I spent 23 years of my life growing up in Chennai, India, living in the same house since I was born. My family was rife with sexist ideas and menstrual taboos. But being the eldest child, and a rebellious, feminist one at that, earned me a few accommodations. I could sleep on the bed, but I had to wash the sheets later. I could be inside the house around people, but I couldn’t touch anyone. There was one important rule – I was not to, under any circumstance, enter the kitchen and make it ‘impure’. I experienced extremely painful cramps, I was deeply uncomfortable with who I was and what was happening to me, and I vehemently hated all these rules. It didn’t matter though; the only escape was to move out and make my own rules in my own space.  

One night as a teenager, I dreamt that my mother, while on her period, was confined to a small box, unable to move left or right, stuck, helpless, fulfilling the duty of every menstruating person – making herself small, embodying her impurity. This visual remains seared into my brain.  

Cut to the year 2020. While the world was simultaneously masked up and breaking down, my pre-menstrual symptoms reached a new level of awful. Every month now consisted of two weeks of constant fatigue and brain fog, a whirlwind of emotions, brutal rejection sensitivity, and pain. I couldn’t study, I had memory issues, and I couldn’t stay present with myself or with other people. My relationship with my partner was strained. I was irritated all the time. It felt like something took hold of my brain. Something was terribly wrong, but I had no idea what it was. Gynaecologists around me didn’t care, surely not when it came to emotional symptoms.  

Online communities came to my rescue. After reading through hundreds of tweets, articles, and blog posts, desperately trying to understand what was happening to me, I learnt the name for these draining, life-sucking symptoms: Premenstrual Disorders (PMDs). Knowing that thousands of menstruators across the globe had the same intense symptoms – it felt freeing to be validated.  

Premenstrual Disorders refer to conditions like Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) and Premenstrual Exacerbation (PME), where menstruators could experience symptoms ranging from emotional changes to suicidality during their luteal phase (the ~15 days just before one’s period begins). PMDs are usually much more severe than Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), the latter being more common. PME is an exaggeration of underlying conditions like anxiety disorder/ depression, hence the symptoms are present to an extent through the entire menstrual cycle, while in the case of PMDD, the symptoms usually subside once the period ends. Research on PMDs is still very nascent, with PMDD being more researched than PME.  

While this awareness was validating, my symptoms did persist. The next immediate need was to find a doctor in India who would listen to me and affirm my queerness. After extensive

Googling and obsessive symptom tracking, I found a doctor who listened to me and correctly identified that I had PME. There was no “cure”, she said, but I would need to change up quite a few things in my life, right from nutrition to working on boundaries and managing compassion fatigue.  

Since that day in 2020, life has been a rollercoaster. I tried several treatment options, got into therapy, and made life choices that either brought down or increased the intensity of PME. Some months, I experienced minimal symptoms. Some others, I had to stay in bed for half the month. I navigated exams, work commitments, personal relationships and my passions around my energy levels. My doctor moved continents, and I knew no affirming medical professional to continue my treatment plan with. I reckoned with being chronically ill for the first time in my life, and I brought disability justice principles into my everyday practice.  

Through this journey, I discovered two things about myself that made having PME challenging – one, I am Genderqueer; two, my PME manifested due to prolonged trauma. This meant that any doctor I consulted should not just be PMD affirmative, but also queer and trans affirmative, and trauma-informed. Indian healthcare is fundamentally casteist, patriarchal, queerphobic and ableist making finding an affirmative doctor almost impossible. Besides, the majority of the online communities were centred around cis women’s perspectives, and mostly from the Global North, which was simply not relatable to me. I had no one to talk to about the unique experiences of being Queer and Neurodivergent, with PME.  

In many ways, my dream as a teenager felt like a premonition. It felt claustrophobic to be stuck in this box with only my PME-ridden brain for company.  PMDs are, by nature, loneliness-inducing disorders, and here I was, feeling invisible with an invisibilized disorder.   

This loneliness was how ‘Project Hell Week’ came into existence. This project creates community spaces for Queer and Trans folks with PMDs and also works with educators and healthcare professionals to bring in affirmative practices and mitigate harm for Queer and Trans patients. My intention with the project is to centre social justice perspectives. There can be no conversation about Queer and Trans menstruators and Premenstrual Disorders without acknowledging the effects of systemic injustice and oppressive systems.  

This conversation on Queer and Trans menstruators with PMDs in India is one component of the larger disability, anti-caste, queer, feminist movement. Through representation and advocacy, institutional change is happening across the country, be it among doctors, schools, and even within families and communities.  While there’s still a long way to go, we will keep fighting, resting, and being kind.