging. Worse than that, the new, heavier flow meant that products costed more and worked for less time.
Workplaces became a vital community resources. Everyone who had something always brought extra, and it was understood that you were expected to give as well as receive. Employers, hoping to save some money, tried to ease back on providing hygeine products for their workers - only to discover it was not considered so much a courtesy, but something for the workers to [[demand]].The threat of unionization was enough for most to quickly revoke their plans. Workers with a stagnant wage, it turned out, were very motivated to keep an absolutely necessary benefit in a time of unease. Labor laws made it difficult both to fire the union heads and hire someone unaffected by the issue.
[[Tampons became a meme symbol of class solidarity.]]Then the tampon and pad had to be reinvented. What was more important - slimness or fluid retention? Feel? What about leak protection? The legitimate companies had to spend time testing out products, making sure it was all safe and legal. Hucksters were happy to fill the space.
(click: "fill the space")[People bought cotton wholesale and made their own pads. Period underwear became the only underwear made for women. Multivitamins and shakes claiming to 'slow the flow' flooded the market, taking advantage of people's desperation and fear. Some of it was a start to genuine research. Some of it was straight up poison. Colloidal silver made a brief comeback, but pictures of a man with blue skin quickly discouraged that endeavor.
(click: "endeavor")[It felt like every week there was a new idea. Did essential oils help? How about natural healing? MLMs made truly outrageous claims about making periods go back to normal, signing up [[countless women]] in the process.]]How do you cope when your body is part of a massive upheaval to society, but simultaneously a taboo topic? It was all people wanted to talk about, but no one wants to talk about what it meant for them outside of the circle of trusted friends. It became like a barrier between those who experienced it and those who didn't — just like periods had always been. A lot of women, men, those within and without the binary, started falling to bioessentialist narratives in their shame and their fear. It's so easy to listen to someone who makes reality smooth and simple, who can answer your questions, like:
(click: "questions")[What does it mean when my flow is (cycling-link:"purple","orange","blue","red","green","neon","dark","light","just like a regular period","yellow","brown","black","white","pink","clear","glowing???")?
Is it normal to (cycling-link:"have more energy","have no energy","crave chestnuts","miss my period","enjoy this","want to go back","cry myself to sleep","hate sex","love sex","doubt god","be so scared")?
Is this (cycling-link:"normal","bad","shameful","wrong","sinful","worth calling my doctor about","a sign of psychosis","an exaggeration","deadly")?
[[Am I normal?]]]Now we fuck through it like animals. My girlfriend and I on the couch, throwing down a towel at most, hands and minds unhindered by the stuff. If the flow never stops, after a certain point, everyone else keeps going as well. It becomes another inconvenient part of life we handle with cotton and hormones. People can become used to damn near anything, and this is hardly an exception. Our bodies are a canvas of teal and pink.
The bright side is it's quite easy to [[wash off]].We don't know a lot of things about our flows. But through pilot studies and a lot of questionable human ingenuity, we do know some things:
It's [[edible]].
It's [[anti-viral AND anti-bacterial]].
It's shockingly [[easy to wash]] out of most fabrics, thank god.
(if: $read >0)[And it's always [[coming out of you.]]](else:)[]The flow is pervasive. It takes up every inch of space in life it can, never letting us forget. The hardest part to get used to is the [[gushing]]. Even the most random things set it off — you shift in your seat and you can feel a release of fluid. Bending? Fluid. Lifting? Fluid. It's enough to send most people who aren't extremely confident in their flow gear packing to the bathroom, anxious they might spring a leak of their own special mystery color.
Then you find out that, no, your flow looks perfectly fine. Nothing has changed substantially. It's just your mind fucking with you.
I sit on the toilet feeling like a [[fool]].(set:$read to it + 1)Don't ask me how I know.
It has a unique taste, too. This caused a lot of converts from kinksters previously into period blood. It seems largely inert to the human body - study of the composition indicates it's not a waste product, but something more akin to the discharge that used to help keep the vagina clean.
[[Weird.|wash off]](set:$read to it + 1)This one caused a huge fuss. As with the vaginal flora we had before, our flow helps curate the microbiome with various chemicals. These chemicals, it turns out, happen to make our bodies inhospitible for any current sexually transmitted illnesses that used to plague us. Over a month the population of infectable bodies was functionally decimated.
(click: "decimated")[Subsequently, scam patches and condoms said to pass on the curative properties of the flow flooded the market. People died from being infected or foregoing their real medicine.
However, hope for an actual cure or treatment using this knowledge [[remains|wash off]].](set:$read to it + 1)Comes right out with water, no matter how old the stain is. You should be more worried about the cloth itself and how it tolerates washing.
In fact, if cleaning is so easy, why avoid stains at all?
Period underwear is a booming market. Once marketed for sustainability and comfort, now practicality takes precedent. All you have to do is throw them in the washer after use. The more absorbant the brand is, the more popular it becomes. Soon enough small businesses pivot from masks to reuseable pads for those who are unable or unwilling to [[replace|wash off]] their wardrobe.Like a dam breaking. Like pus flowing from an open wound. I'm always wet, never clean, I wipe and wipe and there's still more. My thighs are stained with unworldly color.
I feel [[diseased|coming out of you.]].Even after that, the flow finds new ways into your life. It becomes routine. When you go to the bathroom first thing in the morning, what do you do? Check your flow, swap your flow wear. And in the evening after dinner or coming home from work? Same thing.
(click: "Same thing")[Periods were just that — periodic. At least you got a break from them. But the flow is forever. It requires thought, maintenance, effort. In the back of your mind it's always [[churning]].]But the flow is benign, so it's treated like something you have to just get used to. It often feels like we're being asked to forget the way things used to be.
(seq-link:"\"Whatever,","\"Whatever, it's not hurting anyone","\"Whatever, it's not hurting anyone so just shut up and [[cover up]].\"")It reminds me of an old doctor I had.
(click: "old doctor")[I can still remember their message back to me about my health concerns stating nothing seemed of note, and to contact them further if I became anemic or started passing blood clots above the size of a quarter. A stock response to concerns about periods.
(click: "periods")[[[I had just informed them I had been bleeding for two months straight.|I had just informed them I had been bleeding for two months straight.]]]]So perhaps it's not a surprise what happened next.
(click:"next")[All of it — the fluid, the delayed reaction, the shame and slow forgetting of how things used to be. Just as the flow does not stop, we are not allowed rest or acknowledgement.
(more:)[(after:7s)[Then the news [[erupts]].]]]It's on every channel. It's all over the web. Hell, it's even on the fucking radio. It's hysteria, people blaming the woke left all over again or saying it's the next stage of human evolution finally coming to fruition. There are preachers going off in both directions. People are calling off of work. It's madness.
So, what the hell [[happened]]?(after:3s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[Those with penises are passing small, gelatinous [[cysts]].]](after:2s)[Fluid]
(after:4s)[a (cycling-link:"twine","body horror","farce") by mothmouth]
(after:6s)[proofreading by bumblepaws]
(after:8s)[[[replay?|Title]]] <span class="gradient">[[Fluid]].</span> And then there was the [[shame]].