The first time I got my period, I was ten or eleven, and it was the start of summer. All I had wanted to do was use the bathroom and go back to biking outside, but instead I caught sight of a little patch of blood on my underwear for the first time. I stared. I rationalized.
Yes, it could be internal bleeding or cancer. Or, maybe I ate or drank something red in the past few hours — no, nothing I can think of. Yes, it must be disease and impending death.Yes, my family would be sad. Yes, I might die young and have to spend time in a hospital. That would not go well — I hate going to the bathroom in public, and the hospital bathrooms were basically public bathrooms. What an embarrassing way to go. I sighed, oddly calm about fatal malfunctions my body was experiencing.
My brain ping-ponged around as I remained sitting and contemplating the dried blood, and suddenly recalled the first sex-ed class I had ever taken from just a couple months ago at the end of fifth grade. I was relieved and immediately petrified.
“Anne!” I squeaked as casually as I could.
My mom came to the door. I folded up some toilet paper and tucked it into my underwear, remembering from the class that there were things such as pads and tampons. I opened the door and let her in.
“I think I got… I got my period,” I cackled softly. I was smiling from ear to ear in the name of hysteria.
My mom nodded, and her face went from concerned to gravely serious. “That’s fine. All girls get this as they grow older. This is what you have to do.”
She opened a cabinet drawer and pulled out a pad, and then squatted on the toilet.
“While you’re sitting, you can open this up,” she said, miming opening it up. “Then you can just put it on your underwear.”
She handed me the pad and walked out of the bathroom.
The whole thing was very unceremonious, considering that just a minute ago I had been considering what my last words should be when I died of a combination of internal bleeding and constipation. She closed the door behind her, leaving me with my new plastic wrapped friend.
I stared at the plastic wrapped pad in my hands, bright and orange and covered with carefully sketched color swirls. I didn’t feel necessary older, or very womanly, or anything like that. Although the summer was just beginning, I felt as though something else were coming to an end.
“Anne,” I yelled from my seat on the toilet. “What about tampons?”
“You’re too young,” my mom called back.
“What if I want to swim?”
“Then don’t swim.”
I unwrapped the pad and stuck it on my underwear. I pulled my shorts up, and shuffled my feet — I could hear it crinkle, and it felt stiff and strange.
Since that summer day, I’ve had periods that lasted more than two weeks. I’ve leaked in class, in the car, and on the soccer field. I’ve had cramps so debilitating that I’ve collapsed to my knees while trying to walk in school hallways, praying that no one would come by and see me crying. I’ve skipped school and events, just so I could stay home to wear a hot towel around my waist.
But that day, those future ailments were veiled by naive expectations. I wish I could go back, sometimes, and pat little Me on the back as she shuffled uncomfortably back outside and settled onto the bike seat, and gently say, “It’s about to get much, much worse.”
Writer To Writer Literary Journal 