She was fifteen when she got her period. She was too ashamed to tell her mother. Because she was embarrassed to ask for help or even tampons, she would stuff rags up her vagina and duct tape her panties over her private area and wear two pairs of leggings and dark jeans to conceal the blood.
She would sweat uncontrollable and OH the smell. She would seal her vagina shut so no one could smell her womanhood. She thought she was dying when she first saw discharge.
But, the worst was the noise: the crinkling of the tape like the sound of a child’s diaper.
She became obsessed with blood. It was menstrual evidence that left her feeling dirty and ashamed. She changed her super-flow tampon every thirty minutes. For nine days, she would endure the flood. And, for twenty-one days, She would anxiously await.
Last year, after losing twenty pounds to fit into her debutante dress, her period became non-existent. She was dry for five months. Those 153 days were spent worrying over potential menstrual mishaps.
She was put on birth control for regularity in her life. Her breasts grew back, her hips widened and she bled for three months straight. She was becoming a woman again.
She became so disgusted and self conscious with her 36D breasts, size 12 hips and incessant sanguine discharge, She stopped birth control. Ninety-two days of bleeding ended.
She became apprehensive and suspicious of her still changing body and absent period. That is when she found herself pregnant in a Mississippi Wal-mart bathroom.
Because she lived in Mississippi, a state that does not allow abortions, She went to Memphis, TN. She was too scared to call her mother and so scared she went to the first clinic she found. The building looked like a haunted house. She was told to sit in an attic to wait her turn. She did not know if it was the crack head nurse, the alcohol form the night before or the protesters screaming at her about the murder she was about to commit that she felt sick to her stomach and ran for the door. A few days later she returned to Memphis to a welfare hospital. She waited four hours to have her uterine lining and fertilized egg scooped out of her like a carved pumpkin. The xanax the nurses gave her before did nothing to placate the guilt. She sweated shame. She awoke in a room with six other women. They were given sprite and a prescription to help “induce labor”. She was led back into the main reception room and fell into her boyfriend’s arms. She was then told to expect extreme discomfort and bleeding.
After her abortion, the bleeding returned. Only this time it was not celebrating her womanhood. It was ending it. Her body cried out the physical and emotional pain, shed the social guilt and shame, and bled her relief. She had to wear diapers for fourteen days. You could hear the same crinkle as before when her period first began.
She went back to the doctor. She explained her abusive relationship with periods. Blood was the epitome of her body’s embarrassment. She wanted a normal life. A normal sex life. PERIOD. The doctor gave her new birth control to end her bleeding. But two weeks later when she came, the blood came too.
Only during sex did she bleed. She felt like an animal, a BITCH IN HEAT that had to put newspaper down in fear of an accident. Her own cunt was rejecting her.
The next time she got her period, she bled for ten days straight. 12-15 milligrams of blood every 2-4 hours. She would wake up covered in her own blood. The fatigue and pain were unbearable. Every time she moved, she would bleed. The female hysteria set in.
The anxiety of being soiled again unnerved her more than the pain of her uterine lining disintegrating, her iron count depleting and her ovaries gnawing out of her pelvis.
She thinks her body is punishing her for not having a baby like she was suppose to. On January 16, 2010, She should have gone into labor. She would be turning twenty-three years old a few weeks later.
Because talking about your vagina is improper, blood on white cotton is not respectable and abortions are taboo, her coming to terms with her womanhood in the South has been full of isolation and blood lost.
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