Written by Stella Walker
Illustration by Harriet Sherlock
This piece was originally published in ‘Vestige,’ Bossy’s 2023 print edition.
CW: Discusses an eating disorder.
I wake up dying. My abdomen is trying to kill me. I stagger to the bathroom. The toilet paper comes away red. Fuck. Fuck. Why am I shitting blood?
Wait. It’s my period. Oh. Groggy panic subsides.
I stay on the loo for a few minutes. It stinks like summer, a mix of hot laundry tiles and body smells and an air wick that smells vaguely like garbage bags. There is a fly in here, too. It keeps buzzing near my head, but I can’t see it.
This is my first period in four years. Not quite as ceremonious as it sounds, but there you go. I’ve waited for this moment for so long. Hoped, prayed, wished, all that. Now here I am. Shitting blood with sleep in my eyes.
Some friends don’t react when I tell them. To be fair, I mention it casually, affecting nonchalance. By the way. I ask one if she’s got a spare tampon. It’s only when we’ve made it to the bathroom that it drops, and she flips out. I feign bashfulness: Oh, it’s not that big of a deal. Lies. It’s a fucking huge deal. I feel like cartwheeling. I check my nails. No one can know how gratifying I find this all.
At the same time, it feels strange when people react at all. !! omg congratulations !! like I’ve told them I’m pregnant. I point this out to one friend. They giggle. It is a bit weird. We move on. Secretly, I’m a bit hurt. You aren’t meant to take me at my word.
My mum cries down the phone when I tell her. I do too.
…
I see someone on TikTok joke about how they free-bleed to gaslight their period into finishing early. I had forgotten about that game. The pad is dry when I wake up, so I take the risk. I should know better than to gamble with white skirts. I’m out of practice.
…
I have to ask my housemate for a tampon that first morning. I feel bad; she is in a rush. Taller than me and dressed for work, she looks like a proper grown-up. I stand by the door in my pyjamas while she looks in her drawers. Big sister shit. Like the first time all over again.
…
My other housemate lends me her blood stone. It is a small, smooth pebble, brown on one side and dullish grey on the other. She handed it to me brown side up, but wet—under water it changes to a deep, ruby red. I’ve got it on my windowsill at the moment. At night, if I remember, I run it under the tap. It really does look like blood, like a pool of red liquid trapped under a clear surface.
To be honest, I am not quite sure what it does, or is meant to do. It is certainly beautiful, though. And she gave it to me with such significance, with such kindness and such love, that it has a certain meaning for me now, anyway.
…
When I was starting to recover, I spent a lot of energy divorcing my sense of self from my body. I had thought about it enough, too much, and didn’t want to think about it anymore. It was easier to think of my body as a machine. Machines don’t fail, if you give them enough fuel. Food is fuel. I told myself that I – ‘I’ – am not my body. My body merely facilitates my mind; it is my avatar. I supposed that ‘I’ must be somewhere between my ears and behind my forehead.
And that kind of thinking worked, at first. It got me back to health. No small thing.
But detachment only gets you so far. It turns out that I am not just a mind, nor my body just a machine.
…
Don’t worry. I won’t go into gratuitous detail. Eating disorders have been glamorised enough by literature (thanks Skins) to scare me off writing about it more explicitly. I am also not as immune from bullshit as I would like to be, from thinking that I shouldn’t talk about my ED now that I don’t “look” like I have one. Whatever that means. I’ll shut up anyway.
(But you’re talking about it now. What an attention-seeker.)
…
It’s day four now, and I am pretty sure that I have bled through. I am uncomfortable and sweaty and I really need to go deal with it. I really don’t want to do the waddle through the busy café. What if it’s on my jeans? Why are there so many people? I don’t even have a jumper cool cool it’s fine. Why is the bathroom so far away? Thank fuck these seats are black. Ok. I just stood up and checked. It’s fine. I hate this. Having a womb sucks. Wait. No. I don’t mean that. I am suddenly terrified of never getting a period again. What if I scare it off with my bad thoughts? Is psychosomatic amenorrhea a thing?
…
One of my favourite artists died the other day. I see the post from his management team while I’m scrolling to wake up. (I know it’s a bad habit I’m working on it fuck off). More groggy panic. This time no relief.
I spend the morning listening to his music and watching old interviews. I call my mum and cry to her. I berate myself for how selfish I am being. I didn’t even know the guy. What about his family?
Wallowing feels good.
My mum suggests that I might be a bit hormonal. I nearly bite her head off. Only yesterday she was crying with me for joy. That was quick.
But so what if I am? Would it be so bad? Am I not a body?
…
I know menstruation is not a universally joyous event. Nor is it universally feminine or female. Don’t get it twisted: this is not about gender. I would hate for this to be read as a “women’s interest” piece. The solace I derive from conversations with my mum and my housemates is not because of some vague notion of the feminine divine, nor even slightly more concrete ones of maternity and sisterhood. Let’s steer clear of TERF town. I don’t feel any more “womanly” for regaining the capacity to shed my endometrium.
Embodied, though. Maybe. That is the word one friend uses; she asks me: do you feel more embodied?
Yeah. I like that one.
My joy has nothing to do with feeling like a woman, and everything to do with feeling in my body. After years of estrangement, I have come home to myself. All the intellectual groundwork has paid off. I have internalised all the mantras. Once a month, I feel like pure shit about it. But, for now, I am too grateful to care.
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