Kasey R • Ohio • 29
It’s the summer before 8th grade, I’m 13 years old and I’m sitting outside on a folding lawn chair in the middle of our driveway. My mom was gardening nearby. I vividly remember it was afternoon and I was still wearing my pajamas from the night before, so it had to still be summer break. It was perfect weather to sit outside and read, or so I thought. I truly wanted to try and focus on the summer reading assignment and thought that having my productive mom pulling weeds in the background, this would motivate me to start the book*. I told myself “this summer will be different, I will finish this book on time, I won’t avoid any reading assignments, I will remember the details this book!”, and boy I tell you, I can guarantee I will never, ever forget this book. This book, is forever linked to the day I got my first period. This book is also considered one of the most important books of all time and is linked to one of the most horrific and evil events in the history of humankind. This book, that I was reading the day I got my first period, was The Diary of Anne Frank.
Thus began my first existential crisis, a 13 year old girl, sitting in the driveway, reading the diary of another 13 year old girl who wasn’t worried about summer reading assignments or getting her period or popularity going into middle school. ANNE FRANK WAS FIGHTING TO SURVIVE THE HOLOCAUST! Sudden confusion comes over me as I started to feel the same feeling as if I were slowly peeing my pants, while knowing full well that I was not and could not be currently peeing my pants. It all just felt... different than I expected. Instinctively or unhygienicly, I shoved my hand down my underwear... to do who the fuck knows what?...visually check that I was peeing my pants?... any-who, when I saw the blood on my hand and legs and underwear and pajamas and lawn chair and EVERYWHERE my confusion instantly turned to shock, shame, and terror. Tampons = terrifying, tampon ‘insertion’ directions = terrifying, convinced everyone somehow knows = terrifying, middle school co-ed gym swim class = terrifying, FERTILITY = terrifying, sex ed on periods vs living the reality of periods = terrifying.
It should’ve been easy for me to plainly tell my mom I needed her to buy pads because she only had tampons in our house (OB BRAND, NO APPLICATOR KIND! wtf mom) and I didn’t feel ready to try using tampons. But, oh no, instead I tried to tell her what I needed by using the literal game of charades. Then I told her in the most vague way I could by saying that I needed her to “get the outside body cotton and not the inside body cotton”, my sister eventually yelled out loud and they both had a good chuckle at my newly bloomed ‘womanhood’.
Sixteen years later and my ‘lady time’, as I like to call it, still feels like a roller coaster ride from time to time. I still wonder if Anne Frank was also 13 when she got her first period. Who did she turn to when it happened, would she have told Margot? Lastly, my sincere apologies to Anne for the timing of getting my period for the first time and the permanent association I have towards reading your diary entries and the day I became a ‘woman’. <3
