My First Time

Today’s story should come with a trigger warning, there.

I was in boarding school, 13 years old, when I got my first period. It was a crimson red smear on my white with purple flowers panty, I loved that panty. It all started with a draft like breeze from my head to my little toes, followed by a cold sweat. The cramps followed, which obviously, in my young mind meant, a stomachache. That’s when I left class for the washrooms and come upon womanhood. Luckily (depending on who you ask), I had had a run in with womanhood a year before, and knew how to handle myself, well, somewhat. I also had help from a young female dorm matron who showed me everything I'd need to know.

The previous year in a different school, a day school, (why I left is a tale for another day) a girl got her period. This is not a good story, in fact, it is meant to enrage you. Honestly, my parents had never talked to me on the topic despite full knowledge that I was now a teenager, even as my acne made its grand entrance that year. I did resent this about my mother especially, but then realized she didn't know better. I don’t know about your country, but in mine, commercials showed, and still show, blue ink spilled on a pad. As a child, with my mom stashing her pads in unseen corners of her bedroom, I barely knew how one actually looked like, or even that she got them. At school, in sex ed class, we barely talked about sexuality and things that had actual immediacy. I mean yes, HIV/AIDS was a pandemic at the time, but so was the possibility of budding little women having their first periods. They did however make every girl in our class buy a pack, wrap it in newspaper (well, the shops wrapped it for you as if to avoid embarrassing you) and keep it hidden in our lockers, like a dirty little secret. We never even got to open them until we needed them.

Let’s call her Joan. When Joan got her period, she stained her uniform. She could not tell she was having her period, the usual tells were unfamiliar to her. The first person who noticed her stained dress was from our year, a girl. Having been ingrained in her the art of period shaming, instead of helping her out, she blatantly shouted mid laughter, ‘look guys, Joan is bleeding!’ all the while pointing at the stain. You have to understand, we had all been taught directly or indirectly, that having your period was shameful, something you should hide from others. So, when she did it, the other kids joined in, boys and girls, laughing and shouting her name. I know you expect that I was better, an anomaly in this childish hysteria, well, you’re wrong. I stood there petrified, scared to even get close to her. I kept imagining that I was probably next now that girls in my year were catching it. If I got too close, it’d be me in her shoes, so I opted out, ‘no thanks, empathy’.

It was only after she was sobbing and shaking from embarrassment that some older girls come and covered her up and led her to a private area. She spent the rest of the day with a sweater covering her stained dress. The school did not send her home. Later, we came to the realization that it had indeed spread, a couple of other girls in our class had already had their first period. This unfolded in an emergency girls’ meeting the next day, called by the school’s female teachers, which was meant to keep us ‘alert’. And although they addressed the shaming, nothing much as done to help the victim or deter such behavior in the near future, and only the girls got an earful.

When I get my period, I remembered Joan’s first and my heart sunk. I had all these questions that have only grown with time. How is she experiencing her period? Does she still remember how embarrassing her first time was? Does she like her sexuality given its ‘limitations’? Does she resent those who mocked and shamed her more than those who stood by shocked and helpless, maybe even selfishly? If she has kids, has she taught them to embrace every aspect of their sexuality? Has she passed on trauma and ignorance based on how she was raised? Has she taken a path of educating and nurturing? Or has she forgotten?

I know I haven’t.