There are a lot of things I could blame Catholic School for not preparing me for, but at least sexual maturation wasn’t one of them. In fifth grade, we were bussed to the Robert Crown Health Center, which looked only vaguely like the sort of sterile building you bus a bunch of preteens to before gassing them and harvesting their organs. Once inside, we were separated. Boys in the far left room, girls on the right. The girl’s room was wall-to-wall a shade of pink that can only be likened to day one of a fetal pig dissection. It was barren of furniture, and carpeted in the same shade of pink. We were instructed to sit on tiered outcroppings of the wall, sort of the world’s saddest auditorium. The lights dimmed and a screen came down.

            The compulsory entertainment followed a young girl with impeccable blonde hair and perfectly glossed lips. We watched as she considered herself in the mirror, thought about all the changes she had been noticing in herself. The swell of hips and suggestion of breasts earned her new clothes, namely a bra. She began to notice boys more, and needed underarm deodorant. Then one day, she was struck with a mild tummy ache and discovered a spot of blood in her panties. Her mother congratulated her on becoming a woman, and with her, we learned the joys of sanitary napkins and tampon insertion. I had gotten the rundown from my older sister a couple of years ago, but the nerd in me appreciated the science of it. All the diagrams and animations made it clear that my period would be no big deal. And what luck, with this tiny inconvenience, my collection of odd angles and concave curves would be replaced by the voluptuous contours worthy of a Baby Phat model. I knew exactly what to expect.

            A few years later, at 13, I was deeply concerned that I wouldn’t be able to call my friend David to wish him a happy birthday. I knew I would probably miss school the next day from what felt like an ungodly case of diarrhea brewing in my gut. Jesus Christ, my abdomen hurt. Did I eat something bad? I avoided any meat from the Chinese place near school. I rolled over the loveseat, squirming in pain. Lying on my side helped, but not for very long. I ended up propping my feet on the wall and dangling upside-down off the edge before feeling any relief.

            My mom appeared in the doorway of the living room.

            “What are you doing? Get down,” she insisted.

            “I don’t feel good. My stomach hurts really bad. This is the only thing that helps.”

            She dropped her voice slightly.

            “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

            I shook my head morosely. I didn’t, actually.

            “Well, have some mint tea before you go to bed. Maybe take some Pepto Bismol.”

            As it turned out, it wasn’t gastrointestinal distress. Sure enough, I found the Spot in my underwear. My stomach sank. I wasn’t sad about not being a kid anymore, or even scared of what would happen. I knew the deal. I saw the diagrams, knew the medical terminology. But there was this nagging thought, this glimmer at the edge of my consciousness at the time, that I was suddenly burdened with a responsibility. The fact that I could, biologically, technically, hypothetically get pregnant and change my entire life left me reeling. This weight was mine to bear. It would lurk in the corner of my mind for years to come, and weigh heavily on me as I considered my choices involving the opposite sex. It’s a lot to dawn on you when you’re thirteen, but I was raised to be introspective and penitent at all times. Thanks, Catholic school.

            After retrieving a giant sanitary pad from the hall closet, I waddled over to my mom’s room and perched gingerly on her bed.

            “Hey, mom?”

            “Hmmm,” she glanced slightly over her crossword. I toed the sandal on the floor by her bed, letting it drop with an audible thud.

            “I got my period.”

            She considered me fully. For a second, her brows drew together in concern.

            “Okay, well do you know where the stuff is? In the closet?”

            I nodded.

            “Okay, well, like I told your sister. You know where they are, so you take them when you need them. Do you hurt?”

            I nodded again.

            “Okay, well take an Advil.”

            That was it. My mom wasn’t one for long-winded speeches (unless it was 7AM and she was caffeinated and recapping an Amy Tan novel in full) or tired metaphors. To this day, I’m grateful to her for not mentioning flowers or congratulating when I told her. We’re a family of people who handle it.

            No amount of moxie could have prepared me for the following morning. I rolled out of bed feeling worse than ever. It hadn’t been a night of tossing and turning; I was out. But I woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept at all.

            The oversized pad had overpowered my underwear and managed to wrangle itself into a twist. I ducked out of my lower bunk bed—I shared the room with my sister. To my horror, a wide spot of blood stained my sheet. I realized a sickening warmth was trailing slowly down my leg, and I leapt to the bathroom. I slammed the door and examined the damage.

            Now I am a hardcore horror movie fan. And I’m not restricting this to high-camp formulaic romps through the woods or your run-of-the-mill found footage feature. I mean I am a fan of horror movies. As in let’s see someone bite an appendage off or have a demon baby put its tiny hand through a guy’s skull and rip his nose off through his mouth. And that’s not even the sort of fare that makes me flinch. So I hope it’s clear that I am used to gore, and in fact relish in it—when it doesn’t happen to my favorite flannel pajama bottoms.

            That’s the only word for what I discovered that morning. Gore. Maybe even viscera. For some girls, a first period is heavier because the uterine lining waiting to be purged is especially thick. And, I suppose, because of Eve or something where God hates women. But neither sex ed nor Lucky McKee could have prepared me for what I saw. Thick, clotted blood had tumbled down my leg and was inching down to my ankles. Panicked, I wiped at it with toilet paper. One-ply toilet paper. My panties had ended up in a literal twist, which made me marvel at the phrase, and wonder about it’s origin as I bundled the bloody garment in toilet paper and threw it away. My beloved flannel pajama pants were beyond repair. Their white and pastel stripes were full-Carrie,and this was a time before I had discovered Shout! Spray and Wash.

            I remember I sobbed. I sobbed as bundled my pants and threw them away. I sobbed as I scrubbed the spot on my mattress with cold water and bathroom cleaner. I sobbed as the dull, heavy pain thrumming through my narrow hips turned sharp and stabbing. I whimpered and curled up into the fetal position, wishing this wouldn’t be my monthly norm.

            It took a few years, but I managed to figure out how to handle the pain and heavy bleeding, or at least make it so that I could leave the house. My pediatrician, a tall, no-nonsense woman with a sonorous Indian accent, recommended a regimen of ibuprophen for three days before my expected period to bring down inflammatory pain. My childhood gauntness didn’t give way to impressive curves so much as lend to the iron-deficiency anemia that came with heavy bleeding in underweight teens. For a day or two, I looked dead; I was ashen, sluggish, and raccoon-eyed. The menstrual migraines could be managed simply by taking Excedrin and lying still so as not to vomit on people. Most of this was normal, I knew. I knew girls who fainted from their anemia, who missed school from pain. But they were addressing those issues at a level that I never did. Most of them were on birth control, which to my young, uneducated self, was terrifying. I knew the Catholic Church didn’t love it, and I heard third-hand “horror stories” about girls reacting to it. Besides, no one was worried about the girl who chopped off her hair and fantasized about marrying Franz Kafka getting pregnant.

            My pediatrician did her homework, though. When administering my booster shots for sophomore year of high school, she asked me.

            “Do you have a boyfriend?”

            “No, Dr. Sahajpal.” I hadn’t even had my first kiss yet.

            “Ok, sweetie,” she intoned with only a hint of doubt. “I’m going to start you on Gardasil, but I don’t want you ruining your life. You study now, and you can worry about boyfriends later, maybe at university.”

            “Yes, doctor.”

            That needle scraped bone, and the first shot gave me the worst side-effect fever of my fifteen-year life, but to this day, I’m HPV-free. I’ll take that victory.  

            When coping with the pain felt impossible, I found allies in my siblings. My sister Veronica and I grew close when we were teenagers, and when one of us was out of commission, the other would take care of her. Her migraines were worse than mine, so I would bring her Excedrin and ice water, and keep the light in our room off. When my dizziness got out of control, she would make sure I ate and steadied myself with something more substantive than coffee. Our little brother Gabriel, however, came through in a way that neither of us expected. Maybe he was more sympathetic to our pain because of his birth order, or maybe being raised with two sisters did it, but he did a lot to help when he could. He’d make tea, turn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or just dig the Advil out of the medicine cabinet.

            Then again, the source of Gabe’s empathy might have been more generational in nature. Our father Bert has six sisters, and was always uncomfortable with the topic of periods. Six sisters. A wife. Two daughters. And he wouldn’t deign to buy pads on his way home from work, even if he was at the grocery store. His avoidance of the topic reached comical proportions, so much so that he seemed blissfully ignorant of periods all together.

            One Saturday I found myself curled into a ball on the sofa, my arms hugging my abdomen. Bert loped into the room, and immediately recognized his child in pain.

            “What’s wrong? You have a stomach ache?”

            I heaved a huge adolescent sigh.

            “Yeah,” I said flatly. “I have a stomach ache.”

            “Oh, yeah. I think I’m coming down with what you have. I’m going to lie down for a bit.”

            Baby Boomer men. They are something else.

            I would like to clarify that I eventually did fill out. It took a goddamn while, but I got breasts. It happened well after my girl friends got theirs, and the wait quickly determined which among us was the designated “funny one”. I was nineteen and working fulltime for Sephora. A feminine swell grew under the polyester tent that was my uniform, and I experienced a tightness that I attributed to my asthma, not my bra. I’m not proud of how long it took me to figure out that I was finally getting boobs, and that my old cup size was constricting my chest. Maybe it had something to do with inhaling Chanel perfume and aerosol dry shampoo all day that was killing my spatial intelligence and critical thinking skills. Either way, it happened. And honestly, that’s how it should happen. You become an adult, file your taxes, you vote in local elections, and the boob fairy flutters down and blesses you with the need to hold your chest in place every time you run down the stairs to meet the pizza guy. That mere teenagers are given a reason to feel awkward, slouch into themselves, and feel the eyes of slimy old guys on them is a tragedy. Maybe I’m projecting.

            It was around nineteen that my pain got worse. I was constantly stressed out—usually from work, or the anxiety related to running into old classmates and explaining why I wasn’t in school. The anxiety took its toll in the form of very irregular periods. I once went three months without one, fearing immaculate demon conception as much as cancer. Some months, I’d have a virtually painless, mouse-sized period. Some months, I was wracked with spasms of pain so bad I had a hard time standing. This made it especially hard to remain the ever-perky employee.

            “Hello, ladies! Welcome to Sephora,” I would force out, trying to pass off my pain-stance as a sassy pose.

            Once, after I made the move from Chicago to New York, the city was hit by a sizeable blizzard. I went in for my opening shift at Sephora Brooklyn, snow and wind pelting my face so bad it power-sanded the three pounds of foundation off my face. The strain of trudging through snow combined with the Arctic conditions of the store made my cramps feel like heavy metal poles were being stuck through my spine and abdomen. This time, I did, double over, right there on the floor. We were mercifully let go early before the subway shut down for good. I made it home in just enough time to buy a few cans of soup to last me through a possible blackout. I barricaded myself in my room and curled up in bed, too nauseated to bother eating.

            This isn’t normal, I told myself. This isn’t normal.

            By twenty-two, I was living in Manhattan and had passed out from pain once in my new apartment. Thankfully, I was in room. I had started to date my current boyfriend, Cameron, who was conveniently, scandalously, my roommate. I’m a child of immigrants, I don’t waste good money on dating apps.

            Cameron and I were falling fast. I never felt so comfortable with a guy I dated before. Granted, I had shown exceptionally shitty taste in boys previously, with my virginity being taken by a guy with Rob Zombie tattoos. That’s it. That’s the extent of the story. Rob Zombie tattoos should explain exactly the kind of human he was, and the sort of standards I had. I wish him the best though, because at least he wasn’t like Greg, the lanky asshole who stopped texting me when I clarified that, no, despite what he thought I looked like, I was Mexican, not Japanese. Cameron had a pretty low bar set for him, but he became my best friend as quickly as he became my boyfriend. (Not that I endorse that kind of decision-making. It’s irresponsible to sleep with your roommate and should not be attempted by anyone save for professionals on a closed course.)

            Our sex life hit a snag when I started getting really sharp pains that lasted beyond my period. In March of 2017, I was feeling a dull pain grow in my right side. I dismissed it as premenstrual, but it got worse after my period ended. It got to the point that I couldn’t walk more than a few steps without getting nauseous and exhausted. I was warm, my temperature just slightly feverish. After a full night of this, Cam convinced me to go to the E.R.

            Anyone who has had the distinct displeasure of spending time in a NYC emergency room will tell you that that is where New York is the New York you hear about. Everyone’s rushing around, not particularly friendly, and you’re bound to see some gross things. While waiting to be seen, I was left to wait with a man whose toe was bandaged. The bandage had seen better days, a greenish, blackish hue spread over it. He kept mumbling to himself, yelling at the nurses. Finally, he reached down and began to unwind it. I didn’t stick around to see it; nurse’s instructions be damned.

            I was sure I had appendicitis. The nausea, the pain, it all aligned with my little brother’s experiences a few years prior. Unlike Gabe, I hadn’t vomited. As I told the nurses, I willed myself not to vomit. But, I’m a woman so I was put through the same battery of tests and same line of questions.

            Had I ever had a UTI? No. Was I experiencing pain with urination? No. Had I been exposed to any STIs? No. Was I pregnant? No. Was I sure this wasn’t just a little period pain? Fucking no! Help me!

            It was hours of peeing into cups, having blood drawn, and finally a trip to radiology before they eliminated the possibility of appendicitis. I walked in at ten at night and around 5:30AM, I spoke to the attending physician. No appendicitis. Great.

            “So, what’s wrong with me?”

            He sighed, looking down at his clipboard. When he moved, his Donald Jr. slick back shifted out of place.

            “It could be a number of things. Maybe gastrointestinal, maybe endometriosis or an ovarian cyst.”

            “Well, who should I talk to here?”

            “We’re not admitting you,” said Dr. Donald Jr. “You’re going to have to go to your GP and have them take a look. People think you come in here and get a work-up. It’s not like that, that’s just TV.”

            “Ah,” I said, defeated.

            He paused, looking me up and down.

            “Do you want me to give you something for the pain?”

            The question hung heavily in the air. We both knew what he meant.

            “Um, no,” I stammered. “Wait, maybe some ibuprophen? I never got any from the nurse.”

            He snorted and promised to get me some.

            Now I have always been aware of the horrible effects of painkillers. I worked with plenty of women who popped oxy like it was candy, dulling both the back pains and grueling monotony of retail work. I knew what addiction was like, and I never wanted to get close to it. But if I’m being honest, the real reason I hesitated was because I knew what else opioids could do. They make you constipated. They make you so blocked up that you don’t poop for days, and that sounds like hell. My regularity was something I prided myself on, and I didn’t want to lose the one part of my body that seemed to be working just to dull the pain.

            As I walked out of the exam room, the nurse caught up with me to hand me my discharge paper work. Don Jr.’s diagnosis was in bold at the top. Dysmenorrhea. Regular, run-of-the-mill period pain. Thanks, doc.

            I’m just going to say it: I love my gynecologist. Unbeknownst to her, I refer to her by her first name, Karen. She hangs mobiles above her examination tables, each one from a different vacation she took.  She’s a mom, as she told me the first time I met her in 2015. Back then, she informed me her daughter loved Sephora, and the employer box of my patient info sheet became my identifier. After the E.R. fiasco, I made a trip to see her. Ovarian cysts ran on one parent’s side of the family, and endometriosis on the other. It stood to reason, then, that my issues were reproductive in nature. I began to look back on all my episodes of pain, every time it took me away from living life normally. I began to feel a little less gaslighted by my own body, and it was nice to feel like someone believed my pain. 

            After the perfunctory poking and prodding, she informed me she wanted to do a trans-vaginal ultrasound.  It sounded innocent enough.

            The doctor rolled in the machine. It looked like a prop from the War Games porn parody, a 1980’s computer with a dildo attached to it. I balked at the size of the probe. It was cradled near the keyboard like Satan’s Atari. Karen sheathed it with a latex condom made especially for this. She then produced a bottle of gel and covered the robotic appendage with it.

            “Ok,” she said cheerily. “I’m gonna need you to scooch down, all the way.”

            I complied, straining to reach the stirrups. They really need to make those things in a smaller size.

            “Alright,” Karen said. “You’re going to feel a slight pressure.”

            Anyone with a cervix and access to healthcare knows this is a lie and to never believe it. I breathed through the “slight” pressure and focused on the mobile above me.

            “So you changed jobs?”

            “Huh?”

            “I saw on your chart you don’t work for Sephora anymore.”

            “Oh, yeah,” I said, wincing. “I—” The probe was at an odd angle and I discovered that the head pivots. “I’m doing front desk work at a medispa. I actually work with RNs all the time now. It’s really—” I winced again.

            “Well good, I didn’t want to say anything if you still worked there,” Karen said. “But Sephora. I can’t believe it. It’s gotten so awful. My daughter and I go to the one in Queens, and I can’t shop there anymore. I just can’t. It’s dirty, and there’s no one there to help you. I stood there for ten minutes waiting for someone to come over and sharpen a pencil so I could try it.”

            Now, there are some jobs that you never want done when the person in charge of them is angry. Your brow technician, for instance, shouldn’t be angry when applying hot wax near your eyes. Your barber probably shouldn’t go in for straight razor detailing after a fight with his girlfriend. And you absolutely do not want someone operating a photographic dildo inside of you to be furious about their Sephora experience.

            Karen was fuming.

            “I just wanted to try on an eyeliner,” she said, angling the probe deeper. “And they couldn’t find me someone to just sharpen the pencil.” She angled it down. “So I just gave up. And I wanted to find a lipstick,” A sharp pivot to the left. “But the Urban Decay shelf was disgusting. None of them were in the right place.” She was gritting her teeth. “None of them were in stock.” A pivot up. “And you couldn’t even try them on, they were all broken or covered in dirt and fuzzy stuff.” A pivot to the right.

            “Yeah, my old manager used to call them lipstick sweaters,” I offered. At least I didn’t yelp. I wanted to. But I didn’t. “You know, if you just grab a bunch of tissue and spray it with alcohol, you can sanitize and shave it down yourself.”

            “We just went to Macy’s,” she said, yanking the probe out.

            That time I yelped.

            “Okay,” Karen said. “it looks like everything is moving normally. No twisting of the ovaries, no visible cysts.”

            “So, why am I in pain? Could it be endometriosis?”

            “It could be, but we’d have to do a laparoscopy to see. I don’t want to do that if we don’t have to. In the meantime, I’m going to put you on a hormonal birth control, and see if that helps. Endometriosis happens when the tissue collects in ways that it shouldn’t around the time you ovulate. If you’re not ovulating, that should help.”

            I heaved a sigh, worried about side effects like acne, weight gain, mood swings. Anxiety roiled in my stomach.

            “Are there any other options?”

            “Well for some women, having a baby helps symptoms, but that’s not really an option for you.”

            “No.”

            I love Karen. She’s such a mom.

            “Why don’t you get dressed,” Karen said. “And meet me in my office. We’ll talk about the pill there.”

            I left that appointment with apprehensions about starting birth control and a freshly excavated cervix. I kept worrying about mood swings, seizures, blood clots, and everything else you hear about in birth control commercials. I knew there was a real chance it would destroy my sex drive, which made me feel inexplicably guilty for how empathetic and patient Cam was.

            The adjustment period was brief, and not as horrible as anticipated. I was hit with a wave of nausea every time I took the estrogen pill, and became overheated and irate. Within two weeks, though, I adjusted. Taking the pill was reflexive and no longer a dreaded experience. Cam continued to be supportive and caring. When he broke his arm that spring, we took care of each other and vowed to avoid hospitals in the next year.

I wish I could say that the pill magically cured me. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I still have bad months where the pain leaves me bedridden or dizzy. I have had plenty of days where I could feel the Advil wear off, and the throbbing pain creep back in. I take measures. My brother Alonso sent me a hot water bottle with a knit cozy that I named Mr. Rogers. I make giant cups of Tension Tamer tea and do breathing exercises. And if a little gin slips into the mug, all the better. I’ve also adopted the ritual of drinking said tea while watching horror movies, usually alone. I reason that the distraction and occasional adrenaline rush helps with the pain. I call it my Goddess Time.

            It does weigh on me that I will probably have to get the laparoscopy, maybe sooner rather than later. As of my last appointment with Karen, she’s pleased with the small success of hormonal birth control, but I’m still counting those bad days. The pain after sex is the worst, too, and a common indication of endometriosis. It’s a sort of cruel twist of fate that now that I have someone I want to make long-haul plans with in life, I may be limited in my choices about that life. Endometriosis can affect fertility, and while that’s not an issue while I’m younger and in school, that could be devastating later. I feel silly, even insane, for voicing those fears, but Cam is always there to listen and reassure.

            There’s not a happy ending with any kind of feminine pain story. It’s avoided in conversation, and often not believed. As a woman of color, I’m acutely aware of the doubt that sufferers are met with. I refuse to feel stigmatized by it anymore though. I’m not the same girl who was ashamed of a little blood on her sheets. I don’t feel dirty when I menstruate, and I don’t feel less than for being in pain. I’m lucky to have the support I have, and I hope I can sit my daughter down one day and be honest about how hard it is to be a woman, but how powerful we are.

            Because fuck anyone who says otherwise. I’m proud of my period.