Radical Periods

I stopped shaming myself for having a period recently. I stopped trying to open my pad quietly in the bathroom. I stopped hiding the pack of menstrual discs I get at the store behind my other purchases, sliding them over the counter like a suspicious trade. I stopped whispering about it like it was a secret that every so often, I bleed and transform. 

I understand why I hid it away for a while. Jokes, the worst being ‘geez why so moody, are you on your period or something?’ Taboo, there was a ban on tampon and pad TV commercials until 1972. Fear, am I bleeding through these pants, or is this pain manageable enough for me to get through the day?

I felt severe confusion for a long time. ‘Period talk’ seems to be its own special, coded language. For many reasons (some listed above), the code of the period is sacred. Not everyone experiences menstrual cycles the same way. It is a unique part of people’s lives with unique meaning. 

The presence or absence of a period may mean different things. An absence can create a run on sentence that seem to keep going forever and ever and ever, and OMG when it finally shows up after a certain amount of time. . . BAM! There it is. The presence of a frequent period. Breaks up the time between words. Thoughts. Ideas. Memories. To understand its impact on language imagine removing the period all together and you create something entirely new; a brand new dialogue, a brand new genre, a brand new “newness” with its own era. Periods can be used for a variety of reasons. They don’t even need to have a use to begin with, often they simply show up. Periods signify the stop of one thing and the start of another. More radical than the comma, I would argue, as the period holds a definitive space. Here is the beginning and here is the end and in between there are words, feelings and sensations, and you can arrange those however you want them to be until the next one shows up. The letters in between the period signify momentum, moving you along to keep reading and keep exploring. 

Red ink carries its own weight. Typically associated with edits, revisions, transformation, red ink exists to stand out over plain text. There is a boldness to write in red ink, its permanence and flash draw in the ever critical eye. Looking at red ink spilled over white paper, the colors clash. The evidence is tainted with crimson and the words are on fire. 

I’m here all week folks! 

HCXO, Aimee 

• hercampus
• hercampusmillersville
• life experience
• menstrual health
• Millersville University
• period
• Red
• tampon