Trump & Teen P.T.S.D. Inducing Tampon Flashbacks

The night before the election, or what I shall refer to as "the before time" I was on a group zoom call with some fellow autistic & A.D.H.D. females in Canada, also trying to maintain their sanity while navigating this shitshow we are currently stuck in. The subject of the election arose and as I am the only one currently living in the states (albeit a Canadian citizen & legal resident of the United States) & I realized as I was trying to gather the chaotic stream of consciousness in my head into a coherent string of words that would make any sense, I realized Donald Trump running for president again took me back in time like some whiplash time machine, sans the cool lightshow, to when I was a fresh into my teenage girl era, and the first time I experienced a crooked tampon wedged inside my young self. It was such a visceral moment & I got giggling before I could open my mouth, because as much as I wanted to explain how I was feeling, in a smoother, more eloquent adult way - the crooked tampon memory was throbbing in my mind's eye like a lone Budweiser sign against the dark on some forgotten bar, on a deserted highway, making it impossible to look away.

Now, for any man out there or the rare female who has yet to experience this delight, let me do my best to paint a picture for you. Donning your imagination cap, you are barely a teenager and despite having gotten your period at the ridiculously young age of ten, while in Canada, at your conservative grandparents' house (with your parent still over a week away from joining you from California for your summer vacation) & you had to through tears explain to these elderly folks through a closed and locked door of the bathroom, a mere 4.5 feet from the dinner table, that you might be dying at worst, but at best have begun the rite of passage you mistakenly thought would be exciting, that you have started your period. A story for another time, but now a few years later after navigating the hell that is bulky pads, through too many P.E. classes to mention, you have finally gotten permission to start using tampons. Now, keep in mind, this was also 1983, so the slim, pretty colored, don't rip your vagina apart tampons have not yet been invented yet, or your mom is on too tight of a budget, and they are not a part of your joy of being a female yet repertoire.

Nope. Instead, a bulkier, cardboard encasing tube is what you have as you hold your breath after every time you've tried to insert, post urination & wiping into what is a place not yet used to having visitors shoved inside. But most of the time, once inserted, after you release that held breath & walk a few steps actually feels like a part of your body & those are happy times!

Most of us lucky ladies however have inevitably had at minimum one occurrence when The Nightmare happens. No, I am not speaking of the leaking through your clothing and praying for a handy sweatshirt to wrap around your waist pretending to be cool, whilst desperately figuring out how to escape to change. No, I refer to what shall hence forth be known as The Nightmare, part deux, which is when a very special series of unlikely occurrences has aligned. Not unlike the first Trump presidency, that most of us had placed on the shelf with unicorns, fat free Reese's Peanut Butter cups and over the counter erectile disfunction pills. For simplicities sake, the list:

1. You are not at home, or the home of someone your age that you actually trust.

2. None of your friends you are with have started their periods yet.

3. The ones who have, have not learned to pack extras in their purses or backpacks yet.

4. You have sneezed or been startled so badly as to have partially shot your tampon out

5. Once ensconced safely away in bathroom your fear that you don't have any left in your purse / backpack is confirmed.

Now you are confronted with the awkward choice between fully removing and risking leakage or doing your best to push it back up to where it has dislodged from. When you try to push it back up of course being at the end of your period and panicked - any moisture you were hoping for has gone AWOL and you get to enjoy another round of holding your breath and potentially removing the fragile flesh it is assaulting. So, with that last held breath of optimism, you wedge that dry cotton torture device inside slightly askew & pray that no further sneezes or startling events unfold until you somehow get out of the current situation and make it home.

Once you calm down, the human body does have an amazing ability to adapt to whatever situation that has, shall we say stabilized. Not that it is so comfortable that you are able to stop thinking about it for 3 seconds, but you feel brave and accomplished and realize it could be worse.

Then of course a series of things begin to happen making any sense of calm or confidence evaporate as quickly as snickers bars from Halloween left unattended in your fathers' presence. Perhaps you sit down to fast, turn unexpectedly to better hear what someone is saying or maybe you laugh in just the right way that your body spasms and it hits you. That sharp poke or pinch that not only startles you & hurts, but you have to mask the discomfort and explain in some socially awkward way why your eyes almost jumped out of your head, ya know, as it it's a normal occurrence. I would imagine for a man it would be like the dreaded balls or penis caught in the zipper, just a wee bit. Not enough to require a band aid, but you know, hurts like a motherfucker (from what I have been told). Now, because God has a funny sense of humor and likes to keep me on my toes, whenever The Nightmare part deux would occur, I was inevitably nowhere near home & at least an hour, if not more, away from getting any relief.

So yes, imagine for19 or so hours, at any given moment a seemingly innocuous movement on your part, creating a barb of pain in your lady garden that makes you adjust, trying not to cry out and maintain an expression of "hey I'm not crazy and no I am not experiencing sudden onset of Tourette's syndrome", but just an innocent young girl trying to survive yet another socially awkward moment in front of a stadium of people, ok fine, a few people or on a field trip & hold your breath as much as you can praying for a way out of the situation or a quick death to end the suffering.

Now, on a plus when I mentioned to these 7 other women of the displaced tampon scenario, they all knew what I meant, so other than laughing & the funny stories thrown in the mix, they knew immediately, the horrific discomfort I felt on a literal and visceral level of being on the eve of what they knew was a turd in the punch bowl event you had no control over and what that felt like. Not only could I not participate in the voting as I remain a Canadian citizen, but I knew somewhere in my core, that despite the euphoric joy of hope I had been watching bloom in others & myself for 3 months that it was not meant yet to take actual root as apparently, the majority of folks living in this country have opted to burn the ships so to speak, and blindly follow a narcissistic, racist, woman hating, delusional nut bag with the same gusto as I remember seeing in many a classmates face during the 7th grade election speeches. Cheering on fantasy and hope, with no real plan to enact any of the great promises being made yet throwing them their vote for the lollipop being offered.

The startling sharp pain in my lady parts memories were in fact the perfect way to describe how I was feeling at the close proximity of what I knew was going to be the door of hell opening to the next four years of my life, in what could one day actually be a great country, if everyone could only learn about how it actually all works and participate, instead of thinking merely of the their own problems and the cost of eggs and smiling away while being told what they want to hear, while ignoring the lack of any reality attached to the plan.