menstruation

I really feel like an adult lately. Which is weird, I have never thought of myself as an adult and it has little to do with the fact that I just turned 20. I feel as though life is really, unequivocally happening to me, right now without my consent and that is what being an adult is all about, no? You were right when you were four years old and decided you didn’t want to grow up, because Adult Life is all about the details. The mind-numbing details of dealing with the day-to-day until your mind finally derails, maybe in a nursing home somewhere, or if you’re like me, at 3 10 pm on the bus ride home from class, unable to stop crying unable to explain why you are crying. Those dreadful details of communication and bills and being thousands of miles from your family and winter days that you didn’t sign up for.

This is an article I published in my school paper November 11, 2005:

Women bleed. Let’s reiterate that. Women naturally shed their lifeblood every 28 days or so. If this is such a natural, recurring thing, why do we as Americans find it so grotesque? Back in the day, American women were hidden away for one week each month. The general understanding was that menses was unclean. By the time people came to their senses, it was too late. Today, we know that menstruating women can take baths and enjoy sports. They can go out in public. They don’t have to be ashamed.

So why, then, do companies such as Tampax, Kotex, or Stayfree make such a huge profit off of women’s desire to be hide their menses? It’s a proven fact; commercial tampons and pads are not healthy. These products can cause Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS), a potentially life-threatening illness. However, there is a reason these products cause TSS. Didn’t you ever wonder how they got the things so white, and so absorbent? It’s simple: companies use unhealthy synthetics, such as the commonly-used rayon, to soak up as much as possible. Then they bleach it, furthering the harm on the body.

Last weekend I went to my red party!

It was fun because I got to spend time with my friends/Mom.

I went to "Cafe Crape" and after I went to borders, starbucks and the beach! I went in the water and it was 11 at night and I got a lot of candy at my party!

When I think of my puberty years, I think of them being anything but ‘magical.’ I would like to have been invited into womanhood with a ‘period party,’ like I’ve heard some mothers throwing…I would like to have known everything there is to know about what was going on with my body…I would like to have been educated by something other than a Disney-produced pre-teen girls guide to living as a lady VHS. I would like to have discussed it more, instead of mysteriously disappearing from the classroom with all of my girl classmates. Buuut, I wasn’t. Instead, my puberty years, (probably like some of yours,) were littered with embarassing leaks, some awkward times with a tampon applicator and some ruined pairs of jeans.

I don't remember developing breasts, but I do remember fighting the bra my mother wanted to buy me. Why on earth did I want to wear that thing, with too many straps that I was constantly adjusting? Puberty for me was more linked to that *other* development in female sexuality.

Sixth grade, after school, late in the year when the weather was starting to warm up in Florida, I went to the bathroom, pulled down my jeans, and immediately started to squeal for my mother. How had this happened! Nothing hurt, nothing was wrong, but it had to be! My mother leaned in on the door frame, an inscrutable look on her face, until suddenly she burst out laughing. "Clean up, we'll go get some pads." PERIOD?! Oh. Well, I should have known that, right, but it took me completely by surprise.