I am standing in a draughty, picturesque church on an icy Saturday in December, wearing four-inch gold glittery heels and silently cursing you as you churn up my insides without a thought for the occasion. Try as I might to focus on my friend, the gleamingly beautiful bride, and stand stoic during the hymns she’s painstakingly chosen for us to chorus, all I can think is: will you please fuck off? And when can I rip off this fascinator, my heels, dress, tights and, while I’m at it, my skin? The need for delicious wedding champagne to dull your grip is getting increasingly urgent.

Yeah, I’m talking to you. My pushy, aggressive, attention-seeking period. The very same period that has no sense of timing or mercy. OK fine, due to the wonder of the pill you do arrive on time, mostly. But you pay no heed to how you transform me from a fast-walking, talking vibrant being into a husk who craves warmth, trousers that have lost their elastic, and copious amounts of fat chippy chips doused in vinegar.

You demand my attention and refuse to be ignored. Women everywhere could learn a lot from your boldness

I thought it high time I addressed you directly, seeing as we’ve known each other intimately for 24 years, which, bar my parents and three long-suffering schoolmates from Manchester, makes you my longest relationship. And yet the dialogue has been mainly one way. You communicating with me loud and proud, while I submit.

I feel you coming, long before you officially arrive. And yes, I’ve got a period disease, endometriosis, which makes you more brutal to me than most women’s menstrual partners. But even when I’ve got you under some form of control via the pill and a heady cocktail of painkillers, you are still a law unto yourself, and therefore me.

You make me feel hot and cold. Blue and bluer. I feel your downward pull so strong it makes my legs go weak and gives gravity a run for its money. You wreak havoc with my bowels, skin, mood and energy levels. The expulsion of all is real, month in, month out.

In a way, if you weren’t so bloody and painful, you would be my kinda force: loud, dramatic, uncompromising, definite and game-changing. If you weren’t so busy making me feel like a crock of useless shit, I’d go drinking with you. Except you’d be like that mate who always takes it a step too far. The one you have to keep your eye on. That pal who sinks more booze than they can handle, requires your undivided attention and sours the mood at even the happiest of gatherings.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘A bit like Margaret in Judy Blume’s (above) seminal Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, I silently and naively thanked you for putting in a first appearance in that loo in House of Fraser.’ Photograph: Kathy Willens/AP

But you must be having a right old laugh at humankind. There you are with your comrades, every month, bold as brass, unapologetically coming to do your disruptive thing to me and my sisters and we don’t breathe a word. You are loud and we are cowed.

Do I tell a soul at my girlfriend’s wedding why I’ve got a face etched in pain, am mainlining booze almost as fast as I’m hoovering up canapés – and why I’m hobbling in my heels long before the band starts? Do I hell.

You demand my attention and refuse to be ignored. Women everywhere could learn a lot from your boldness. But a deeply embedded social code has developed around you which commands women’s silence and shame. I can’t call ours a love-hate relationship. I can’t forgive how you rob me of me each month. What I can stretch to is “respect-hate”.

Five ways to cope with menstrual cramps Read more

The three highlights of our union? Our first meeting and my sheer relief that you showed up and made me feel like a “normal” teenage girl – whatever that is. A bit like Margaret in Judy Blume’s seminal Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, I silently and naively thanked you for putting in an appearance in that nippy loo in Manchester’s House of Fraser. Our second peak revolved around school sport. I must salute you for all the times you got me out of dreaded swimming lessons – whether you were there or not.

But our best moment? When you finally buggered off post-IVF. That’s when I truly respected you for the first time and understood your purpose: our son. For without you, or at least some semblance of you, I wouldn’t have him. At that point you at last made sense to me and my gratitude was enormous. Somehow, in our bloody war, we had done something. Together.

I will still have to work hard to tame you and not let you wear the trousers. I will continue to loathe the equipment you force me to shove into my pants to cope with your presence. I will still damn each day you arrive and the impact you have. And I know I will zealously celebrate the day you swagger off for good – despite the associated emotions of getting older clamouring for my attention.

But we’ve been through a lot. A heck of a lot. And we could have at least another decade or two together. So if you are going to stay loud and proud, then so the hell am I.

• Emma Barnett is a presenter on BBC Two’s Newsnight and the author of Period