Day 99

I slot the Zelda game cartridge into the Nintendo Switch, wondering if I’m going to remember the controls. I spent hours early on in lockdown playing the games, wandering the fields, and doing nothing at all but explore the landscape of Hyrule. It was soothing to be this little figure in this vast expansive world. I could lose myself in green fields or forests, explore deserts and mountain tops, or fight my way through a demolished castle. Gradually, I left the game behind, the world unchanging and a constant reminder of what I couldn’t have in the physical world. I pulled the cartridge out and replaced it with a game of Harry Potter Lego, the world of Hogwarts and magic pulling me in. I am near finishing the main storyline of that game but I do not want to play it today.

Today, I want to get lost in the mountaintops of Hyrule, the snow covered peaks, dark and cool on the screen. I sit on the sofa, load the game, and within minutes it’s like I have never stopped playing the game. I wander around the landscape, fighting monsters, hunting down shrines I have not completed, and harvesting all the food I spot.

‘I’m going to hog the TV today,’ I tell my partner as I hear her footsteps approach the sofa. I curl my legs towards me, creating space for her on the sofa but she only got down to grab her notebook. She disappear upstairs to the study within minutes.

The controls in my hands, I wander through the colourful world on the screen, forgetting the jab of pain that rise and fall in my uterus. Today is the first day of my period and it isn’t the most fun day. I am glad to be having my period, my body having forgotten the month of June entirely. I suspect anxiety and a new sustained exercise regime to be the causes of this skipped month. This month, it came as a surprise. The mood swing, the warm throbbing ache of the left side of my face, the cramps in my legs, and the other myriads of tell-tale signs have not occurred. My period has simply arrived, my body gentle on the pre-menstrual symptoms for once.

As I make Link jump off a cliff, their paraglider opening automatically, I delight in the ability to lie on the sofa, playing Zelda all day. There is a luxury in being able to take a day off because of the pain of my period. The pain feel less acute, my brain less muddled. I know it isn’t the case. I am simply demanding less of my body today that I do when I am at work. I let it rest, able to listen to its demands for once.