This week, my head is empty and all I’m thinking about is Cheer. Season 2 is out and I am devouring it like a rabid dog (btw can anyone explain why my hilarious tweet about Maddy Brum is not blowing up???). There is, once again, nothing happening in my life because of the ‘cron and the SADs and all I’m doing is watching TV. I don’t really have any exciting stories to share, so I figured I’d turn to some stories from the past that I’ve written, and share those instead! Maybe I’ll do this again because these next few weeks are looking similarly slow for ole girl. Remember plans? How is everyone else doing?
Anyway, here’s a story I performed LIVE in Jan 2020, wherein I recount the time that I accidentally flushed my Diva Cup down the toilet. I hope you enjoy and if you’re watching Cheer, text me.
I am going to tell a story of the most shameful thing I’ve ever done.
It might seem obvious to some, but in case it’s not, I use a diva cup. I’m guessing you can tell how environmentally friendly I am because I’m wearing a kooky shirt that might be thrifted or might have cost $50 at Madewell — no one will ever know — or by the fact that I’m a little stinky. Whatever signal you’re picking up on, you’re correct in recognizing that I care about the earth.
In my quest to continue signaling (but also to genuinely try and change something about my lifestyle), I stopped using tampons in 2017 and switched to diva cups. Let me be honest with you, it made me feel like an absolute hero. Every time I dumped my bloody innards into the toilet, I’d think, “I am a goddamn saint for being this sustainable.” And then I would flush the toilet 9 times until all the blood went down.
I lived this eco-friendly life for months and I gave myself a pat myself on the back for being the change I wished to see in the world. It was angelic… until the night that the facade came crashing down. I was in college, and had just returned home from a wild night of playing drunk improv games with my sketch comedy friends then crying about our traumas. When I burst through the door of my apartment, I needed to pee. BAD.
I was in the middle of my moon cycle (period), but I wasn’t worried at this point because I was a pro at emptying and cleaning my diva cup. A little alcohol buzz had nothing on me! But as soon as I took it out, I got a call from my then-lover. I don’t know what it was, maybe the joy of having a reciprocated love, maybe it was the extra slipperyness of my blood that day, or maybe it was the fact that I am stupid and in that moment was drunk, but I dropped the diva cup right into the toilet.
Fuck. I looked down. Chaos. “I need to call you back,” I said. I spent the next 15 minutes staring at the bloody stew beneath me wondering how the fuck I was gonna get myself out of this mess. I ran through my options:
Dive in and pull it out. No way. I thought, What would people think? (It’s a real testament to my self-obsession that I thought people would immediately know about this without me telling them)
Fish it out. I don’t know why but this option seemed like the bleakest one at the time. “Fish it out?! With my HANDS?? What am I, some kind of dirty lil stinker?? No way.” Meanwhile, the act of dumping out a diva cup — something I did every day that week — was arguably just as “dirty-lil-stinker”-esque.
Leave it alone until one of my roommates comes home and then act absolutely shocked when they find it. What kind of person would do that and then just leave it there?!
That might be the best option.
Wait, I’m the only one in the house who uses a diva cup. That’s a dead giveaway.
Fuck.
I took another 15 minutes to process and eventually I decided that the second, scariest option was my best bet. I scanned the bathroom for something to use — because again, I refused to use my hands for some unknown reason — but I couldn’t find anything that would magnetize to silicon. I had already waited for half an hour and it was getting late. My roommates would be home soon. I grabbed the toilet bowl scrubber and tried to nudge the cup just enough above the water so that I could grab it. It didn’t work. Instead, all I did was stir the bowl like a drunk, menstruating witch.
I need something that will squeeze it, I thought. So I ran and got scissors.
No, wait, something about that option feels wrong. (Sometimes, thankfully, I have my moments)
Then, I had a brilliant realization. I know what squeezes things: chopsticks. Lucky for me, I had sushi for dinner last night. I ran into my bedroom and found a single pair of chopsticks. I’m a genius, I thought.
Wait, but I’m terrible at using chopsticks!
Then, I had another moment that saved me: I’ll take a single chopstick and poke it into the cup then lift it out of the water.
JK, it was not a moment that saved me. I got your asses.
Nevertheless, she persisted. I could hear my roommate’s footsteps entering our apartment, and I was running out of time. I plunged the single chopstick into the cup and in return, the diva cup slid right down the toilet. Gone.
I looked up. No. That couldn’t be. There’s no way that could have happened because I care about the earth, remember? Remember my shirt??
If I flush it, it’ll come right back, I thought. I believed this because most things generally work out for me.
I flushed. Nothing. So much nothing in fact that the toilet worked normally. It flushed! No clogging, no overflowing, nothing. Just a flush.
I flushed again, the same! A clean flush. My roommates walked upstairs and I had the choice to walk away right then and pretend like nothing happened. But again, I have a desperate need for attention and an extremely guilty conscience, so I told them everything immediately. They were like “are you ok” and I was like “no :p”
Ultimately, we had a laugh and figured, I guess if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But as I said, this is a story of shame. And that is what I felt. For all of my efforts to single handedly save the earth with my reusable menstrual cup, I still flushed a non-biodegradable product down the drain for all the turtles to choke on. Sure, I doused my hands in my own blood once a month but what good was it if I just killed a whole school of fish?! I imagined each one of the fish’s mothers walking by me on the street, shooting daggers out of their beady fish eyes and pooping long poops on my feet. I was a failure.
Or maybe I wasn’t. Maybe some teeny fish had found my diva cup and turned it into a cozy home with algae on the edges and kelp lining the walls. Maybe that fish made a family there, and they lived together peacefully with all the other fish in the village and they threw dinner parties and their kids had sleepovers and everyone was happy.
Or maybe I’m just an idiot. Either way, I flushed my diva cup down the toilet.
So to the fish or turtle or sea otter who died eating my dirty cup, I’m truly so sorry. If, by some miracle, you are alive and you’re nestled inside that weird silicon cone, I hope you’re happy. I’ve since replaced the flushed cup and have kept this one afloat for several years now. I don’t really know how much of an environmental impact it’s making but I like to think it’s something. Ultimately that’s all we can do these days is something.
So the moral of the story, I think, is that I’ve lived and learned. And now every time my diva cup falls in the toilet, I pick it up with my hands and that is the real signal of my growth.