My life - Part 22

In June 1989, when I was 11, I got my period. My mother never told me anything about menstruation, and some teacher had mentioned it in class in the year before, but I was only half listening and totally in denial, believing that such things will never happen to me. And then it did. I thought I had hurt myself and was bleeding. I called my father in his office but he was out (this was before hand phones) so I had no choice but to call my mother. She told me, in the most top secret voice that would put any of Her Majesty's agents to shame, to go to a certain cupboard, and hidden right at the back of everything in that cupboard, I would find sanitary pads, and I was to take one and wear it. I had a million questions, but she sounded irritated with the few questions I managed to slip in, so I stopped my questions.

I had no idea how to wear a pad. Upon investigations, I noticed that one side was sticky and the other not. I figured that the sticky part was to be stuck to my skin so that the blood would go straight into the pad. When my mother came home she asked me how was everything and I told her I didn't like wearing the pad because it is damn painful when I take it out. She then said what a stupid child I was, and that I had to wear the pad the other way around. And how in the world was I supposed to know that??

Common sense. I think I lack it, together with a sense of directions. If I am not told exactly what to do, or if I hadn't read about something, I have difficulties figuring it out on my own. Some things are easy to figure out. Like now, when I'm travelling and I'm not sure of how to do something or how to approach a situation, I usually hang around or sit down nearby and just watch how the locals do it. Once I am confident as to how to do it, I will then go and do it. Piece of cake!

But how in the world was I supposed to know how to wear a pad if I didn't even know what menstruation was in the first place?? This was a time before the internet, I certainly couldn't discuss important state secrets with my mother, I had no sisters to discuss this with, and my mother's behavior led me to believe that this was not something one spoke about in public, so I also did not ask any of my friends about this. Because of this, I had a mental block for years that menstruation was a bad thing, one did not mention or discuss these things, especially not in front of boys, one just deals with it quietly by oneself, it is a global open secret. It is only in my thirties that I had the courage to buy my own sanitary pads, I was too embarrassed to do so earlier. With age came the realization that there is nothing, there was never anything, to be ashamed of. 

For the longest time I hated it when I got my period. I got angry with God for not granting me my wish to become a boy all those years ago. I've come a long way. From being uncomfortable with the very subject of menstruation, I am now, for the first time in my life, travelling abroad knowing that I will menstruate whilst abroad, something that I never thought I would ever do in my life. I usually travel on 'safe' days (luckily for me it comes like a clock) or take the pill that delays it. And look at me now! If I can get over this mental block, surely I can get over bigger mental blocks? I can only hope. 

But one thing is for sure. If I ever have a daughter, I will tell her all about menstruation at the earliest she is able to understand, and I will teach her everything so that she is not in shock when it happens to her, and she would know what to do, and how to embrace it, and how to be comfortable with it. She would never wish that she was a boy.