Content Note: this piece contains discussions of menstruation, blood, and body dysphoria.

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I used to love the colour red,

So bold and vibrant:

Red makes things go faster. 

The hue of roses,

Of cuts and scrapes and adventures;

Royal felt-lined cloak red. 

Until red became the bloodied sheets I awoke to,

Warm shame seeping between my legs;

An aching horror show. 

Just as water used to mean joy,

Swimming and underwater handstands

Now reminded me of why I could not swim. 

For others the red week was sacred,

A lunar ritual of connection

And reflection, but never for me. 

So many blood reds:

Dark clotted blood and bright fresh blood,

Sticky and sweet and wrong. 

Yet soon it will finally be gone;

My months will become my own

And perhaps then I shall reclaim the colour red. 

The first time it happened I felt like I had woken up inside a horror film; there was a bitter tang in the air and a warm slickness against my lower back, in between my legs...the sheets were bloody and a dull ache bloomed within my pelvis. I didn't understand how often to change the pads and I remember still smelling that cloying musk even as I roller skated at a friend's birthday party, trying so hard not to think about the sick feeling of a heavy pad dragging down my underwear, a weight pulling me under to drown in my own blood. 

I was ready for it the second time; I had spent the entire month dreading the reprisal and I took the pads without needing to ask. Every time I stood up I would surreptitiously check, despite the four layers I wore hugging my hips for fear of the dreaded dark red splotch. The nausea, lower back pain, wrenching abdominal ache and random sudden spikes of searing hot pain became disturbingly familiar, the smell on myself or others enough to paralyse my heart 

with paroxysms of horror. 

I envied the boys with a yearning bordering on hatred, a painful feeling I buried as deeply as I could. I looked up herbal remedies and every old wives tale of how to naturally stop the bleeding, but fell short of starving myself to dry up the bloody spring deep within me. Besides, nothing worked and it felt like a curse heaped upon me and everyone else with a uterus. I couldn't understand how others accepted and even celebrated what for me was an all consuming loathing. I thought there must be something terribly wrong with me, that I was weak and selfish for despising this part of my body. And I knew my physical symptoms weren't as bad as many others – I was still able to function, albeit at the cost of my mental health and energy. 

I hastily compartmentalised, refusing to acknowledge the hardware waiting to trigger each month until there was no ignoring it. Then it was a numb survival instinct, both hyper vigilant and in denial somehow simultaneously until it was over and I had another month, if I was lucky - it seemed every time I tried a new birth control method of suppression my body would punish me with unpredictability, depression and extended bleeding. And every time I would swear and cry and punch things in private, presenting a manicured mask to the world, desperate to ensure no one could know what was happening to me or how I truly felt because those feelings were illicit and dangerous. 

Those feelings seeped out, however, in private moments of guilty satisfaction. I already wore baggy 'tomboy' clothes, but I would steal my brother's jeans when no one was home and revel in the fantasy of being a boy with no bleeding, no hated swells on my chest, no feminine expectations. He gave me those jeans when he outgrew them and I was overjoyed to have permission to wear boy clothes, even if they didn't fit me properly and I heard the whispers – and sometimes overt comments - of judgement and shaming from family, friends and even strangers. I was both not a woman and cursed to be a woman in that sickening hormonal cycle. I felt a deep shame perusing websites that celebrated the sacred monthly ritual, imploring women to make peace with their bodies and linking it to the phases of the moon. A beautiful thing that I could see only as a cosmic punishment heaped upon my rebellious soul. 

Each month became a rollercoaster, the highs jack-knifing into lows almost instantly; I would conscientiously forget the inevitable each time until the first spots appeared or, God forbid, a recurrence of that very first traumatic time awakening to a pool of settled blood. Having entered the bathroom humming under my breath, I would breathe curses and clench my fists as cold depressive fury swept through my veins, resisting the urge to punch a wall.