worldsaway

She stopped talking to me.

Not all at once. There wasn’t a fight or a dramatic goodbye. Just silence. The kind that settles into a home so slowly you almost convince yourself it has always been there.

I was growing up.

My body was doing what bodies do. My voice was changing. My thoughts were becoming my own. I didn’t know that none of it was wrong. I only knew that the older I became, the quieter she became.

Then I got my first period.

It’s supposed to be one of those days mothers remember forever. The day they hold their daughters a little closer. The day they say, “You’re okay. This is normal.”

Not us.

That night, I stood beside her bed in the dark.

“Mom,” I whispered.

She stirred.

“Mom,” I whispered again.

“What?” she mumbled.

“I’m bleeding… a lot.”

She sighed.

“Okay… well, you know what that is, right?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Okay.”

She rolled onto her other side and went back to sleep.

I never told her we didn’t have any pads.

I never told her I was scared.

Knowing what a period was didn’t mean I knew what to do when it finally happened to me. It didn’t make the blood any less frightening. It didn’t stop the cramps twisting through my stomach or answer the questions that kept circling my mind.

So I went to the bathroom alone.

I folded toilet paper into my underwear because it was the only thing I could think to do. I stripped the blood-soaked sheets from my bed as quietly as I could, laid a towel beneath me, and climbed back under the covers.

I didn’t sleep much that night.

I lay awake, listening to the silence in the house. Wondering if this was what becoming a woman was supposed to feel like. Wondering if everyone cried the first time. Wondering if everyone did it alone.

The cramps came in waves.

So did the tears.

Children are remarkably good at making sense of things that don’t make sense.

So I did what children do.

I made it my fault.

I told myself I had grown up too soon.

That I had changed into someone she didn’t want anymore.

That if my body had stayed small, maybe she would have stayed too.

For years, I carried that belief without realizing it. As though my body had betrayed us both. As though becoming a woman had been an act of disobedience.

How dare I start my period.

How dare I grow up.

It took me years to understand that my growing up was never the tragedy.

The tragedy was that the person who should have walked beside me couldn’t bear to watch me become someone separate from her.

Someone she could not shape.

Someone she could not keep small.

Someone she could no longer control.