For medical reasons, my mom hadn't really had periods at all for many years, so I couldn't even look to her menstrual cycle for clues. I didn't really have a mom to confide in about anything, let alone my periods. Throughout my teen years I was on my own, having left home at 12 to live with my grandmother. I figured there must be something wrong with me that made me such a wimp, but I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I would have enjoyed doing sports, but those totally embarrassing locker room experiences made me afraid to even try out. As if gym class wasn't hard enough, I routinely doubled-over in pain, sitting on the sidelines when actually, I would have preferred to be playing. It always seemed unfair to me that this supposedly natural process that every woman goes through hit me so hard that I had trouble functioning. I was really busy at school and involved in a lot of activities, all of which I was very passionate about. I usually bled heavily for seven days each month, and that would make me very fatigued and run down. And they definitely didn't sleep on towels or fear spending the night at a friend's house, where they might bleed all over the couch. Sure, lots of my friends complained about their periods, but they didn't miss school or have to stay in bed all day. I figured I must be weak if they bothered me so much. Usually I didn't let stuff like that get to me, but I lived in a constant state of embarrassment over how hard my periods were. But when it was discovered that I didn't use tampons, a few of the more popular girls in my grade told me I was "gross" for using pads, which they equated with wearing diapers. In the locker room, especially throughout high school gym class, we'd often ask one another for some kind of menstrual product. Later I would learn the reason or that, but as a teenager I was just frustrated because I was teased for using pads. I tried to use tampons, but no matter what brand or size I tried, they were just too painful. Over the next few years, the timing of my periods became fairly regular, but they were always accompanied by painful diarrhea and nausea that often struck me in the middle of the night, and bleeding so heavy that I needed to wear several overnight pads at once. I hoped that it was only so miserable because it was my very first period, and that as I got older and they became more regular, they would get better. I spent the entire day in the bathroom bleeding and bent over with terrible cramps and feeling sick to my stomach. My first period came on Thanksgiving when I was 12 years old.
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