My First Painful Period: Intrusive Thoughts, Diary Clues, and the Hidden Grief of Childhood
My diary doesn’t report when I started my first ever period, but it does report when I started my second. This is because the pain was horrendous and lasted for 6 days in a row. It started on 2 May 1977 and ended on 7 May. I was 11. I had yet to learn these pains were not normal and that something in my past was causing them. Working Out When the Pain Began From these dates, I could work out roughly when I had started my first ever period, which would have been around 2 April 1977. As I recall it was a week before Easter. I lost a little blood but don’t recall much pain. I told Mum about it, worried there was something wrong with me. Mum got cagey, unsure of how to explain about the birds and the bees. I would later learn everything I needed from biology lessons and library books. My second ever period was a rude awakening! What a whopper of a pain! I remember thinking, ‘Will I have to put up with this every month until I’m about 50?’ I thought it was ‘normal.’ I would suffer agoniz...