Bleed!
Yes, this is about menstruation (and other fluids).
Back in June, an intuitive (i.e. rebranded psychic) told me that I needed to release years of pent-up frustration and allow myself to process deep-seated hard emotions. She advised I let myself move through the big feelings in order to let newness in. Naturally, I took this guidance as an opportunity to prove that I’m still a good student eleven years after my formal education ended. I would feel through my feelings! To prove I could!
About five weeks after seeing the psychic, I sobbed on the subway for the first time. I’ve lived in New York for almost five years and having a proper subway sob did register as a milestone.
I was on my way home from going to the Bronx Zoo with my family. This was a three-borough day: I live in Brooklyn, my family lives in upper Manhattan, and the Bronx Zoo is — wow — in the Bronx. It takes an hour and fifteen minutes to get from my apartment to the Bronx Zoo (30 minutes of walking total, plus 45-minutes of train time). I know this sounds like I’m setting up a middle school math problem (if the 2 train is scheduled to leave Borough Hall at 2:53p and Cailin needs 18 minutes to walk there from her apartment, what time will she get to the zoo? Please take the MTA’s notorious unreliability into consideration).
Maybe I’m burying the lede here, but it was also the first day of my period which slowed my walk speed by approximately 2%.
Look, I’ve had consistently horrendous periods since I started having them in fifth grade. I’ve gone through phases where day one of my period involved more vomiting than other people see in their entire adult lives. I pop pain killers as soon as my cramps set in. I have a drawer full of disposable heatwraps that are meant for neck pain but work just as well for period cramps (by the way, the neck-sized ones are way more effective than the ones targeted at period cramps). My period is a monthly battle, but I learned how to manage it during my 20s. I am always prepared for the bloodshed! I track my cycle meticulously! Menstruation will not defeat me!
Until it did at the Bronx Zoo.
I used the bathroom as soon as I got into the zoo, but I made a remarkable rookie mistake of not changing my tampon. Who do I think I am, an ebullient woman in a tampon commercial? I’ve had approximately 250 periods (and for those of you curious, I think I’ll have about 204 more. Thrilling to be on the back half of my menstruation journey.)
We wandered the zoo for a couple of hours and it was a sweaty night, so I figured the combination of humidity, temperature, and walking had made my shorts feel damp.
Alas, I went to the bathroom and to my horror saw that I’d bled through my shorts. This was not a light leak, this was a BLEED. I stared down at the bloodied crotch of my shorts in genuine astonishment: I’d actually never encountered this. Sure, I’d had the rouge leaky moment, especially on pieces of furniture. The last time I saw leakage like this was in 7th grade Pre-Algebra when a classmate I’ll call Rose was wearing a white terrycloth skirt. She sat in the second row. There was a collective gasp from those of us in the third and fourth rows when Rose stood — bright red blood had pooled on the seat of her chair. Her terryclothed behind was dyed by nature. We held our breaths as our teacher (a woman, thank goodness) allowed Rose’s quick exit from the classroom with a friend at her side. Rose walked around the rest of the day with a jacket tied around her waist, the hallmark move of an early menstruator (or a 33-year-old at the Bronx Zoo as you’re about to learn).
I stared at the blood that had seeped through an almost impressive amount of my shorts fabric, thought of Rose (where is she now?), and had an out of body moment. How did I get here? You know, holistically. It seemed so thoroughly animal, almost like staring at wildlife for hours had triggered it.
Have you ever tried to clean up blood in a public bathroom stall while the pre-teen in the neighboring stall is clearly having a similar moment? Her grandma waited for her outside the stall door. They negotiated the terms of her leakage in whispers. I wanted to chime in that things get better (puberty, periods, all of it) until they don’t, but instead I took more one-ply toilet paper than a woman should ever have to use and did my best to remedy the situation. If I ever ran for office (I won’t), I’d make part of my campaign about toilet paper thickness in public restrooms.
I never thought I’d be 33 and dawdling to a zoo parking lot tugging on the hem of my t-shirt, hoping it was long enough to cover the blood stains on my shorts but there I was. (Frankly, shout out me for wearing my largest t-shirt to the zoo.)
My family had driven to the zoo from their Manhattan apartment. I sat in the passenger seat to their place atop a makeshift towel, wondering if I’d ever actually feel like a full fledged adult. Maybe once I hit forty? Fifty? Sixty? Never?
I’ve never been more grateful for my sister and brother-in-law’s multi-ply toilet paper or wet wipes. I cleaned up and my sister bestowed a stainable sweatshirt upon me, which I tied around my waist with Rose on my mind, a period warrior whose lost the battle and is not totally sure she’s going to win the war.
Once I was on the 2 train, I secured myself a seat, began to compose an emotional text to a friend (shockingly, not about my period) and promptly started to cry.
It was one of those silent cries that was more physical than noisy: my upper body convulsed as the tears fell faster. I made brief eye contact with the 30-something man across from me, who seemed curious about why a woman in an oversized Buffalo Bills t-shirt was quietly sobbing, but not curious enough to ask.
I cried for the duration of the train ride, a cleansing experience that was equal parts sobering and liberating. I felt impossibly old, young, and tired. Maybe I was releasing the psychic-noted emotional frustration that had been living in my body since I got my first period in the fifth grade (too early, so stressful). I didn’t care that I was crying in public surrounded by people, I felt no shame, there was something about having such a thoroughly pubescent accident that eliminated these embarrassments. I cried it all out, unabashedly.
When I got off the train, I beelined for a burger spot (a few years ago, a friend convinced me that eating a burger on your period is the best iron supplement), then saw a man I know sitting right next to the door. I debated whether I wanted this man to see me tear and blood-stained. I was ravenous for a cheeseburger but less interested in small talk considering the exhaustion from all the bodily fluids I’d released that day, so I did a lap around the neighborhood and voicenoted a friend, hopeful that by the time I got back to the burger place the man would be gone. He was. I went inside and ordered, mulling over how many more years of day-one-period-burgers I have ahead of me.
I got home, treated my shorts with stain remover, put them in the washer, and devoured the burger. All my blood came out in the wash.
Cailin!! What does your doctor say about this?? You do not need to suffer like this any longer, there are things that will help. I have friends who suffered far too long and they couldn't believe how much better they felt energy wise once it was under control. I may need to get your number from your mom so we can chat.
You're a great writer and you know how to dig down deep and express the best and the worst.