Okay, I don’t really know what to write her, only that I owe everything to everyone who spoke about their periods on here. See, here’s my story. I’m not usually the honest type - quite shy actually, but hey ho, I owe you a lot.
Yesterday, I went to the toilet after school, I noticed the brown stuff and immediately knew it was my period - weird, how quickly I figured it out - and I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there shaking for, like, ten minutes. I heard my dad come up the stairs, and I realized I had been a while. So I shoved by brain into work mode. I remembered seeing my mum’s box of tampons in the cupboard under the sink, so that was where I looked. I didn’t really like the idea of tampons, so I looked deeper. Eventually, I found some of those Always Towel things, and I knew that they were perfect.
But I still had some ruined pants and no idea what to do otherwise. How do you tell your mum? Do you tell your mum? What am I going to do now? Basically, your head goes ‘Ahhhh! What is this dark magic?’. I was so traumatized, I was crying when I woke the next day. There was some blood on the bed sheet, so I switched the sheet and hid it. My mum was calling me because I was taking FOREVER. She noticed my red eyes and asked if I were okay. I said I had stomach ache, because truly I had, but it wasn’t as bad as some that I read about on here, so I feel quite lucky now.
She called my Grandma and said I could have the day off school. I was wearing a pad, over two pairs of pants and two pairs of leggings. Yes, I am very paranoid. And rightfully, because even so, some blood got through the five layers of protection onto my poor Gran’s couch.
When I got home, I changed my pad for a tampon, and the bleeding stopped. For, like, five minutes. It soon started up again, weirdly enough, it started again when I sneezed, ha ha. Anyway, by seven o clock I had to change my tampon back for a pad. Then my mum went to the gym. No big deal at the time.
Twenty minutes later, I am stressing so much that I type I am having my first period into google. This tumblr came up and… My mood began to lift. There are a lot of people here who know exactly what I am going through. I went through pages 1 to 6, all of them. It gave me enough courage to begin to anticipate my mum coming home. When she came home, I waited for here to come upstairs. I rushed out to tell her, and, just as I thought words had began to evaporate from my shy mind, “I think I started my period”. Those six words that made me cry so hard I nearly died. My mum was like “Oh, it’s okay. Don’t cry. It’s natural, you’ll be fine” which is so nice of her. When I’d calmed down, it was easier, because she went through where everything is, and thanks to this site I know a lot more about my periods.
Five minutes ago, I had the most scary moment of my life. Not the period, but the telling. It is scary as anything. But when they say “You can tell us anything”, they mean it.
Is it sad, that that is one of the most inspirational stories I think I’ve ever read or written in my entire life?