Alyssa C. • Indiana • 24
I was raised super conservative and homeschooled so I didn't get much of a "talk" from my parents except my mom lit a match and said, "if you have sex before you're married, it's like this match. I can never re-light it again." and that was the end of it. She forgot to tell me about periods entirely. But don't worry, I had friends and the internet for that! My best friend for the majority of elementary and middle school had puberty knock on her door probably not long after getting out of a stroller (no shame here, just the fact of all of our wonderfully different bodies.) I'm pretty sure she out-did Pamela Anderson in the chest region in the fourth grade. All of this is wonderful except the fact that she was sure to remind me every chance she got that she was better/more special/more of a woman than me because of these things. (Thank goodness that's not true because at 24, most slightly overweight tween boys still have bigger boobs than me.)
For nearly a year before I actually got my period, I pretended that I had. You know, for street cred and all. On the day when my period *actually* came, I was so excited that I wrote the date on the window sill of my bedroom in a marker. I wonder if my parents ever painted over that when they sold the house after I went to college. Well, if not, maybe the new resident will read this and realize what the boldly stamped "October 19, 2006" on the first hallway bedroom to the right really means.
