155 fucking under-roos stained....

I am almost 24 hours into my 155th period.

It first happened at the house in Monmouth.

For months I'd been curious about these "periods" I'd learned about in school and on those ads with bright colors and gloomy women made cheerful by chocolate and tampax.

Fact: Periods don't look like Windex. Seriously. It was a shock to me too.


My mom had mentioned that there would be spotting, most likely, before I actually got my period. I figured that all periods were spots. I mean... have you seen a period?


.


it's a spot. just a little dot.

So I was searching for little red dots, even though the ads clearly showed gallons of clear blue liquid. And I searched hard. I even had this marbleizing painting kit, super 90s crafty toy... and I took the red paint and made tiny dots on a pair of underwear, and showed my mom, hoping I'd convince her it was my period. It was the same way I tried to fail my eye exams so I'd have to get glasses. She didn't fall for it.

Then one evening, I peed. I peaked at my undies and started asking myself when I'd pooed and why hadn't I noticed... Then I felt something new and different and I looked bowlward.

A smeer of deep red oozed out of a hole I didn't know existed.

This was it. I knew it in a heartbeat. No longer were maxipads going to be stuck onto my snoopy doll. No... they'd be stuck to snoopy underwear instead. I wasn't a girl. Not yet a woman. If only I'd had Britney to help me understand what I was.

I came running out of the bathroom, full of a joy that would later be filled with a monthly dose of anger and resentment. "DAD! DAD!" I yelled for my dad because he did the shopping and I didn't buy into gendered concerns even at the tender age of 11. "I NEED YOU TO GO OUT AND BUY SOME ALWAYS ULTRA THIN MAXIS WITH WINGS!!" I'd studied the ads well. I knew that they were thin so it wouldn't feel like wearing a diaper and diapers are for babies and old people. I was neither. And even though they were thin they held three times as much clear blue liquid as other leading brands. And the wings would keep them in place so that they wouldn't slide around... the slide might cause leaks. And leaks mean having to tie an unstylish sarong around your waist.

"What? What?" My dad sounded angry not because I was presenting him with lady issues but with a complex demand. He had me write it down. I obliged, eagerly.



Over the next few years I came to realize that these periods? Not so fun. And now, as I sit here, at a job I hate, my insides soaking into a tiny piece of cotton I had to take from a stranger, my back hurting almost as much as my breasts, my stomach wrenching in pain and hunger all at once, my emotions raw and my fuse short -- I look back on that young, stupid 11 year old, 155 periods ago, so blind in that moment of misplaced joy. If she'd known that those smiling happy menstruating ladies, dancing in their pads at the beach were really just models, lying to their fellow woman to make a buck, maybe I wouldn't have pushed my uterus so hard to start expelling itself.


A lot of kids wish for adulthood - the intangible idea of adulthood. I craved the biological version desperately. And I was just as moronic as those kids who traded their toys and make believe for drugs and each others' genitals.


What I wouldn't give to go back to a time when I didn't have to worry about the bloody lining of my uterus ruining a night... or a day... or seven of them... in a row.

155 periods eating my life up
155 fucking under-roos stained
155 periods grossing out others
155 intense abdominal pains
The tampons
The thick pads
The Pamprin and tons of chocolate
The bloating
The cramping, gastrointestinal strife
155 horrid men-stru-al cycles,
Do you even realize you've ruined my life.