THE HORROR OF THE RED!

Imagine Bleeding for 12 days and 12 nights, something that I was totally unprepared for! To make matters worse, I still had to walk to school every day and with only a Tissue to hold the bleeding because I was too ashamed to have been in my periods at the age of 11!Pads were very expensive that my mother could not afford to buy me a packet. And by the rate at which the Red was spilling, I needed at least 8 packets, which obviously we could not afford.

All kinds of thoughts would go through my mind then, what did I ever do to deserve being born as a girl child! At this moment, I truly hated being born a female. I hated God for creating me a girl! I hated everything about being a girl. All this was the horror of the Red. I do not think there was anyone in my home who really understood what I was going through.

I remember the day like it was just yesterday, that day when the red finally showed up. I was just 11 years old, and being the youngest of the three sisters, it came as a shock that my red came when I was so young. To make matters worse, I was not prepared to handle such a thing. No one in my house was. I wasn’t expecting to wake up one morning and find my panty all red! I was beyond horrified.

So the Red finally came, but I was so ashamed to even tell my mum because I didn’t understand why I was bleeding! Did I cut myself!? Am I going to Die!? These were the thoughts going through my mind. What would my mother think? Since I couldn’t tell anyone, it became my big little secret, which was not very easy to keep because I was now beginning to spot badly! The Red managed to spoil all my stuff, my panties, my towel, my bedsheet, the sofa, nothing was spared by this horror! After struggling an entire Sunday morning through to evening, finally my big sister caught up with me, then the drama began in the name of 'This girl can finally get pregnant!'.

What made the Red a true horror for me wasn’t the lack of pads but how everyone treated me now. My mother called me into their bedroom and didn’t explain much to me about what was going on in my body, all she was concerned with was that the Red finally meant that I can be someone’s mother! And she made it very clear to me that if I ended up pregnant I will be kicked out of the home! I was just 11! Bleeding for 12days wasn’t the horror either , the words were the horror! Because with these words my childhood came to a stop! Just Like that, I couldn’t play with my friends of the opposite sex anymore because I could get pregnant! Just like that, I wasn’t allowed to play with my dolls coz I was now a grown woman, at 11! I was a grown woman. this was the saddest day of my life, God was so unfair to me. Yes, I had seen the Red, but mentally I was still a baby. I loved to play, I loved to run around, I loved being free. But for some reason the red had brought anxiety to my mother, it made her so horrified that every time I was out playing I could be organizing to get pregnant! Therefore, with the Red, I was now on a lock down and a lock out.

I saw my friends continue to play blissfully, without a care in the world but myself, I was carrying the world on my shoulders. My mother brought to me rolls of tissue and showed me how to turn one into a nice pad. 12 days I went through the tissue like there was a drought until finally on the 13th day, I woke up and I was normal again! Physically I was normal but my whole life was turned inside out. So much was expected of me. How I wished I could go back to being the young carefree girl but that time had already passed.

It has been 2 decades since the first time I saw the Red, and a lot has changed over the years. I now have my own little girl, she is 7. My daily prayer for her is that, she wont lose her childhood like I lost mine because of the red. I pray for her that when her red finally comes, It will be when she has enjoyed being a child, not at 11 like mine, maybe from 14 she can understand what the red means. I pray for me too, that I will be a better guide for her as she embraces womanhood gracefully.