No Intermission

When it comes to “becoming a woman,” I always wished to be a late bloomer. I’d heard the stories about girls who didn’t get their periods until they were seventeen or older, but they all seemed to be gymnasts and seeing how I’d gotten kicked out of gymnastics when I wasn’t able to do a back handspring, that path seemed unlikely. (The YMCA doesn’t use the words “kicked out” but I’m pretty sure that is exactly what “unable to be promoted to the next class” means.)

Regardless, I still held out hope that somehow my genes and my hormones would come together and decide that after braces, and breakouts, and glasses, I had obviously suffered enough and they could afford to grant me a slight reprieve.

But genes are stubborn and hormones are jerks, so they completely ignored my request. More accurately, they waited just long enough to make me think my request had been granted before ruining my life five months after I turned fourteen.

By that time, I’d naively let myself believe that I would escape the curse for another school year and pushed the thought to the back of my mind. Which is exactly why I found myself sitting in the bathroom, rage-reading Tampax’s instructional pamphlet while my sister shouted up to me that we were going to be late to school.

I was vastly unprepared- both for the physical acrobatics I managed to accomplish that morning, but also for the feelings of utter disappointment over my own body’s betrayal.

Was there seriously no warning? No intermission? No last hurrah for girlhood?

Nope. Just the realization that before that moment I could wear white jeans with reckless abandonment and now, for one week a month, three months out of every year, I would join every other woman in having to act like everything was fine, while in reality I teetered precipitously between screaming and crying, popped ibuprofen like it was candy, and had the distinct feeling that despite what anyone said to the contrary, my uterus was in fact trying to kill me from the inside out. Or at the very least, it was trying to escape.

I should have just learned to do the damn back handspring.