Confessions logo

And That's on Periods

Blood-soaked tears, pants, and skirts

By Bella LeonPublished 3 years ago 20 min read
4
And That's on Periods
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

I am the most embarrassing person alive. Wait. Let me rephrase that: I am the most embarrassed person alive. This is not hyperbolic. If my mind was the main vessel in Inside Out, it wouldn't be the lovely Joy leading the ship. It would be Fear because I am afraid of being embarrassed. To make matters worse, I am living as an embarrassed person despite not having done anything embarrassing today or yesterday.

But yes, I am Fear.

And I am always embarrassed.

This damning feeling of embarrassment has only plagued me my entire life. And at the ripe age of twenty-four, you'd think it would just go away! But my list of embarrassing moments that I have been compiling for two decades is growing.

Just for kicks, here are a few: I wrote a play for a comedy competition once and no one laughed (I lost, obviously). I accidentally mocked my British science teacher in front of her entire class by copying her accent when she was scolding me for talking during class (It was regurgitative, I swear). I publicly rejected (and in front of an entire class of students) a massive and relatively expensive promposal from a guy friend and someone filmed it (Ugh, currently cringing). I've drunkenly injured myself so badly at a party that an ambulance was called and it resulted in everyone getting in trouble with their parents. Rushing to a college class to present for a project, I walked into the classroom late with part of my charcoal face-mask on the side of my cheeks and presented a 20 minute PSA on the importance of reparations for the black community (I looked like I was performing with black face. When I found out, I wanted to die). To top it all off, I have consistently embarrassed myself in front of my bosses over the years: My first boss caught me making fun of her lame Tik-Tok (for financial clout) videos. My second boss thought I had a flatulence problem (we shared the same small office), but it was actually that damned squeaking chair. My third boss caught me throwing up in a toilet after a Christmas party. She proceeded to tell me that she knew I had used all her alcohol tickets (She gave everyone one ticket for a free drink. I thought she was being cheap since she made more than six figures a year and underpaid her staff. So I decided to "Robin Hood" her and take the tickets and give it to my co-workers and me). It wasn't exactly my most embarrassing experience with an employer, but she didn't like me much after that.

Sometimes, I feel like a character on Seinfeld. Slightly uncomfortable things happen to me, and I respond in an ironic and embarrassing way. Should I even consider posting this for the fresh eyes of the internet to prod and gape at? Am I promulgating my own misery? Maybe.

Weirdly enough, I don't find sport fails, sex stories, and clumsiness embarrassing. You won't find that here! I do have plenty of stories for those subjects as well, but this one might be more intriguing.

Like I said, I am the most embarrassing embarrassed person alive. Most times, an utterance of an embarrassing story from a friend is my cue for running in the other direction. Once before, a friend asked me about my most embarrassing experience. I may or may not have screamed, "Look over there!" and zoomed away to another section of the room, anxiously avoiding her glances.

Hey, lookie here; another embarrassing moment. She proceeded to follow me to the other side of the room and said, "What the hell?"

Yeah, I know. I sound like a lame person to hangout with. I am not disputing that here. I am currently embarrassed writing this story.

I didn't say I liked this aspect about me. I actually hate it. But indulge in my embarrassing moments. Maybe it'll make you feel better about yourself....or not.

I am embarrassed so easily that you might find these examples a tad dramatic. But I truly believe that this uncomfortable feeling bubbling in me has spawned from being conditioned to believe that I have to worry about my impressions left on a crowd of strangers, family, or friends.

I am easily embarrassed for three reasons: deep subconscious insecurities, my damning anxiety, and society's invisible rules for being alive. Let me elaborate on all three while telling you one of the most embarrassing things that has ever happened to me. It's told in three acts with a surprising amount of background story which spans over the course of a year.

To be honest, if I could somehow hire the entire team from Inception to alter my memory of this entire year, I would gladly pay all the money I have to get it done. Unfortunately, such luxuries are not afforded to the world. So I'm just going to have to live with it, and maybe learn to grow from it too.

So grab some popcorn and enjoy the ride!

ACT 1: The Unbearable Likeness of Me

By Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

The story takes place a few months after my fourteenth birthday. For some odd reason, every time I age another year, I submit to the thought that I am going to the best version of myself that year. At ten-years-old, I thought I would become a world-famous author. And at twelve, I thought it was the year I would blossom into the smartest person to walk the planet. Turning fourteen, I was sure that I would have the best grades in the class, become a great musician and author, and finally quit school to live my dreams out in Paris. However hyperbolic my brain was wired to be, I had a list of goals to accomplish. And at fourteen, I believed I would accomplish it quite easily. After all, I was a fully-grown adult to my young, demented, and misled mind.

Seemingly, I was a full-grown adult ready to take over the world. But then, I walked into my classroom and found out that it might not be my year. It might not be my month, day, hour, second, and lifetime actually.

My small class of less than twenty people sat in a room, readying themselves for more equations to study. While my math teacher gabbed about formulas and equations (for which I could not recall to this day, even if you hired a Fields medal winner to tutor me), I was dutifully taking notes. And behind my feigned math notes, I had written letters to my friends sitting near me. We tossed the notes around, telling jokes and pretending to laugh so that the kids on the other side of the room became intrigued by our shenanigans. An hour into the class, I had forgone the task of written communications with my classmates. It wasn't my choice, they were the more studious than I and math was my mortal enemy as a child. Instead, I was reading a Harry Potter book that was hidden under the table, atop my backpack. It was neatly and very cleverly (if I do say so myself) hidden in the backpack where it appeared that I was studying math while I was actually reading. Due to this, I had zoned out most of the class. I missed almost everything my teacher and classmates had said from the moment I passed the first note to the last page I turned of my Harry Potter book. So it wasn't a surprise that I would say something stupid and garner an entire hate club dedicated in my name.

The teacher asked the class to pack their bags. I closed my book and began tossing pencils, papers, and "notes" into my backpack while I heard the class openly talk about something. I wasn't sure exactly what they were referring to, but it sounded like a funny story that I needed to have an opinion on.

Oh, how I wish I was less like a person who enjoyed funny stories and more like a person who minded their own business.

After my teacher chimed in on their conversation, I was ready to plundge into the jokes. I wanted to tell a joke. I needed to tell a joke. If I didn't say something funny, I thought the world was going to crash and burn. So I said it.

The student who was telling this seemingly funny story told the teacher something like, "I'm off to say goodbye to grandma now. Bye!"

To give you context again, I wasn't listening to their conversation. I just wanted to be included. To give you more context, half the class and my teacher was laughing and joking with this student for twenty minutes before he said goodbye. I assumed the story was rooted in comedy. And I was sure that I was going to win funny points for responding to his goodbye with deadpan. So I said something like, "Why? Is she dead?"

And then, I roared with laughter.

Then he said, "Yes. She passed about an hour ago."

Silence. That's all I remember: the silence. Though I have relentlessly tried to erase this particular memory, it only gets worse from here. Like an embarrassing dominos effects, this block was the first to fall in a series of other embarrassing blocks. Incoming. More silence to come.

After that interaction, my teacher publicly scolded me for making fun of his dead grandmother who also happened to have cancer.

....My bad?

Then, my entire class of young fourteen-year-olds ostracized me for the rest of the month. This is not a joke. I was the school's Hitler for making a joke about someone's dead grandma. It was the verbal equivalent to kicking a puppy. It really wasn't my year. And I'm not going to say that I didn't deserve it. I am most often accidentally rude. So I absorbed the moment. I relished in it for a moment before trying to find the closest exit to my seat.

The kid was incredibly nice about it though. I called him later that day to apologize and he was so kind about the situation. He said, "It happens. You were just making a joke! I know you're not mean."

To which I stupidly said, "I wasn't trying to make fun of your grandmother, really. I just misread the situation."

I'm sure that my response came across as evasive. I should have taken the gut punch and moved on. But, I'm the most embarrassing embarrassed person alive. No one should expect the "right" response from me. After speaking with him on the phone, I texted my friend. No response. Then another friend. Nothing. Then, another friend. Not one message. I knew what I had just done to myself; I had become a bully on accident.

Brace yourself for this next part; the month I tried to redeem myself and made it worse.

ACT 2: Fleabag's Favorite Period Film

By Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

It was hard to recover from that horrible joke. Most days, I had to find comfort in sitting alone. I didn't have a problem with not having friends. I had a problem with people seeing me as a horrible human being. So I overcompensated. I began offering snacks to people; goldfish and candy. I complimented more people than normal which probably came across as feigned admiration. And I tried to mind my own business more. I had hoped that these fellow fourteen-year-olds would see the growth in my moral consciousness. I had hoped that these immature little people really cared about whether I was growing.

I was wrong.

I still had retained zero friends by the end of the month.

After sometime, I had realized that my anxiety was part of the problem. I had anxiously been hoping to impress my friends with a silly joke and committed the opposite. With a new club of individuals who gathered to hate on me, I grew more anxious of how the world perceived me. Am I a bad person? Do I deserve this?

My answer: Probably.

But as we crawled to the end of the month, I began experiencing some version of the five stages of grief. Except, I held onto anger for most of the time. I couldn't decide who I was more upset with: myself or the world.

Myself: for letting my anxiety climb over me and take hold of my insecurities for wanting to be seen as funny.

The world: simply for existing at that point.

Dramatic, no?

Anyways, I walked into my favorite class of the day to present my creative writing paper to the students. At this point, I didn't have any friendly faces in the crowd. I was the girl who laughed at someone's dead grandma. No one cared that I stood happily in front of them to read my creative writing essay except for me. Still filled with anger at the world, I began reading my essay.

I made the correct pauses and unfolded the story in a proper and fun way. Again, I tried to be funny. Subconsciously, I was trying to garner some friends. I was trying to be likable. It was confusing to say the least because I was still angry and really didn't care about making friends. Or at least, I thought I didn't.

But as I stood at the front of the class, presenting my perfect essay, I turned my back to the class to write my essay title and name on the board as per the teacher's instructions. This is where I faltered. This was the end for me.

I heard a snicker behind me. I heard folded words whispered and blending together, combusting into a silent laugh at the back left of the classroom. And then, I heard a gasp. And again, more silence.

I recognized that silence. It had haunted me for a month.

At first, I thought someone stuck a "kick me" sign on the back of my jacket. Then again, I'm not living in some lame '80s movie, so I thought my anxiety was at work again. I thought I was imagining things. But I wasn't. And it was far worse than a mere sign.

At the time, I was harrowingly terrified that I had ever turned my back to my classroom.

First of all, my school required all girls to wear skirts and polo shirts. The skirt was beige and that day I had happened to get my period.

I'm sure you know where this is leading.

I had turned my back to my classroom and no one wanted to tell me that I had a big red blood stain on the back of my skirt. Worst yet, I had walked around the entire school for hours before a random girl ran up to me to inform me of my misfortune. Then, I realized; they were laughing at me. And they didn't want to tell me because I was the girl who joked about someone's dead grandma.

The situation sounds depressing more than embarrassing at this point. Do not worry. More embarrassment to come.

I was determined to fall back into their graces before the summer came rolling around. But it was much harder than I realized. I felt like I was living in an reenactment of Stephen King's Carrie.

Fleabag, season 2.

I was the girl covered in blood. I was being looked at when I didn't want to be. I was wearing the scarlet letter, so to speak.

After the random girl informed me of my misfortune, it was time for everyone to go home. Everyone had packed their bags and rode the bus home while I tried to get the stain out of my skirt. Though I knew the effort was futile since no one was at the school, I tried to walk into the girl's bathroom to scrub my brain of embarrassment and my clothes of blood, but the bathrooms were closed. I had to find another way.

While scouring the rooms for a sink, I found a bathroom open to the public in a different part of the school. Except, it was the boy's bathroom. I didn't care whether I'd get caught in the boy's bathroom at the time. But I should've cared.

Walking into the boy's bathroom, I took my skirt and began washing it in the sink. Moments later, I heard footsteps coming towards the door. Quickly, I try to put my skirt back on and hide the wet spot with my jacket.

If I had better luck, we wouldn't be here.

Silence again.

The boy who I teased about his dead grandmother walked into the bathroom as I was putting on my blood-stained skirt.

Immediately, he turned and walked out of the bathroom. As I exited the bathroom, I felt like Cersei from Game of Thrones walking naked through the streets, getting pummeled by rogue tomatoes and bread. He stood outside and we locked eyes for a second as I exited. Then, I scampered off in another direction without a word.

"Woe is me" doesn't even cover it.

After that, I decided to donate every piece of clothing that could show blood on it. If I had my period, I was wearing a jacket around my waist or wearing dark clothes. I stashed extra period products in my locker. I avoided putting it in my bag, just in case someone wanted to be the worst and look through it. I had become ashamed of my body for presenting my period to an entire class, and I hated my personality for the grandma thing. At this point, I had moved away from anger and onto bargaining.

"Please, God. Can we erase this part of history?"

While periods aren't exactly embarrassing to everyone who experiences it, some young girls are told to be ashamed of it. It was a secret that we had amongst friends. We asked secretively, "Did you get your period yet?"

And some would shyly say, "Uhm, yes."

We hide tampons and pads when going to the bathroom. We cough when opening the loud pad package and avoid complaining about cramps and backaches at the dinner table. Most young girls are taught to be ashamed of their bodies. Men are informed to be disgusted by periods. Sometimes uttering the word "tampon" really makes a room of men turn on their heads.

If you're wondering what awkwardness the word "period" does to a room, then just looks here for a fine example:

Menstruation, everyone.

At the time, I had felt as though I was consumed by embarrassment. I didn't have any friends. I was inviting more hate at every second. And to top it all off, I had embarrassed myself again in front of that boy.

This brings us to Act 3; the moment in my life when I realized that blood ain't so bad.

ACT 3: Learning to Embrace the Hate, the Blood, and the Guilt

By Josefin on Unsplash

It was the following year when I began reliving my worst nightmare. I had changed schools that summer and entered at a much larger school filled with classes with much more than twenty people in one room. It was daunting and a hard transition. But I didn't leave the other school because of the grandma joke or the period problems. My mother really wanted me at a bigger school with more opportunities. But to be honest, I enjoyed the thought that I could start over and maybe make some friends this time.

Alas, I am not God's favorite. I had embarrassed myself over and over at this new school throughout the years that I spent there. Just for kicks, here's some examples: At a party, I threw up on the truck of a kid that I had a massive crush on. One of my teachers waved around my menstruation products in front of an entire class (inadvertently). My dog ate my homework (literally). When I told my teacher, she laughed for about an hour then stormed off to another classroom and announced to the entire class what I had just told her.

Again, not God's favorite.

This time, I was reliving the same mistake as before but with a new crowd and in my first year. I was sitting in a chemistry class when my teacher asked me to step-up to the board and complete the periodic table of elements. As I shifted towards the front of the class, I realized that I had forgotten my jacket and I might be leaking blood....AGAIN.

At first, I told her I wasn't ready to complete the periodic table. She said to suck-it-up and do it anyways. I remained in my seat for a moment. I didn't want another hate club dedicated in my name. (In retrospect, that would've never happened, but I was being hyperbolic.) She waited for a moment before she began to scold me for disobeying her orders.

What is this school? Some torture chamber with teachers as dictators?!

Anyways, I felt my stomach tremble. I was shaking, sweating, and bleeding. For a moment, I thought about my mistake; I should've worn a darker shade of blue. Then I searched for jackets in the room to steal and wrap around my waist. But my teacher was waiting. She thought I had not studied the material and wanted to avoid being wrong. Anxiety began to build.

So I calculated my options:

1. Go to the front of the board and get humiliated.

2. Tell the teacher why I don't want to.

Depending on your personality, both options are acceptable. But to me, option 2 allowed me to escape the silence. I did the right thing. I walked to her desk at the back of the room while the class was finishing the periodic table on their sheet of paper. Nervously, I informed her of my mishap. She wasn't known for being a very nice teacher. To her defense, I already knew that. She said, "I don't see anything."

She was wrong. THERE WAS SOMETHING.

I walked to the front of the classroom anyways and watched as the kids examined my pants, spotted with blood. After that, I felt some level of release. I had surrender my fear and finally moved to the best stage yet: I don't care what you think of me.

Really though, at that point, I had seen and done it all.

Earlier, I mentioned that there are three reasons why I feel embarrassed all the time: deep subconscious insecurities, my damning anxiety, and society's invisible rules for being alive.

My deep subconscious insecurities (like not being very smart, funny, or a good person) have always manifested into a bad joke or some bad reaction to a situation; the grandma incident enhanced by the first period incident.

My damning anxiety forced bad reactions to my triggering subconscious insecurities.

Society's invisible rules for being alive is seen in the pure embarrassment a young girl has for menstruating. Apparently, women should feel embarrassed that they bleed. But now that more women speak about it, it doesn't seem so bad anymore. Or maybe I have grown-up more. Without the context of society (rejecting women being proud of bleeding), I think this story would've been much shorter. But I wouldn't have been able to say that this collection of incidents has helped me realize that I was not wrong for feeling embarrassed of my period; everyone was relishing my embarrassment and laughing. Instead, social context is wrong for making women feel like blood-soaked pants, openly carrying menstruation products, and publicly talking about periods is wrong. It isn't. Half of the world menstruates.

If anything, you should feel left out (this is a joke, menstruating sucks).

Now that I am living in the last stage of grief (I don't care what you think of me), I openly talk about periods. I have conversations about my cramps and I walk around public areas with my tampon in my hand. Though a terrible joke brought me to this point, I know that I have grown into someone who defends those who menstruate. Periods are a tier in the hierarchy of society's problems that is often left out of conversations. But we should talk about it because there isn't anything wrong or disgusting about it.

So indulge in my misfortune; or rather, indulge in my fortune disguised as misfortune. It has taught me more about my personality, my threshold for understanding my morality, and my body than most positive interactions have. And of course, I haven't told a bad joke about someone's dead grandma since.

___

As always, thank you for reading! Any and all tips are deeply appreciated :)

Embarrassment
4

About the Creator

Bella Leon

Welcome to my digital diary!

I have a vast but useless knowledge of cinema, and I just love to write.

You can expect to find random articles regarding various subjects, poetry, short stories, and anything film related. Happy reading <3

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.