Crimson

MENUSTRATION

Day One

I feel animal. My whole body runs hot, a fever. I am bent over, crouched. I am feral. I could scratch at any moment. I shit constantly. Blood runs between my legs. I am sweating. I feel everything, swelling.
I want a cave to crawl in. To die in.

Day Two

I take a shower. Wash the blood off my legs. Put clothes on. Grimace. Walk out the door, upright. It feels absurd, to ask this of me. To pretend, I am human at all.

Day Three

A girl in my middle school vomited at the onset of every period. She would go to the nurse, puke, and go home. It looked terrible but, of course, we used it to our advantage. Climbed another rung higher on the social ladder at her expense. Still, we envied her. She could leave, suffer in silence. The rest of us swallowed Advil by the handful. The rest of us checked our pants in the bathroom mirror, praying for a leak-proof day. The rest of us said a prayer for any tied sweater around the waist. If asked, we pretended to be disgusted by ourselves. Alone, we swore
we didn’t believe it.
Day Four
Around lunch tables, we asked each other in a hush: Did you get it yet? Either early or late blooming meant ostracism. I prayed to be in the middle. To be invisible. “Normal.”

Day Five

Googling what is “normal” tells me that the average age for “getting it” has actually decreased over time. A hundred years ago, female bodies typically began bleeding at fourteen. Twelve or thirteen was the average age for my Millennial generation. Today, female bodies are hitting puberty even younger, experiencing thelarche (when breast tissue begins to develop) around eight years old and menarche (first period) only a couple years later.

Studies have also found that early onset puberty is correlated with the impacts of environmental racism. American biologist Sandra Steingraber wrote in an article in Grist magazine that "all of the stressors that appear to contribute to early puberty in girls—obesity, television viewing, sedentariness, family dysfunction, preterm birth, formula-feeding, chemical exposures—are higher in poor communities and communities of color where poverty, racism, unemployment, and toxic substance exposures are high. In particular, U.S. black children are disproportionately exposed to physical environmental stressors, and it is also this group that reaches puberty earliest among U.S."

Day Six

Imagine the blood seeping through your small, cropped shorts as you played on the swings. Marking you no longer “child.” But if not a child, what are you? You do not understand what you are becoming. You are eight. It just marks you.

FOLLICULAR

Day Seven

The first time I tried to put in a tampon, I was twelve and I needed my mother's help. I was set to go to a friend's pool party when some dark, brown goo appeared on my undies. I knew no one would believe me if I said, "I just don't feel like swimming." They would know. My mom looked at me with a pinched face: "Really? Do I really need to do this?" And god bless her heart she really did try to get that thing up there. Neither of us have been able to look at each other quite the same since. I called my friend; told them I was sick.

Day Eight

In the United States, tampons, and other period products, are taxed as “luxury items,” not necessities. There is no governmental program that helps bleeding bodies pay for period products. There are also no regulations forcing tampon and pad manufacturers to disclose what chemicals and materials are inside their products.

Like most services in the U.S., access to period care is not distributed equitably. One study of low-income women in St. Louis found that almost 50% of surveyed women were not able to buy menstrual products in the last year. In a 2021 national survey of college students, researchers at George Mason University and the University of Pennsylvania found that 10% of all female college students are unable to afford menstrual products.

We are told to clean it all up, but we don't have access to what we need to do so. We didn’t make these rules, I want to scream. We didn’t ask for any of this.

Day Nine

A month after the failed tampon attempt, I went up to our beach house with my dad. We went to the ocean's edge, and I sat down to watch him swim. My dad asked why I wasn't swimming. I said, "Dad, I can't. I have my period." He went red, but pressed on "Aren't there...things for that?" I looked down, shook my head: “I’m too young." Because how do you say I don’t know how to un-dirty this body. I don’t think the subject has ever come up again. He went swimming, anyway.

Day Ten

A poll of 500 men, commissioned by the period underwear creators Thinx, found that that 51% of them believe it is inappropriate for women to openly discuss their periods in the workplace. Research by the brand INTIMA found that one in 10 men (14%) have never had a conversation about periods, and a quarter believe you must remove a tampon to urinate.

I’ve often heard that you don’t know what you don’t know. But isn’t the better question: why
don’t you know?

Day Eleven

My brother couldn't stand when my mom and I would mention anything to do with our "flows." He would go rigid in his seat, silent as steel, like we had cast a spell of eternal awkwardness over the dinner table. "Sorry Nick," my mom would say, hiding a giggle. The whole thing—his silence, her sheepishness, the tension over the table—made me angry. I would look at him and say, "What? I only said tampon." And he would sputter back, "Stop saying it." And I would send back, "What, tampon?” Small victories.

OVULATION

Day Twelve

Period is the worst name for this monthly occurrence. Nothing could be a less apt metaphor. That tiny, tidy dot. It mocks me now with its finality, its cleanliness. Please, page, give me a semicolon, an em dash, that squiggle on the keyboard we never use.

Day Thirteen

Of course, more creative names have cropped up over time. One international study found over 5,000 different slang words for it. In America, they say the following euphemisms are typical, "Crimson wave," "Aunt Flo," "Shark Week," but I’ve never heard anyone call it that. Abroad, there are other creative nicknames: "The painters and decorators are in" from the UK, "I have my own things" from Italy, “Granny’s stuck in traffic” from South Africa, “I’m with Chico” from Brazil, “Little sister has come” from China, and my personal favorite, "Having jam in my
waffle," from the Swedes.

Day Fourteen

Menstruation might be the most neutral of them all, but the word is devoid of any real sense of what it means. Menstruation could just as easily be interpreted a person lost in thought or succumbed to exhaustion. I was deep in menstruation.

Day Fifteen

Personally, I tell people, "I'm bleeding." Because that's literally what's happening. And I'm tired of hiding within this animal.

Day Sixteen

The root of the word menstruation is the Latin “mēnsēs,” plural of mēnsis meaning month. Looking farther back, however, mēnsis is derived from the Greek word ‘mene’ meaning moon.

The idea of the monthly blood being caused, related, or synchronized with the moon is age-old to human cultures all over the world. In Mayan mythology, for instance, menstruation was closely connected to the Moon goddess.

Aristotle theorized that a female body probably bled during the coldest part of the month, which coincided with the waning of the moon because “this time of the month is colder and more humid because of the wasting and disappearance of the Moon.” Of course, he admitted that some women didn’t conform to this pattern, but those were exceptions to his rule, not indications that his rule might not be accurate.

Day Seventeen

Many, many moons later, researchers are still trying to determine if this moon-based mythology is based in scientific fact or not. A year-long retrospective study in 2013 tracked 980 menstrual cycles in 74 females of reproductive age over a calendar year and found no “synchrony of lunar phases with the menstrual cycle.” In 2016, the period tracking app Clue commissioned another study which analyzed over 7.5 million menstrual cycles and concluded that periods most likely do “not sync with the lunar cycle.”

A 2021 study in the journal Science Advances, however, suggests that there may be more to the idea of synchrony between lunar phases and menstrual cycles than previous research may have indicated. They found that “women’s menstrual cycles with a period longer than 27 days were intermittently synchronous with the Moon’s luminance and/or gravimetric cycles.” With age and exposure to artificial nocturnal light, however, menstrual cycles shortened and lost this synchrony. They concluded with a hypothesis that “in ancient times, human reproductive behavior was synchronous with the Moon but that our modern lifestyles have changed reproductive physiology and behavior.”

I personally like to think my cycles are connected to something as wide as the ocean, as far away as the moon. I turn my lights off at night, look at the brightness of the moon, and aim my womb towards the light. I call them sister, mother. It helps to not feel so alone.

Day Eighteen

A few years after college, I moved onto a farm for a job in agricultural education and met a woman who loved talking about our “moon cycles.” I nursed a healthy skepticism of her unabashed candor at first—she loved saying the word vagina—but for the first time, someone wanted to talk about it.

Lying down in the throes of cramping, I would call her, and she would hand over a mug of steaming ginger tea and a small blue vial of motherwort tincture. She would rub my back and rant about how cramps only happen because we’re forced to work when we’re bleeding, a time when we should instead be resting. She would take me on walks with her under the full moon. She gave me small bites of rose-infused chocolate. I moaned and groaned in agreement. I would’ve followed her anywhere.

LUTEAL

Day Nineteen

There were, of course, a few times when I felt immense relief upon seeing the crimson wave appear on the shores of my underwear. Times when I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in, a God whose scriptures call this bodily function “unclean.” Times when my knees pressed against the bathroom floor, my head bent into my hands, and I cried, "Oh, dear God, thank you. Thank you."

Day Twenty

That same year I moved to the farm with the moon lady, Trump was elected. Threats to remove access to birth control loomed, and I was tired of how much the hormones of my daily pill affected my mood, skin, and overall sense of wellness. I decided to get the copper IUD inserted—10 years of promised safety from pregnancy sounded like freedom.

What no one tells you, when you get an IUD inserted, is that it will feel unlike anything you have ever felt before. They open your cervix. For people who haven't given birth vaginally, this is the first time that shape-shifting portal is opened, followed by a branched wing lodged inside.

I gasped from the sensation. It wasn’t exactly pain, it was—insertion. It felt like my whole body was expanding and contracting simultaneously. I reached my hand out for the other nurse in the room. “Please,” I begged. She took my hand.

We don’t ever want to do these things alone. Not in stirrups covered by bright yellow cloth. Not under florescent lights. Not because we feel there is no other option. But there I was—holding a stranger’s hand like she was God and I was the falling Eve.

When I returned to the farm, I told my moon friend about it, asked her for any advice on easing the intense cramping. She looked at me in shock. “Oh dear. Such a sacred thing, to have your cervix opened.” She pulled me into her arms and held me. The New Yorker in me wanted to push her away and say, “I’m fine, really.”

But the animal in me cried and cried and cried.

Day Twenty-One

A few years later, I moved to the wild dripping Pacific Northwest rainforest to join a year-long wilderness immersion program. Spending every day in the wet woods, learning the paths of the wild creatures, the plant names, the bird calls, I felt my body come alive in a new way.

Surrounded by the moss and fern, us womb-carriers talked about our periods all the time. We unpacked our shame. We showed each other our blood. We left bloody offerings for the forestand held full moon circles. Some of us wore red bracelets when we were bleeding, signifying we were emptying our linings and thus, needed care—more shoulder rubs, more snacks.

In short, we got a bit carried away. But we didn't care. For the first time, bleeding felt like celebration.

Day Twenty-Two

Our culminating end-of-year experience for this immersion program was a week spent in the woods with nothing but the clothes on our backs. The instructors called it “survival week.” We would apply all the social, environmental, and physical survival skills we had learned over the nine-month program like friction fire, foraging, nonviolent communication, and staying warm and sane under constant rain.

About a week before the trip, a classmate asked our professors—what if we have our period while we’re there? They said there wasn’t time in our syllabus for that. Apparently, it wasn’t deemed essential to our survival. Instead, a female apprentice in the program held a meeting outside of class time to talk about ways to manage menstruation in the wilderness. It wasn’t required for male bodies to attend, and none of them did. They showed us how to make pads out of moss, how to heat up rocks next to fire for cramps, how to wash with river water and dry off with a corner of your shirt.

A few people ended up bleeding on the trip. When I asked one of them how it was going, they said, “Liberating.”

“I bleed wherever the fuck I want.”

Day Twenty-Three

The summer after, I was hired as a camp counselor for the wilderness school's youth program, which hosted week-long overnight camps for middle-school aged kids. They spent a week building shelter, making fire, foraging food—and mostly rolling around in the mud.

Since it was overnight, and since it was middle school, our director said the other female-bodied instructor and I needed to have a “period talk” with the female-bodied campers.

This was it. This was my chance to undo those middle school sob stories. Those whispers around lunch tables. Those sweaters tied around the waist. The shame, the shame, the shame.

I came on strong. I cheerfully reassured the campers, “And if you get your period while you’re here, don’t worry! We have everything you need. We got tampons. We got pads. Unlimited supply.” The kids wouldn’t meet my eye. But I would rather be embarrassing than silent. I pressed on.

“And really, this time is a celebration! This time is sacred, and special!”

One of the campers, a thirteen-year-old who identified as nonbinary, stood up and ran away to the woods, crying.

I knew I messed up. I followed them. I found them hunched under a big leaf maple tree, head in their hands. I said I was sorry. I said, “Can you tell me what you are feeling?” They said, “For me, it is not a celebration. It is a reminder of all things I am not. I hate that I have to do this every month.”

“You’re right,” I said. “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right.”

Day Twenty-Four

Unfortunately, in my own reclamation, I made the classic white cis-woman mistake of assuming everyone experiences periods exactly as I do. That to be woman meant to bleed and thus to bleed meant to be woman.

Be warned: your body is yours alone.

Day Twenty-Five

Take a look at period products packaging. Is it pink? Is there a distinctly “woman” character on the box playing lacrosse or doing gymnastics? Think of that all-too-familiar phrase when a kid gets their first period, “You’re a woman, now.” Many cis-men and cis-women make this mistake of thinking bleeding means womanhood. It can for some people, and for others, the two aren't the same. In October 2019, the menstrual product brand Always took the symbol for female off its packaging. A good start to a much-needed overhaul on cis-gendered period messaging. Caroline Colvin, a non-binary Black journalist, said it best: “Womanhood shouldn't hinge on biological functions. Womanhood should depend on how people self-identify. Full-stop.”

Day Twenty-Six or Twenty-Seven or Thirty or However Damn Long it Takes Because Cycles are Ever-Changing and “Normal” is a Myth

Menstruation is actually rare in the animal kingdom, experienced only by us, primates, some species of bats, elephant shrews, and the Cairo spiny mouse. That’s it.

I don't know what the significance of this is, the uniqueness or the commonality. I don't know if elephant shrews spend those days resting, or if primates eat more when they shed their linings. I don't know if spiny mice howl with the pain of cramps or if bats bleed with the turning of the moon. There is so much I don't know about menstruation—mine, yours, or theirs. But I'd like to know more. I'd like to talk about it.

What I do know for sure is we deserve better, better, better.

Geneva Toland is a writer, farmer, naturalist, and educator residing on Báxoje territory (Ames, IA). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Canary Literary Magazine, West Trade Review, and the Farmer-ish Journal, among others. She is currently a student in Iowa State University's MFA program in Creative Writing and the Environment.