The physiological and emotional rollercoaster for women who are menstruating is agonizing to witness. Anyone who has lived with a woman who goes through it month after month for years and decades, especially in the case of live-in lovers and spouses, knows this. It’s not just unexpected mood shifts, either. It’s while changing together in the bedroom, perhaps to go out somewhere, and seeing, as the woman in your life removes her panties and sees, as you do, that they are marked in the crotch with a small dark, dried purple-red stain, the momentary surprise that gives way to a groaning resignation that an inconvenient and demanding visitor has returned to dictate the pace and tenor of your lives for a week.

The days leading up to the visit are better known for some than others, with communications delivered through radical shifts in body temperature, bloating, and emotional volatility. In those cases, the anticipation of the visit is often worse than the visit itself. Bathroom occupancy becomes far less predictable in those times, both before and during the visits. Plans that had been made weeks in advance are suddenly scuttled for what, at first, appears to be no reason, but, in fact, once analyzed, becomes entirely reasonable. Everything in life, from clothing to dining to sleeping to sexuality, changes in ways that cannot be predicted even though the same radical behavior seems to occur each month.

But the changes don’t occur in exactly the same ways each month, with the same frequencies, the same problems associated. When the visitor has not been anticipated, sheets freshly washed and put onto the bed the night before suddenly need to be washed again. A seemingly minor inconvenience, yes, and if that were the only incident there would be little about daily life affected. But when it’s discovered, immediately after learning that the sheets need to be washed again, that the supply of feminine hygiene products had run out without being restocked, an early Sunday morning trip to the store becomes a necessity, ruining the lazy calm of waking slowly without getting dressed for hours, picking up a newspaper and lounging on the back porch in the morning sun to read about sports scores or weather reports or ridiculous opinions in the editorial pages, and dreamily drinking coffee while watching a lovely woman unknowingly purring while she sashays half naked toward you with creamer in hand.

There is an odd aftermath even in the days that follow the visitor’s departure, both for the woman who was visited and the partner who lived with the woman being visited. Life could resume just as it had been before the visitor’s arrival almost immediately or it could be several days later before life resembles anything that had existed previously. Even in the case of a radical shift, the partner may be thrown more into a state of bewildered shock than the woman visited simply because he or she hadn’t realized the visitor had left. It can be unnerving to witness the wild appearance of an exceedingly good mood after a week or ten days of varying states of dourness, frustration, impetuousness, and disgust. Even for the woman whose visitor has left who finds herself in an extraordinarily good mood, a partner who responds peculiarly can be confusing.

All of this combines to communicate something that, in various cultural mindsets, seems strange: we have only marginal control over our lives. We create grand narratives to tell an entirely different story of possible realities, but those narratives provide more confusion than clarity because what happens in life so rarely goes according to plan. Usually this happens in very subtle ways and so we barely notice that we’re almost constantly wrong, in ways significant and insignificant, about what will happen next. When things go awry, according to how we had expected things to be, we blame all manner of suspects for ruining the good life.

First, we blame other people, then we blame cultural phenomena, then we blame the economy, then we blame illegal immigrants, then we blame racism, then we blame radical Islam, then we blame our bosses, then we blame … and we blame … and we blame … almost always ignoring the real cause: we are to blame for blaming things that are not to blame even though the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates the way things are over and over again, as often as not in practical matters such as menstruation as it effects not just the woman menstruating, but partners, friends, coworkers, and so on.

To explain discrepancies that arise between expectations and reality, grand, overarching metaphysical explanations for why this or that is happening are developed. Sometimes we develop the narratives ourselves, but more often we adopt metanarratives that have been developed by others, often over generations, centuries, and even millennia (especially in the case of religion). Depending on who we are and how we’ve developed our beliefs and values, we decry patriarchy, corporatism, religion, liberalism, atheism, the loss of traditional values, intolerance, and so on and so forth, but the problem, at root, is always nature even though the problems of nature are exacerbated by metanarratives about “how things are” and the implementation of “solutions” to the problems of nature: economics, politics, religion, education, industrialization, technology, and various ideologies that are believed to be cure-alls in almost the same ways that people once believed that snake oil could cure fevers.

The problem, again, is nature. Menstruation is but one example, something that exists no matter what political ideology is practiced at any given time in any given part of the world. Sexuality and reproduction create enormous difficulties in life. Sperm existing in one body, egg existing in another, emotions and hormones driving the two bodies to react in differing ways that, occasionally, line up symbiotically but often don’t, leading to one or the other person feeling disappointment, frustration, irritation, anger, resentment, worry, fear, or terror. It’s the same with food, drink, shelter, comfort, all of which we need as natural beings, and yet we take that for granted so much that we lose sight of that basic reality as we develop and implement economic and political means to attempt to provide those entirely natural needs.

We’re almost entirely delusional. However, that is not a sickness, as psychologists would have you believe. No, it’s by design, nature’s design. We have to be delusional in order to subvert awareness of our lack of control over our very nature and the absence of any coherent or identifiable meaning to life. If we were to admit that life is most basically about continuation and reproduction for the sake of continuation and reproduction we’d feel, at best, completely alienated from purpose and, thus, filled with a despairing nihilism. Our metaphysics and narratives are the delusions required to continue putting up with what is most of the time unsatisfactory moment-to-moment living. And, if not entirely unsatisfactory, barely enjoyable—and almost never fulfilling.

Religion, philosophy, morality, and psychology all tell stories of how fulfillment or peace or health—or whatever happens less often than everything else we experience in life—represent the best of life. A purpose is served here: to delude ourselves, in different ways, that life is worth living specifically for those pie-in-the-sky reasons, that some day, some how, the good stuff will be realized, and life will finally be fulfilling.

Well, why should that be? Because without those stories we’re left face-to-face with reality: that nature rules and that our nature, in particular, is life and that life, without delusions, sucks. Perhaps that’s the reason civilization developed as it did, through the awareness that natural life sucks and that, maybe, we could escape from nature by manipulating it as much as possible to reshape it in a way that negated the power of nature over human life. But, of course, civilization is nature’s way of drawing humanity away from the awareness of the reality of nature’s dominance over life; civilization is the myth that prevents humanity from doing what may be the only sensible thing to do once aware of the totality of the trap of living: ending life.

It becomes evident, then, that myth, religion, philosophy, morality, ethics, politics, economics, culture, art, and every other form of story that exists are essentially elements of what we, in contemporary culture, would call The Matrix. Any and all illusory matrices are necessary delusions to continue life and it is life itself that is slavery, slavery to the body, to emotion, to thought, to everything that goes along with being alive. The only thing that occurs when a person unplugs from the matrix of delusions is awareness and awareness is the unfiltered experience of living without any delusional defenses against the inconsequential futility of being alive.

All that I have written, too, is a story and, thus, a delusion, a subversion of awareness achieved through the acknowledgment of awareness. Nature has such a profound power over life that it can convince the living to continue living even when it’s become clear that there is no reason to live. We call it the “survival instinct,” but it may be better labeled the “submission instinct.” Only the rarest of us performs the most potent act of agency that exists: the decision to end life. It is remarkable how extraordinary an overlord nature is. We can know, with certainty, that life has no individual meaning beyond which we create and, yet, we continue to obey nature’s dictates. No one living is free; only in death could freedom exist and even then it isn’t likely since humanity made up the concept of freedom in a delusional, futile effort to escape from nature.

We’re trapped. Always have been, always will be.

Or … maybe we’ve never been trapped and we just believe we have been. Maybe we created concepts like freedom to delude ourselves into believing that there was such a thing as not being free. We may have also deluded ourselves into believing that predators are superior to prey, that power is superior to powerlessness. After all, when natural conditions worsen, it is predator species that fall first, not prey species. Global warming and climate change isn’t all that scary if you’re a mouse, but it certainly is if you’re a cat. The cat will go extinct before the mouse does. And humans, if we are indeed atop the food chain, are in the most precarious position of all because we need so much more just to survive—let alone live what we call a “quality life.” Being atop the food chain is the worst place to be because only the very best natural conditions are conducive to surviving and thriving. The simpler the life form, the more adaptable to diverse conditions. Bacteria came before us and will live long after we’re gone.

Perhaps, then, our stories of greatness are delusions to make us believe there is something special about living—even for a moment—atop the food chain. Reverence for consciousness is the ultimate human religion: “we’re special because we have the capacity for awareness in ways that other species do not.” That’s a story we tell ourselves, one that tells us that even the worst human life is better than the best life of any other species. I think, though, that it looks much better being the family dog in a wealthy compound in Connecticut than a human being living in the squalor of a disease- and danger-riddled trash city in urban India. What life could be better than a dog living with an affectionate couple with tremendous access to resources on massive acreage near Jackson Hole, Wyoming? Veterinary care, gourmet foods, loving touch, room to roam with caretakers providing access to luxurious shelter and comfort in a rural mansion? That seems like a good life.

It’s arguable that domesticated breeds of dogs and cats have the best lives in the world, species-wide, than any other creatures including humans. They’re aristocrats. They don’t have to deal with politics, economics, hunting, gathering, providing health care, nothing. They just have to continue existing without pissing on the rug. There are horror stories about pets treated cruelly, but in terms of numbers and percentages, I’m guessing there are more humans abused in domesticated settings than cats or dogs. Furthermore, I would guess there have been more humans abandoned by economics and politics to lives of drudgery, squalor, pain, suffering, misery, torture, and inhumane conditions than domesticated breeds of dogs and cats. If a dog kills a human baby, the dog may be beaten and then put down, but it won’t likely have to spend decades in solitary confinement after going terrifyingly insane. Certain species of animals have clearly succeeded, at this point, in rising above humanity to lives of the greatest comfort and quality, begging the question about whether humanity really is “at the top of the food chain.”

Control, when it comes to humanity, is almost always delusional. The pet owner believes it is in control when, in fact, the “owner” lives in servitude while the animals live without a care. Western society frowns on pet owners who beat or abuse their pets—on this issue, that is neither here nor there. What is obvious in that case is that the owners are not servile. They clearly exercise power in their own favor rather than for the good of the animals instead of themselves. The pet owner that spends all of his or her life savings after working for decades in a job that has sapped almost all of the good of life is clearly sacrificing his or her life to continue the aristocratic life of the animal he or she serves and, perhaps, worships as a deity of sorts. Is there some hope that a benign eternal life after death will be granted by a cat or dog god for having so thoroughly devoted themselves to the well-being of a Golden Retriever or a Scottish Fold?

I don’t know, but from my vantage point almost everything humans do is ridiculous. Stories will be created to justify this act or that, to elevate this behavior or that, to explain this phenomena or that, but the stories only ever make sense under the narrowest of perspectives. The more viewpoints that are directed at any given story, the more absurd the stories seem. And yet, as I wrote earlier, there is little a human can do but commit to a variety of delusions in order to choose one way of living over all other possible ways to live and then, whenever those delusions are contested, defend them at nearly all costs, including violence, in order to maintain the belief that there is a meaning to life, that life is something other than a pointless trap of continuation and reproduction that may be part of some larger design that isn’t knowable to the individual, group, nation, or even an entire global generation. Of course, there may be no larger design that has any meaning or purpose. Either way, the individual human life has no purpose other than to continue living and, at best, reproduce, neither of which are satisfactory on any level without an accompanying narrative manufacturing a meaning that has nothing to do with reality.

This is why “believing in something greater than oneself” is so appealing, even if it is unlikely that anything that might be greater than oneself could really give a shit about whether you believe in it or not, presuming the design has an awareness or the capacity to care; it does not follow that something greater than oneself having a meaning or purpose translates to individual life having a meaning or purpose. Believing in something greater than oneself is just another delusion, something that has no discernible connection with reality.

The more one thinks in these ways, the more a person may be comforted by knowing that death is an absolute eventuality. Putting an end to one’s existence is one way to achieve that end, but allowing nature to snuff oneself in its own time is just as reasonable an option if a person can stand living with uncertainty long enough or, more commonly, believe ceaselessly in delusions until the last breath. It doesn’t likely matter either way, not if one rejects delusions. What is certain is that the trap of life for individuals will eventually end even as the epic continuation of life, through reproduction, carries on for whatever purpose it has or does not have. The important thing is that nature can’t force any individual of a species—or even each species—to live forever … unless those religious ideas about reincarnation and “afterlives” are true.