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I was 14 and had just started high school. Most of my friends had already gotten their period but I guess I was lucky and was a late bloomer. I got it in the middle of the school day and lucky me, I was wearing white shorts that day :(
All I remember is freaking out in the school bathroom that I ruined my favorite shorts and being relieved that my period finally came!
My first period happened a week after my 11th birthday. My mom was always trying to avoid topics like periods and sex because I wasn't "old enough." A little too overprotective. She really should have opened up, because I had no idea what to expect and I wasn't ready. It was a school night and I was getting ready for bed. I went to the restroom and I noticed brown/red-ish residue on my underwear. I panicked! I knew what it was because a friend of mine had mentioned what a period was like back in the 4th grade, but I didn't know what to do next. I came out of the restroom with a worried face and let my mom know. My sister and aunt happened to be around and they overheard. I got the "awe, you're a woman now!" I started crying because I didn't quite feel ready for that part of my life.
My mom taught me how to put a pad on that night, and I hated every bit of it. I had to wear a big puffy pad?! Ugh, I was not a fan at all. I felt weird walking in it. My mom let me skip school the next day because I certainly was not in the mood to face reality with my period.
Coming back to school felt weird. It sounds so silly, but I felt like a different person. The most embarrassing moment came by at lunchtime. I felt my period seep into the back of my pants. I rushed to the bathroom- I missed the entire pad! I remember wondering if I had a broken vagina!. One of my classmates, James, asked what that stain in the back of my pants was. I said I had sat on ketchup or something. Years later in freshman year, he admitted to knowing that stain on my pants was, in fact, my period. He said he had an older sister, and he had seen that happen to her. Sheesh, talk about an embarrassing first period.
Scene: it is two days before my thirteenth birthday, and I am wearing a strappy little black and white dress that— according to my grandma— makes me look like Audrey Hepburn. In the next room, my family and a bunch of old people I don’t really know are chewing on overcooked chicken swimming in some kind of lemon sauce. This party is for me, but it doesn’t really feel like it. Most of the guests are at least five times my age.
Tomorrow is my Bat Mitzvah. I’ve been preparing for a whole year, so I must be ready, but knowing that all these strangers showed up to watch me read in a foreign language from a sacred scroll is a little intimidating. My stomach is doing flips.
I excuse myself to the bathroom, imagining all the ways that tomorrow might be a colossal disaster. When I pull down my underwear, there is a reddish-brown smear along the crotch. I stare, first dumbfounded, then amazed, then fucking TRIUMPHANT, and i march back out into the dining room with a cat-ate-the-canary smile, and inform my mother that I need to borrow her purse, because I just became a motherfucking WOMAN.
