I remember when my friend got her first period better than when I got mine. I can’t really remember mine. My period came and went without me ever talking to anyone, other than my friends who were shocked and amazed at how early I got it.

My mother passed by in the kitchen one day, two years after I had gotten it, and she said, “Have you came across your period yet?”

“Yes,” I told her and that was that.

The big period talk was over. She had never talked to me about it before then, so I didn’t want to talk about it now. Somehow I had known what to do and what my period was all about.

One night my father came into my room and said, “So you’re a woman now, sweetie.” My eyes squinted my evil squint and I cringed and squirmed under that word: “WOMAN”. I felt like he was creeping into something he shouldn’t. Somehow that meant something that I really didn’t want to be.

My friend got her period at school in grade five. She thought she was dying, in the bathroom, blood running down her leg, soaking her underpants. She started crying and screaming. Someone ran to get a teacher and the teacher came in and took her to the nurse’s office. I thought, “It’s true, maybe she is gonna die”.

You see, no one had ever told her about bleeding, especially from there. It was a shock and a bit of a wake-up call for the teachers to start talking to us about menstruation.

Poor Tina, bloody, screaming Tina. I’m sure at that moment the joy of becoming a woman didn’t seem all it was hyped up to be.

Anonymous