December 6th, 2013- somehow during a birthday party for my friend, we all were sitting in her room and first period stories began spilling. Around the circle, all of then shared and despite me assuming I was so much more mature than my friends, I was the only one at that party without mine. When the circle got to me, akward silence ensued, and I’m not quite sure how I eventually brushed over it.
Since the first time my mother had ever told me about periods (I was 7, my sister was 11, and she randomly told us in a strict impatient voice that when we got older we would bleed once a month, and it was nice of her to tell us that so we would wake up and think we were dying like she did.) Despite getting the impression, they were bad, a new event happened- one of my sisters friends started, which launched the other mothers (including mine) to talk to their daughters. Unfortunately, I was left out of this. Jealousy took over around age nine, as my sister started at the ripe old age of 12 & ¾. My sister dragged out the emotions constantly so her and my mom could leave any situation whenever and enjoy late night ice cream several nights a week (my parents were in the middle of a rough divorce, and it made me feel extremely unloved when they left me upstairs with my dad.
Thus, I began praying for my period to come for a solid two years, just to get the attention I thought I deserved. Finally, I realize periods weren’t fun, and I stopped the prayers. When I did finally get my period at school, it was December 10th, 5 days after my 13th birthday, and 4 days after that embarrassing sleepover. I came home, waited three hours to work up the courage, and told my mom. She gave me a high five and then found one of my sisters heavy flow pads. Later that night, we whet to Walgreens and in one of my most embarrassing memories, bought pads. I had no supplies because when I had asked my mom for some the week before, she laughed at me and brushed it off to avoid to conversation. I was partially annoyed that I had to change the toilet paper in my underwear after every class, but still happy that I had a story because for the first time in a while, that sleepover had made me feel inadequacy. I also still feel a certain inadequacy from my family because my mom and sister still leave me with my dad because my sister is annoyed with him, and my mom to this day has never actually sat down with me and talked about periods, bras, or sex. Any time I ask my mom to buy me more pads or tampons, she leaves them on the dryer and says in a low voice, “the items you requested are on the dryer”. It’s so stupid I sometimes laugh. My moms solution is to sometimes bring up something like, “woah, look at that white dress. Wouldn’t it suck to get your period while wearing that?!” Loudly in public. So it gets me excited to see more people trying to make periods more of a normal topic, because in my family, that isn’t going to happen.