More periods, please

The strangest thing happened to me yesterday. I can't imagine what came over me.

I was in Barnes & Noble, in the medical section, reading the Jerome Groopman book (B+), and when I finished it, I was worrying about the length of time between my periods, if it was too long, and I picked up some gynecology handbook and looked up menstruation, and there was an entry for premature ovarian failure. The entry was about a paragraph long and not very detailed (I don't think it even listed symptoms), but I started freaking out, like, What if I have this? I'll never have kids. All the time I spend looking at baby clothes and thinking about babies and finding pictures of cute babies online, all of that will go from silly to tragic. I got myself so worked up, I thought I was going to cry in the middle of the bookstore. So I went to my gynecologist to set up an appointment. I wanted to see her that day, and when the secretary asked why, I told her the truth, and all the other secretaries turned around to look at me all agape and she was like, "Let me leave a note for the doctor to call you," which I think means, "I'm doing this to appease you, because I think you're insane."

My periods have always been kind of far apart (around 30 days), but for the past couple months they've been like 32 days apart and they last two or three days, and I know this is weird, but it just sort of makes me feel like less of a woman. All my friends are like, oh, you're so lucky, mine are every 28 days and they last like a week, but I don't feel lucky. I feel masculine. And of course I know that the period doesn't make the woman and I am a woman regardless of how frequent my periods are. I don't know why this makes me so upset.

And now no man will ever read this blog again because it mentioned periods.