I’m sitting in my apartment in Chicago, in my big, comfy, green armchair that I got when I first moved here—with a towel on the seat and a hot-pad over my lower abs. Yes, it’s that time again. I woke up twice this morning, once at 3:30 a.m. and then again somewhere around 6 a.m., to find my pajama pants and then my gym shorts… Well, let’s just say I am now on my third pair of pants (my last-resort pink gym shorts) and am hoping no more stains will be made the rest of the morning. 

Cramps are interesting, because it makes one aware of muscles that you don’t ever give attention to in your normal daily routine. But then suddenly, whenever “that time of the month” hits and immobilizes your body, it’s all, “wow, there’s apparently an entire muscle group in my pelvic region that is rebelling and seriously inconveniencing my life.” It’s kinda like when the workers who run the CTA go on strike. You have this group of ignored, under-appreciated employees that people hardly ever notice or think about, but when you’re standing for forty minutes on the terminal waiting for the train, it’s suddenly all, “wow, there’s apparently an entire group of people that run these trains who are rebelling and seriously inconveniencing my life.” I’m just telling it like it is: like the strikes of under-appreciated workers, menstrual cramps are often unexpected and inconvenient. 

In college, I lived in a duplex near campus with three other girls. One day, I drove home in serious pain from school and fell through the door. I remember I stumbled to the kitchen to take some pain meds and then collapsed on the couch, clutching my stomach. I needed my heating pad. It’s one of the only things that consistently provides some semblance of relief, however little. I crawled to the bathroom on my hands and knees, but it wasn’t under the sink where I left it. I messaged our house’s group chat, “WHO TOOK MY HEATING PAD,” and the two out of three people who responded didn’t know. I went back to the couch and laid down in pain before crawling back to the bathroom to vomit up the pain pills I had just swallowed. Back on the couch again, I needed distraction. I fumbled with the zipper on my backpack and pulled out my laptop. I went to Netflix and put on The Office, hoping that maybe some humor would make the time pass more quickly. 

I have never felt more genuinely annoyed by anything in my entire life. 

I was laying in serious pain, just hoping for a little distraction—and instead, I felt pure, unadulterated, seething irritation. I just did NOT want to laugh, and I was angry that the show was trying to MAKE me laugh (like that was its job or something). 

This was when I learned to never watch comedy when I’m in pain. 

I shut off The Office and couldn’t think of anything else that could possibly get me through the next couple hours of misery before the cramps subsided. I held my stomach in the fetal position and stared at the wall. I couldn’t read, couldn’t move, couldn’t do any of my normal creative activities… then it hit me. Not an idea—despair. I started to cry, thinking about how my mom used to take care of me when I was sick. She would make me tea, prop some pillows around me, bring me pain meds, and cover me with a blanket whether I wanted it or not. And here I was, laying cold and alone on a stinky couch, bleeding like a fire hose, without even my heating pad because one of my stupid housemates didn’t have the courtesy to return it after I lent it to them. I just wanted to go home, and to go back to the times when I was little and didn’t have to suffer the debilitating pain that periods put you through. Sentiment continued to flood my angry, self-pitying, PMS-ing brain, until for some reason it looped around to The Lion King, my favorite Disney movie from childhood—and then suddenly, I had a burning need to watch The Lion King. 

This was before the days of Disney+, so I had some hunting to do. I pulled Netflix back up. It wasn’t there. I went to Hulu. Not there. I even checked one more site where my brother had an account, but it still wasn’t there. I became distraught. At this moment in time, every particle in my body was convinced: all that would comfort me from being away from home, from growing up too quickly, and that could really distract me from the shooting and twisting pain in my uterus would be The Lion King. Finally, with nowhere else to turn, I desperately checked YouTube—and thank God, I found a full recording of it that was sectioned off into three parts. And I played it. 

Friends, family, readers— I tell you, I was healed that day. From the very moment “Circle of Life” started playing, I was suddenly washed over with a warm wave of peace and comfort. It’s like my mind was baptized in love and sentiment that somehow made my body relax rather than aggressively continue to prepare for my potential future children. And as the movie went on, I cried, I chuckled, my heart was softened, and my screaming vagina was drowned out by the sounds of “Hakuna Matata” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.”

The answer is “yes,” Sir Elton John. I could feel the love that night. 

Before it was over, I had gently drifted into a little nap. When I woke up and the movie had finished, I started it all over again, because I had a few more hours until I could expect the cramps to really be over and done with. 

As I continued to grow up and hit more milestones in my adulthood—graduating, moving to Chicago, landing my first gigs, and so on—those few things from childhood that I return to that bring comfort and familiarity have become more and more sacred. We all have those special things that calm us down and make us feel at home again, wherever we might be in the world or in our lives. So, as I sit in my apartment in Chicago (very different than my college duplex), heating pad on my lap (and no fetal position), you better believe I do sometimes still turn on The Lion King. Oh, but I should mention—the “live-action” one does not have the same effect. Not even close.

Photo © Giles Laurent, gileslaurent.com, License CC BY-SA

Sophia Medawar

Sophia (‘19) double-majored in theatre and religion and insists that her life is a “storybook.” She lives in an apartment above a flower shop in downtown Chicago and has multiple roles working across the arts in comedy, music, theatre, film, and visual art—though her greatest passion is writing. Her work includes stage plays, screenplays, and articles, focusing mostly on cultural trends, comedy, reviews, and religious satire. She loves road trips, visiting her family in Grand Rapids, hunting for the perfect latte, and rescuing plants from the flower shop’s dumpster.