Experiment 1: Choices

* The Alive Project is a series of experiments based on the leading of the Holy Spirit to experience the daily life of another with the express purpose of acknowledging and understanding the heart of God towards His created order.

Here's the thing. I have choices. I do not have to use this thing. This is what I'm thinking as I look down at these instructions:

This is totally my choice. No one is making me do this. I'm glad I didn't see this before I started:

I'm not a freaking rocket scientist you guys! This looks complicated. Nevermind the package directions also instruct me to "rotate the cup one full rotation once it is in place to ensure a proper seal against your cervix". Hubba, wha? I'm folding this thing, shoving it up my hoots and then twisting it until it SUCTIONS itself to me! Wait didn't that lady on Amazon say that's what she was going to the hospital for?!

I'm thinking about all my choices as I stand in my kitchen looking over this thing. I have a half a box of tampons in my cabinet. I think I just cleaned some postpartum pads out of my drawers. I could honestly just send my husband to the store on his way home. My choices are not menstrual cup or mud. My choices are menstrual cup and literally anything else in the known universe specifically made for collecting my period fluid and disposing of it nicely. Some of these methods do not even involve putting anything inside my body. That sounds good right now!

I'm starting to think I made a mistake. By the way, you cannot just send these things back. I'm glad you can't, that would not make me feel good about purchasing them. I am seriously considering my options. Then I realize that this is not WWIII. It is not the end of the civilized world. This is not some sort of political or religious movement, this is a little cup. Just do it.

So I breath deep, fold, and...it's not so...oh no...it is...it's good...yikes...no...oh there we go...hm...maybe, got it. Got it? Got it! Okay good. Stand up...ugh...guess it wasn't unfolded. Well, it is now. Wait and see I guess.

Let's be honest. This thing is taking some getting used to. I suppose any time you try something new it takes getting used to. I literally didn't use tampons until college because I couldn't figure them out. The margin for trial and error here is small. If you've got it right you know within two seconds of standing up, if you don't you're gonna have to sit back down. It's different getting used to this, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.

I am starting to realize something, though, by entering this process. I do have choices. I have a lot of choices. Like I said my choices are not mud or mattress pickings. My choices are not stay home from school or be ridiculed. My choices are not spend money on food or tampons. My choices are anything and everything.

okay, this is not a thing, but almost

 I can have ANYTHING I want in regards to my period. Anything! I want tampons, okay. I want pantyliners, sure. I want pads, just in case, no problem. I want chocolate, of course. I want my husband to get me some ice cream, and put the kids to bed, and rub my back while we watch the show I choose, check, check, and check. You want it, you got it! I am terribly spoiled. It doesn't make me bad, but it does make me hard.

I was going to say "soft", but I think that is so wrong. Getting what I want, having what I need is making me hard. It's solidifying me in my autonomy from the world. It's making me impenetrable to the suffering and heartache and true inconveniences of the world because, to me, there are no true obstacles (so I think). Having anything and everything I want for the incidentals of my life is making me entitled to them. It's making me angry when I don't get anything and everything I want in absolutely everything. Barf. The tendency to make these things all about me is so overwhelming it's sickening.

Time and again while trying to get this thing right I thought about what it must be like to be a 12-year-old girl in an outhouse trying to teach herself this before school. Wishing and hoping that it will work so that she can go and learn. I think about a mother receiving a menstrual cup and wondering if this will allow her to buy more food for her babies next month. I think about young girls with dreams and mud, trying to decide between humiliation and hygiene. It's gut-wrenching.

photo by Femme International

When confronted with my choices I am also confronted with the lack of choices for millions of women around the world. My sympathy wants to save them, my empathy wants to know them. I'd love to meet these women. Hear their stories. Ask them why they chose the cup. It seems so simple, trivial, dumb really. Yet it seems important. I'm sure their reasons are so fundamentally different from mine, but that choice unites us as women. It's a choice we all have to make.

It's a choice I'm glad I've made because I feel connected to these women. I don't know them. I haven't met them, but I know something about them. I have made a conscious choice to align myself with them. They matter to me because...well, simply, they matter. They always have, I'm just aware of it now.

This isn't the end of the experiment, in fact, it's only day 1. I feel as though I've learned so much, but once you know something you start to feel something, and once you start to feel something...watch out...