Honestly, being on my monthly period is definitely not what I look up to each month. To prove this, this is a story of an experience I recorded in my journal while at bible camp in October. It was the day before the last day of camp and at morning worship, I had these really bad pains (I thought I had to pee) and I went to the bathroom, but the pains didn’t go away. So my day continued on, and after dinner, the person in charge told us the we were going to play a game in the forest.
For some reason I just said to myself, “hmm, looks like I’ve got my period. ” and went straight to the game. I must of thought that it wasn’t happening or it was something else. So I played the game, and my team won , so I was in a good mood. But I had to go to the bathroom again. I get to the bathroom and the spot was a little bigger. I was sitting in the stall and in the next stall I heard someone opening a pad. I had never heard that noise ever, but by the grace of God somehow I knew it was a pad.
Somehow I mustered up the courage to ask this girl if I could have a pad because I had started my period, and she was just like “Yeah, sure. If you need more, come find me. ” I said thank you, and went to put it on. It must have been a maxi pad, it was so thick. By this time, it was time for a campfire, so I uncomfortably sat through campfire masking my pain. This had to be the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me this month. There are times when I try not to even think about it with hopes that my body somehow forgets to flood me with reminders that I am fertile.
I remember when I first got mine and there was kind of this thing where I thought it was cool. If I could go back, I’d tell myself it wasn’t cool and to put it back as long as I could. As time went on, I tried dealing with the pain and hormonal shifts in my body by not just curling in a ball on my bed, but by doing active things to ease the pain. The activities I do during the during of my period is play basketball, which helps me take out my anger and the movement of my body really relaxes me.
Regarding my mood, I am usually a pretty calm person, but every month, I just get so irritated over the dumbest crap; I can’t even stand being around people a lot of the time. Plus, I get the cramps from hell, which doesn’t help my mood any. And man, I get the weirdest cravings, especially for anything that’s sweet or sour: mint chocolate chip ice cream, lemonade, white chocolate etc. I’ve never been much of a crier, and I don’t tend to get emotional when I’m PMSing, but .
For a space of about two hours the day before I start literally anything will bother me. Also, this is more what PMS (as in Pre-Menstrual) feels like. I was expecting more of what it actually feels like to be on it. Like “someone is ripping apart one of my organs from the inside” or “my reproductive system is a war zone and I’m supposed to shove a foreign object up there? These are some of the thoughts I get when on my period. Sometimes, my period is so embarrassing at times, so I try to hide it. I was never the type to tell everyone I’m on my period.
