Andreea’s Story

I don’t remember exactly how old I was, either 11 or 13, when I first got my period. The fact that I don’t remember points to how uneventful bleeding was in my family. I was raised by matriarch warriors - Mama and her mother Mamaia. Like all of us they had internalized patriarchy, and they both expressed it in different ways.

Mamaia set the tone for how everything was getting done. I was spending the summer like I did most years up to high school at her home in the country and I was in her company when I first bled. She had surgical instructions: “Go clean yourself (in her outhouse as she did not have an indoor bathroom nor running water), grab some cotton rolls from my room and put on fresh underwear, then wash your stained pair right away. Quickly! and be discreet, this is a woman’s business, nobody needs to know”.

I don’t recall Mama having a conversation with me after the fact. There was no need after all, she had exposed me to her own bleeding early on. I would see her change her pads faster than it would take her to slip into her shoes. She taught me how to be an invisible hare. You see, domestic violence had us both in a muted coalition.  

Getting my period wasn’t anything glamorous, it only brought more responsibility. Yet another thing a woman has to deal with that a man doesn’t. I was taught how to hide my used pads in the trash so as to not disgust Tata.

These women – they were stoics, and they were raising another one. Such went my rite of passage. Coming more into myself in a world full of confusing contradictions: transparency of what it looks like but forbiddance to leave a trace, discipline but in its harsh aspect. Care and love but withheld.

Stoicism was there to keep me safe. It is a reliable anchor still. And today, I leave indentations. 

-Andreea, she/they, 33