I woke up this morning to terrible cramps. I knew it was going to happen. I had known the day was coming near, and it was finally here. It’s the first day and it’s always the worst. It felt like someone stabbing me in my stomach with all their strength. The first thing I did even before rushing to the bathroom was to get my pain-killer. Even though it’s not much of a help, for me at least, I still took it. I went to the bathroom, and took a warm shower. No, it still did not help. I cried to myself, “Why the hell doesn’t it happen just once a year or never?”. It almost felt like I was going to pass out. I wanted to tear out my uterus and laugh at it. I tried meditating. It gave me a sense of relief for a moment but as soon as I was done with it, the pain started laughing at me like it was saying to me, “Hey sis! I’m not done yet”. Damn it!

The worst thing about getting periods, except for the pain itself is that I get period diarrhea. Perfect! The only thing that was left to happen. Now, I felt the constant need to go to the bathroom. The pain was dull, constant and went on for a long time, a really really long time. I was screaming, crying and almost threw up. Every period feels like the most painful ever. I get to the point where I feel like I’d rather get pregnant, just so that the cramps would be over. But no, then I’d have labour pain to look forward to.

With menstrual pain comes the mood swings. Oh, the mood swings! I am either extremely emotional, crying or screaming like I’m insane. Or I lash out at anyone around me. I never want to behave like that, but I do because of the feelings I get then.

Every single month we go through this horrible pain. We survive it and we go through this pain again the next month. Going through this experience should at least qualify us to no judgements of being any lesser or being called the weaker sex. Despite the terrible pain, we still do the work that needs to get done and go through the day like everyone else.

Periods are still considered a taboo subject in this day and age. Most of the girls still hesitate to even say out loud, “I am on my periods”. While purchasing a pad or tampons, girls and even some pharmacists, who are supposed to know better, hide them inside paper wrappings so that no one would know that you are on your periods. During festivals we aren’t allowed to celebrate since we’re bleeding. Why? Is it because mother nature confirmed that we are not pregnant? No. It’s because if we’re on our periods, we are considered impure. And we’ll be cursed if we participate in the festivities. That’s what they say. Who in their right mind would think that any of those things made any sense. For the record, when I got my periods 1 year back during one of the festivals, I celebrated it like everybody else, without telling anyone that I was on that time of the month. Had I informed anyone about it then, I would have been forbidden to celebrate it. Am I cursed for doing so? I guess not. I don’t think that having periods is a sin or something that we should be ashamed of. If we do not talk about it, we wouldn’t be able to discover more about our bodies and what is happening to us.