A couple weeks ago I wrote about gaining peace of mind by going on The Pill.

I got so many compliments from women who could relate, which is a main reason why I wrote it. Women don’t get to talk about their bodies the way we should. As sexualized as our culture becomes, fetishizing little girls in pigtails and Catholic school uniforms, the fact of the matter is we live in a Puritanical society that burned witches at the stake and continue to outlaw sex in any other position other than missionary. We can watch a million people get blown to bloody bits on regular tv programming but if in the fraction of one ridiculous moment some pop singer should expose her breast, Lord help us.

There was an episode of Sex and the City in which Charlotte, in her mid-30s, finally for the first time takes a good, close look at her vagina. Oprah then talked about it. And thousands of women then did it, also for the first time. Recently I explained to a woman my age (late 20s), how exactly to use a tampon with an applicator. And constantly I am hearing teenagers calling into advice shows like Love Line, wondering if they might be pregnant after a sex act that didn’t involve actual penetration or exchange of fluid.

Sex cannot be talked about. Vaginas are vajayjays. And periods are things that we pretend are not happening.

It’s stifling. And it’s misogynistic.

Women shoulder a quiet and painful struggle in their menstrual cycles. Rarely do we speak of it because we don’t want to be the cliche, whiny girl complaining, “Ohh, my cramps,” so pitiful and so in need of attention. As if it weren’t enough to have to deal with the bleeding, bloating, backaches, migraines and moodswings, to be made to feel repulsive is the most degrading symptom of them all. Is there even anything comparable that men go through to which women are so unabashedly like, “I don’t want to hear about it; gross”?

“I talk about my period all. the. time.,” commented lizzelizzel, an AltDaily user, on my Pill story. “It is a constant presence. I know where I am in my cycle just by how I feel in the morning.” I envy liz for being so in tune with her body. Half the time I have no idea what the hell mine is doing.

“This is a strong topic for me,” wrote Brook on our Facebook under the story link. “Hormonal birth control is a double edged sword-while originally an empowering little pill, it is really very dangerous to women. There are a lot of alternatives, I would suggest firstly just simply knowing your ovulation schedule. That helps. Truly. It’s never failed me, but nothing is fail proof.

“I believe in working with the body, not against it,” she continues. “It’s really disturbing that every OBGYN I’ve been to never asks or encourages women to really know their bodies–AKA tracking their ovulation.”

“I’m a gal who has tried many different birth controls,” Snow White commented on the story. “Some good, some made me lose control of even my most primal instincts. My favorite is the vasectomy.” Hell yes.

Snow White mentions a very real fact that we deal with in the battle with our bodies–searching for the right birth control is an intense and difficult odyssey. I started LoSeasonique, a low-dose hormone pill that as a side effect makes it so you have a period once every three months. For me, I got my period on schedule anyways, and bled for nine or ten days. Lovely. Also, I have found that the other side effects for me include that which Snow White talks about. It makes me lose my mind:

Jesse says something to me on an idle Tuesday morning. I take offense. He says, “Don’t get so defensive.” I tell him I’m not, and if he says that to me one more time I will kill him. He says something about me being bitchy that sends me into a blind rage in which I pick up some unbolted-down object and throw it at him, crying and screaming, and he tackles me to the ground and proceeds to stroke my head and shush me like I am a wild, red-eyed mare.

So much for peace of mind.

We have less sex, ironically, than we did before I started the birth control. And this is due to the other lovely side effects, which include spontaneous cramps, the most painful I have ever endured, accompanied by nausea-induced vomiting. Over a beautiful weekend in Connecticut the last couple days, dinners and conversations were interrupted on numerous occasions by my leaving the room to throw up. My coping mechanisms were to pace around the bedroom rubbing my stomach and then writhe in my sleep, kicking my legs and waking up in cold sweat.

Never have I felt so betrayed by my body. Yet I tried mightily to swallow my complaints.

And now as I go hunting again for the right pill, I am reminded of the cross we quietly bear. But hopefully, as I regale to you fortunate readers with the travails of that journey, we can break that silence more and more.