Warning, This Post Contains Blood and Gore

Let me just say up front, that this is a post about periods. You have been warned, if you don’t want to read all the gory details, I give you full permission to stop reading now. My feelings won’t be hurt if you do. However, I think that periods need to be talked about in a healthy and open way and here’s my input to the period conversation.

I got my first period when I was eleven. It was fifteen days before my twelfth birthday and it was a snow day. I was lucky. I wasn’t at school or swimming or wearing white shorts in public when I had my first period. My mother had bought be some pads about a year before and taught me how to use them for when my time came.

So when I went to the bathroom, looked down and saw red spots of blood on my panties, I wasn’t entirely freaked out. In fact, I was excited. I was the first of my friends to get my period. I was more grown up than them. I was a woman. I called my mom and told her that I’d gotten my period. When she got home from work that day, she gave me her antique amethyst necklace with fresh water pearls, strung together on a chain sort of like a net or a bunch of grapes in gradually diminishing rows of gems and pearls; and a pair of amethyst earring to go with. She welcomed me to womanhood and it was beautiful, I felt good about myself. I felt proud.

That was the last time for a long time that I had any good feeling associated with having my periods. Right from the start I had really heavy periods. It took me awhile to figure out that I need to use the ultra long overnight maxi pads with wings during the day. I’d bleed through my pants at school, leaving red smears on the classroom chairs. I’d have to go through the day with a sweater or a jacket wrapped around my waist. My cramps were so bad that some days I had to stay home from school because I couldn’t walk without pain and no amount of Midol or Tylenol or ibuprofen seemed to do any good. I’d lay in my bed in bloody misery, curled in the fetal position around a heating pad.

The excessive bleeding and terrible cramps were only the beginning though. I’d frequently get my period twice in one month and it never came according to the twenty-eight day cycle. I tried to keep track of it, but I was always surprised when I’d feel a wetness in my underwear and a sudden pit would form in my stomach letting me know, that, “Surprise! It’s period time!”

I was miserable and embarrassed, too embarrassed to talk to anyone or to ask for help. Everyone else seemed to be handling getting their periods just fine. No body else had to talk about it. No body else left embarrassing red streaks behind everywhere they went. What was wrong with me? Why was my body like this? I must have been doing it wrong?

These were the things I thought. And I now know that most of them are ridiculous. I mean, you can’t be bad at having your period. You can’t do it wrong.  But I was in so much distress that my self esteem was driven way down and I fell to thinking that it was my fault. That my body was punishing me with periods from hell for some mysterious reason.

My parents were of course, concerned. I don’t think I let on quite how bad it was. I’ve always been the kind of kid who tried to take care of everything by myself. It comes from being an older sibling. I had to be the responsible one. I shouldn’t make any more trouble for my parents than necessary. I shouldn’t worry them. I really should have worried them.

My parents finally intervened and took me to the pediatrician when my cramps got to be so painful that I started vomiting and I couldn’t straighten out of the fetal position. The pediatrician wasn’t able to pinpoint anything particularly wrong with me. I didn’t medically have anything wrong with me beyond a hormonal imbalance. So, she prescribed me birth control with the hopes of regulating my cycle and teaching my hormones how they were supposed to behave. She also recommended that I take sodium naproxen for my cramps (which is what’s in Aleve).

And it worked. I was finally able to regulate my cycle so that my period no longer surprised me. The naproxen dulled the agony of my cramps to a manageable ache. I no longer left nearly so many embarrassing messes lying around. I didn’t have to miss any more school because of my period. But it was still just as heavy and still left me feeling tired and sick to my stomach and ashamed. I was still miserable five days out of twenty-eight, but my misery was managed.

But having our periods shouldn’t be about being miserable and cranky and turning into bitches. It should be a time of taking care of ourselves and being in awe of our bodies’ ability to create the uterine lining to sustain life in our wombs for nine months. Our periods should be our power, not our shame. We shouldn’t have to hide the fact that we carry feminine hygiene products in our purses. I mean, what is the point? Nearly every woman between puberty and menopause gets a period every month, why do we try and pretend that we don’t? Why have we created this stigma around periods?

I’ve finally managed to achieve a mostly pain free period through acupuncture and five element Chinese medicine. I still have bad months, but for the most part I’m finally able to function like an ordinary human being every day of the month instead of  turning into a ball of blood, pain, and grouchiness for five days a month. I’ve been learning to embrace the miracle that is menstruation and as a part of coming to terms with the fact that I am a woman who bleeds every month, as a part of learning to accept and love that part of myself without reverting to self-hatred and self pity, I decided to share my period story and I invite those who want to to share those in the comments section.

Thank you for reading.