Day 3. But I had symptoms since:

Day 3
But I had symptoms since: 



Part way through my first menstruation cycle is when the pain really started to hit me. I was 14 in fact my birthday had just passed and I was feeling weird but didn’t think about it, I went to sit on the toilet and saw blood oozing into the bowl from between my legs. I burst into tears, as far as I was concerned that blood meant the beginning of the end when it came to being pain free, to do what I want when I wanted, the end of being able to wear what I wanted, the end of having good attendance at school or anything. Sure I didn’t know these things to be true in my case…. Well I didn’t know YET. But my mom had been very honest about how her period affected her life (she was diagnosed with endometriosis also) so I had reason to be scared. Sure there was no guarantee that it would mean I would have the same issues as her, but her mother had terrible periods that would leave her crippled in pain and unable to move, and so did her mother (so my mom, grandma, and great-grandma) all sounded like they suffered from endometriosis.

After I stopped crying and was able to tell my mom why I was crying in the bathroom I was able to find the amusing side of it all. We had recently moved to a very “white” town, that was really rather wealthy, or everyone I went to school with was, so while I was crying about the arrival of my menses, I knew other girls in my class were celebrating the arrival of threes, bragging about it and so on. For me it was my dirty secret, as none of the girls understood, I simply had to be making it up, as THEY didn’t lose control of their legs while on their period, or throw up…… As boys had nothing to compare it to I most often found them the most understanding so tried to stick with more guy then girlfriends.

Photograph credit: "Cubicle 5" by AbsentAsI on deviantart.com