The day started with my pulsing thighs taking over my morning alarm’s duty. Fighting the grogginess and the escalating pain, I braced myself to greet the familiar course of events: stumble to the washroom, hoping this isn’t the day; fight the nausea to swallow a pill and beg my uterus to please cooperate.
I was far from home in a “personality development” camp, replete with forest walks, team-building activities, cleaning chores and mini trips. I knew loose cotton pyjamas would replace tight jeans around my waist, that I wouldn’t have the luxury of spending an eternity in the common washroom, gathering the courage to rise from the toilet seat and that I wouldn’t be able to practise my “scream therapy,” which worked oddly well. I think back to that rainy day at camp: popping two pills instead of one and squirming on the bed wrapped in a towel still damp from the shower, surrounded by concerned roommates trying to offer me snacks and help me up.
A male official walked up to our mentor and told her, “She seems upset since morning. Please ask her what’s wrong”, making no eye contact with me even though I was sitting right in front of him, still recovering from the pain and shame. When the mentor turned to me and said: “We all wish to see a happy and energetic version of you”, I was surprised at the irony. I wanted to say that that is exactly what I wanted, too. And that’s how my coming-of-age story became one of surrender and being humbled by my own body.
By then, I had enough evidence to believe that my body was an obstacle I had to overcome to become productive: my high school class teacher’s raised eyebrows at the repetitive leave reasons in the school diary and a close family member’s joke that a comedic character constantly resting in a movie resembled me. When I once said that my ambition was to become an astronaut, I was mockingly asked by a girl my age in the school bus whether I would go home once a month from space when I got my period. As much as it angered and dumbfounded me, I also internalised the idea that I had to ignore my body’s calls if I wanted to chase my dreams.
But before periods became painful, I watched my neighbour get celebrated when she got her first period by her family with sweets, clothes and jewellery. It was, to me, an invitation I couldn’t wait to receive into the wondrous world of womanhood. My naive eagerness was similar to Margaret Simon’s from Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, in which she prays,“Gretchen, my friend, got her period. I’m so jealous, God. I hate myself for being so jealous, but I am.”
My friends spoke of the secret signals they would give their teachers if they needed to visit the washroom to change. I itched to be let into that circle of secret signals, covert exchanges and code names, only to learn that what followed the “surprise” day would be a journey of monthly sick leaves, emptying and refilling of hot-water bags, gagging and cursing my own body. I also came to understand one rule: pain was tolerable only when it inconvenienced no one.
At 12, someone I looked up to proclaimed that it was lame to sit at home and do nothing at all in the name of “periods”. At 17, I watched my friend being praised by her aunt for being the life of a gathering—serving, socialising and even keeping up through a dance performance, all despite being on her period. That day, I set the perfect definition for my personal “coming-of-age” moment: thriving through the pain and making it look effortless.