What the Waning Feels Like

Nobody tells you it has a texture.

The waning. The going-under. The part of the cycle that gets called PMS by people who have never actually lived inside it — who have only watched it from the outside and decided it was a problem to be managed.

It's not a problem. It's a season.

And it feels like this:

Like the volume on everything gets turned up three notches and you didn't ask for that. Like your skin is thinner — not metaphorically, actually thinner, like you're missing a layer that was there last week. Like the things you usually carry without noticing have suddenly found their weight again.

The laundry pile is not just laundry. The unanswered message is not just a message. The small injustice at 3pm hits somewhere behind the sternum and sits there.

This is not you falling apart. This is your nervous system doing what it was built to do — reading everything more acutely, feeling the edges of things. The waning doesn't make you irrational. It makes you accurate. The things that hurt are the things that were already there. You just couldn't feel them as clearly before.

There's a scent I reach for when I'm here.

Not something bright or sharp — nothing citrus, nothing that demands. Something that goes with me rather than at me. Dark woods. Leather that's been worn soft. The green underneath — earth and moss and the particular smell of rain before it arrives.

Fragrance memory is the oldest kind. Your body knows before your mind does.

When I'm waning I want scent that says I've got you. Not wake up, be better, try harder. Just: I've got you.

The waning is the tide going out.

This is not a flaw in the design. The tide goes out so it can come back. The going-under is how you gather.

You don't have to be productive in the waning. You don't have to be eloquent, or composed, or good at being perceived. You're allowed to move slow. To cancel the thing. To eat what you want and say less than usual and let the house be messier than you'd prefer.

You're allowed to be a creature in the dark who knows what she needs.

That's not weakness. That's feral. That's the oldest intelligence you have.

Light a candle. Something heavy. Put it somewhere you can see it from the couch.

That's enough for today.