Rites of Passage are Overrated
don’t know what age it will happen at, I think it’s pretty much different for each girl depending on her group of friends, but at some point, you will find yourself desperate to get your period.
Chances are, a few of your friends will have it. You will wonder when your turn will come, hope it comes soon, think that it can’t be possibly soon enough.
Stop hoping and wishing and praying for your period. What many romanticize as a rite de passage to womanhood is actually a death sentence. No one really explains the implications of the commitment, for the fact that you sign yourself up to be a host for the most unwelcome yet consistent visitor of all time. Shark week is supposed to be once a year, but the love is lost when it becomes a monthly show.
Yes, all your friends will get it. You might find yourself to be the last one and you will feel like you are missing something, missing something grand and life changing and it is just within your reach. Any day. Any day it could happen.
When you do get it, it will be at the wrong time. You will be in math class. Or at the movies. Maybe it will be during your after school volleyball practice. Or you will wake up one night so confused as to what is happening as this shade of red is so very wrong. The shame sets in. You’re not sure. You’re not sure who you can ask or talk to.
You will have to tell your mom. Your mom. And she will look at you differently. Like a lady. She will look at you like you entered a whole new phase of your life as she smiles at you knowingly. You will fail to understand that what you think is this loving look of pride is actually one of empathy. She knows. She knows too well what is coming your way.
Bloating. Cramps. Accidents. Moments of irritability, that regardless of when they happen or why, some male will think he has the right to publically proclaim you are PMS’ing. If you are not completely happy and blowing rays of sunshine out of your ass, the entire male population will immediately chalk it up to you having your monthly visitor, instead of you being a person with emotions and stuff. And that brings up another thing – your vocabulary will expand with a variety of colorful phrases to describe menstruation. On the rag. Crimson Tide. Aunt Flow. Shark Week. They don’t improve over time, trust me.
It becomes a rollercoaster. You yearned for it. You got it. Life is complete. You learn to live with it. You deal. You want it to go away. You can’t wait for it to come. You pray for it to come and curse it when it’s late. You judge choices, poor or good, based on its arrival.
I know right now it’s a big deal. Perhaps the biggest deal. But if you don’t fit in for a bit, enjoy that freedom while you have it.
Wear your white pants proudly and without fear while you can, little one, before womanhood and with it, labor day fashion rules, set in.
