Guest Post by Trena. I am really thankful for Trena’s decision to write about the pill in a way that most people never consider.
When I was a senior in high school, my period got really out of hand. For several months, I would come home sick the first day of my period. I would get so sick that I would vomit the entire day. Everything I ate, everything I drank, I eventually would dry heave the rest of the night. It was bad. It would be so unbearable and I was pulled out of school several months in a row. It wasn’t Toxic Shock Syndrome because my period was so heavy the first day that I couldn’t even wear a tampon. I would soak through a jumbo tampon in an hour easily. Instead, I would wear an overnight pad and change it every two hours. Like I said, it was unbearable. After several months of this happening my mom set up an appointment with a gynecologist.
He had a solution to the problem and it came in the form of a pill. It was the birth control pill but he said it also worked to help women who had issues with their menstral cycle. The only catch was that I had to make sure to take the pill every single day at the exact same time. No problem at all.
I started taking the pill and it was magic! My periods were no longer heavy and my sickness went away. That pill was my lifesaver and I was so thankful for it. It turned out, the pill came in handy for other reasons. Well, maybe it became a little too handy too. I mean, I had to take it for my female issues, so I might as well use it.
Fast forward seven years later when I meet the man of my dreams, Francis Wayne. I knew right away that he was the one and I even nicknamed him, “The One” to my friends. He was absolutely everything I wanted in a man and I was beyond Cloud 10.
He knew I was on the pill for female issues and it never really came up that I could use it for other reasons. But after we were dating for nine months, we started using it for other reasons. It just happened, something we really didn’t plan and both felt awful about. But the pill kept us safe and we just pushed the issue to the side. This went on for months and we both felt bad about what we were doing and knew we needed to stop, but neither one of us talked to the other person about it. Finally, a year had gone by, and one of us spoke up. I still don’t remember who it was, but thankfully that person did. I guess it was such a hard subject to talk about, even though it was a very important subject, that both of us were afraid to hurt the other person. But someone spoke and we decided it wasn’t right. We practiced our faith together, always attending Mass on the weekends, but we weren’t living what we were preaching. We kept thinking about God looking down on us and being ashamed. And then we were ashamed.
But words are weaker than will power and we all know how powerful the gift of will power is. So to keep to our word and know that there was no way to fall back on what we agreed, I stopped taking the pill. I knew that there would be a chance that my periods from hell would return but I weighed my options: periods from hell or feeling like I was in hell? I took the periods from hell.
And to my surprise, my periods were fine. All together I was on the pill for eight years. Gosh, that just makes me shiver to think how long I relied on that crutch to “cure” my female issues. When I look back at my life, I realize that when I was a senior I had stopped playing soccer and was no longer a cheerleader. My eating habits were disgusting as well. If I would have taken better care of my physical well-being then I may never have had the issues I had. Five years after starting the pill, I started to workout. (It is so gross to think that I went nearly five years without working out consistently!) I started taking kickboxing and was started my love for running. I started to watch what I was eating and was more conscience about making healthy choices. Two years later, when I met Frank, I ran my first marathon and was continuing with my healthy lifestyles.
So my female issues were solved by diet and exercise. The eight years of paying anywhere from $3 to $30 a month for the pill, depending on which insurance company I was with at the time,were fruitless. It not only robbed my bank account, made me believe it was fixing my issues but it also gave me the ability to do things I might not have done otherwise. The pill gave me power and honestly, I didn’t deserve that kind of power.
After I quit taking the pill, which led to us quiting another part of our life, we dated for four more years until our wedding day. And let me tell you, the wedding night was amazing. I’m thankful for the mistakes we made in our relationship because those mistakes only brought us closer to God and each other. We learned to trust in God’s Word deeper and practice what we preached. We learned to open our communication lines and trust each other, 100%. The pill did that for us by allowing us to give into pressure. But removing the pill, or I should call it, the band-aid, set us free.
More of Trena’s writing can be found at The Third Prayer. Please check it out!
