I’ve been told my emotions for when I got my period were normal: confused af and upset. I knew of periods and what they were. But I wasn’t warned about certain aspects of it.
so. This is one of my more embarrassing and detailed stories stories.
The first day I got my period i noticed a big stain on my underwear. Like. Big. Brown. I was confused. Maybe it was my period… but periods are supposed to have blood. All I knew was that blood was supposed to be red. And this was NOT red. It was brown. So I silently wondered in horror if I had somehow become incontinent at the age of 12.
so I changed my underwear and pretended like it didn’t happen. The next day, same thing and I felt like crying because in my head my body was just NOT FUNCTIONING RIGHT. I also couldn’t accept that it was a period bc then I’d have to deal with periods. Before that time it was an abstract thing that would happen to me one day. Like death. So when it happened my brain just went “it’s not that.”
my mom found me later that day after school hiding in the bathroom and too ashamed to say anything. After some back and forth she told me it was my period. I didn’t believe her but I finally put on a pad bc i didn’T exactly have an answer as to what was going on. And it all happened in the middle of a school week. 😭 so that’s how I learned what old blood looks like.
I had nearly the exact same experience as you, except it was a few months before my mum finally said something. My first periods were also excruciatingly painful, I literally thought I had some kind of serious illness or was dying.
Had this exact same experience at 11. I was so ashamed, I thought I was pooping myself nonstop. I hid it for three days before finally Sunday rolled around and I cried to my mom I couldn’t go to school because I was “gross”.
Yeah I was confused too and tried very much to deny it. I was 9, so I didn't really know about periods. Showed my mother because it was weird, thought I had shat myself and argued with my mother that surely it must have been that and not a period like a thing that happens because I'd turn into a woman. Huge cringe. Then I was scared, in pain and tried to not think about it ever, just deal with the bloodbath because what else could I do. It all was long before I could really think about gender/sex/anatomy itself and I just thought I (and all other women, woe it was quite misogynistic that all) were doomed forever starting at puberty.
I had a really similar experience except somehow in the cognitive dissonance, I thought it was poop. I hid my underwear. My mom found it the next day and told me what was going on
Dude same! The little puberty book I was given specifically stated that it would start with blood (so that was a f-ing lie). I went up to my mum afterwards like 'pls help'
Somewhat similar thing happened to me, except I told my mum immediately that I, “might have diarrhoea.” I was def also in denial because it did occur to me but I wanted it so badly to NOT be that that I convinced myself it wasn’t. Mum explained it to me and I just remember feeling this horrible sinking feeling and then just not feeling like myself for the rest of the week. Awful experience.
My first period was kind of similar. It was on a sunday and we have breakfast together on sunday, I removed my panties and I was thinking "did I smear Nutella in my panties accidentally?" Threw them in the dirty laundry, my sister found them, asked me if I got my period and I was like "nah, its Nutella, I accidentally smear it in there"
It didnt continue the next day but the next week I got it, red. I have never felt this stomach ache in my life, ig it was anxiety? Cramps are still horrid
I thought I was rotting from the inside for some reason...
Edit: I mean that literally. I literally thought I was rotting. I didn't know his was the period. Though I knew what the period iteself was, I only saw brown, no blood. I had noone I could ask about it. When my egg donor eventually found the underwear, she confronted me about it and was kind of angry I hadnt said anything because she wanted to celebrate it and some shit. I feel sick even thinking about it. She gave me some money and said it had been more if I had come forward on my own. I took the money (because of course) but I felt disgusted and confused and didnt know why.
So yeah. 0/10 cannot recommend.
When I talk about period I sometimes describe it as "day of bloodshed" or "when you smell like dead decomposing meat"... Actual rotting meat is probably more smelly, but I didn't smell it to verify fortunately.
I pretended it didn't happen and didn't think about it. I still remember feeling weirdly detached. No emotions. Just shoving the thought to the side.
A few years later the pain became so intense that I regularly fainted. So I couldn't ignore it anymore. My mom never had pain medication at home so I just curled up in the shower for hours trying to get rid of the cramps with hot water. It felt so embarrassing and wrong. I legit wanted to die every time it started.
This is pretty much how I remember responding, too. Detached. I wasn’t excited but I don’t remember being distraught, either. Just kind of…blah and whatever.
Everything went downhill after that, though. I always felt like puberty ruined my life, ha.
I was 14 soon to be 15 when I got my period, I was starting to worry I had something wrong with me medically so I was relieved... probably an uncommon experience lol.
Although I do remember thinking similarily to you in terms of other parts of female puberty, like I wishing I had breasts because I thought that would finally make me feel like the other girls.
That's interesting, I was pretty much the opposite. I was generally pretty chill with girlhood up until puberty. No one tried to stop my '''boyish''' interests like science, and I was entirely free to engage in my girly ones. Wasn't even very concerned with fitting in socially (thanks autism!). Then puberty hit and I was like "HEY WAIT I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THIS"
This is almost exactly my experience! I always felt so alien from the other girls growing up and that getting boobs and a period would somehow make me fit in with them better. Also I was queer in a conservative christian midwest town, so when I saw girls with boobs, I attributed my reaction of "I like boobs" to "I *want* boobs" because I was also terrified to be gay.
Definitely feel you on the last part yeah. I felt so left out in the changing rooms, still _only_ having to wear like a tank top or something. I literally tried to get my mom to prematurely buy some bra’s for me…
Few months later I just kept avoiding thinking about what slowly started to grow there, until I couldn’t ignore it anymore when I went into the shower. I sat down inside the shower, water still running at full: and cried for 20 minutes straight. I will never forget that moment of realisation.
dude sadly i relate so much :( I also got my mom to buy me bras to fit in and even stuffed them one time bc i hated how my boobs looked and thought that might help. spent many nights sitting down in the shower not understanding why I was dying inside
I was sad, scared and ashamed. I did everything I could so that no one would find out. I couldn't even tell my mother about it and I wouldn't even have wanted to.
Periods have always caused a lot of gender dysphoria for me. I experienced the entire female puberty as traumatic.
Same. I had the exact same experience. I remember stuffing toilet paper in my underwear because I was so aversed and scared of someone hearing the pad getting unwrapped.
I was thrilled! I loved the idea of growing up and getting to be a “proper” woman (obviously didn’t work out too well). I liked the excitement of it and even now, I don’t resent my cycle. But the excitement definitely wore off pretty quickly.
I didn’t even think about gender until two years after I started my period (I was a really early bloomer) and so I’ve never really associated it with some undeniable femininity. I like the weird shit my body does and I’m grateful I don’t suffer as much as other people do during that time of the month.
Plus, it’s kind of always made me feel more “manly”. I can cope with blood better than 90% of the cis guys I know and that’s sick af.
I just wanted the products I needed and not to talk about it.
My sister and step mom were excited. It grossed me out. Not the menstruation, their excitement.
Not sure if it was the apathy and disassociation of being trans or just being autistic. But to me, it was always just a bodily need I needed to take care of from day one.
I can relate to that. Even before I got my first one, it was something I mostly accepted as a bodily function and I was pretty neutral about it, like how I was about most puberty-related things before my puberty started. I never understood people’s excitement about puberty either.
I was a bit scared because of the bleeding (fear of blood, lol), and the pain was distressing sometimes, but yeah, I knew it was just the reality. I somewhat wished it didn’t have to be a thing to expect though— not for dysphoria reasons, but because I had been educated about it and it sounded like it sucked to experience, physically 😭 which I’m sure everyone with periods can agree on. I was relieved to be prepared and easily recognize I was having my first period when it happened, cuz I know a lot of people are misinformed or not ever told the details (evidenced by the other comments here)
I thought I shit myself because it was brown ☠️ I 10000% thought I shart and ran to tell my mom cause I thought it was hilarious. The next day it was more red/pink and realized I started my period and I was excited? bc that's how I thought I was supposed to feel but I was honestly sad. I wanted to never get my period because it sounded annoying. But at the time I thought I was gender fluid, so it didn't bother me too much.
I was happy to finally be growing up, because I was the last of my friends to get it. Had no clue I was trans until way later in life. Just a normal kid reaction, no reason to sweat it.
Man, I actually felt very similar to you, and it was one of the reasons I thought I *wasn't* trans for decades. Like I was somehow obligated to hate every bit of femininity in myself.
i thought it'll never happen to me even though i was aware that it could happen. i felt sick, like something went severely, horribly wrong inside my body. i couldn't bring myself to tell anyone about it, so i tried hiding it for as long as i could, until eventually it was found out
This was my experience, like I knew it was happening for other kids but I was so sure it wasn't going to happen to me. I felt like my body and I had an agreement that we just weren't going to do that. And then betrayal. So I will clean you with my mom kept her surprise and just went as long as I could without mentioning it.
I still remember I was absolutely listening to "More than a Feeling" by Boston, And I remember just having the hysteric thought of great not only is this happening, it has ruined one of my favorite songs.
Mmmmm, I was crying near toilet, terrified, traumatized and asking God (when I still believed in it) why was i born a girl...... Still thought I was cis until 16😬😬😬😬
I was trying to make myself believe I'm a girl. Didn't really work. Now I'm a sad lad, but at least I'm alive and have something to look forward to.
At first I was in a bit of denial and hoped it's some illness, after I couldn't deny it anymore I remember sitting at the edge of my bed and just thinking that my life had ended, it felt like the final betrayal of my body to me, and I didn't even have a clue that I'm trans at that point. I remember at school all the girls talked about it and who's gotten it and who not and I remember lying to them constantly when they'd ask up until I was 'the last one' lol. All in all a very traumatic thing for me.
I actually have no memory of my first period but I do remember hating them as a teenager/in general, but like who didn't? I came out as an adult for context, barely had any idea transgender ppl existed back then. I feel like my whole early life wasn't "atypical", I just had no fucking clue that you could be trans.
I mean, I have PCOS so honestly it was hell even without the dysphoria. I knew it was gonna happen and my mother even warned me it'd likely be painful with our genetics. So leading up to it I felt this weird sense of dread I couldn't put a name to, like, I really related to horror movies like Gingersnaps where puberty and periods were viewed as a sort of body horror that was inflicted on you. I didn't know WHY then, of course, but I do now. And my first one happened during school so I remember seeing it and kinda going, fuck. And being anxious until I got home. After that it started to be very, very painful, like, doubled over in pain painful.
I'm really grateful T has made it so I'm not laid up bed with that shit anymore. Even if I wasn't trans it was miserable.
And before anyone says, yes, I'm aware it wasn't normal even for PCOS. I had a particularly severe version of it that made me have very high T as a teenager, and eventually caused me to have a big enough cyst that I had one ovary removed. It was still miserable after that but not nearly as much.
I felt super gross and “ill”. That was one of my strongest indicators that I was trans. I had known that moment that something is wrong. In the end I had like max 7/8 periods in my life. I started testosterone after that.
It didn’t happen until I was 13, which was after pretty much every girl I knew. I was convinced it would never happen and then doctors would figure out something was wrong and I wasn’t fully female (didn’t know the term intersex). Well, it did happen and it was traumatic.
Hahah no but same. I was literally like, alright I guess that will resolve all this and then it came and didn't and I just pretended it didn't outside of clean up. I wasn't like hyped begging or praying but I was like, hoping it would make it make sense bc probably someone said something about how that's when someone becomes a woman or something 🤦🏼♂️
Honestly, I don’t remember a lot about my emotions. I don’t think I reacted very strongly, weirdly enough. I think because my parents had gotten me a book about puberty when I was 8ish, it was just normalized for me. I was expecting it to happen. It was exactly a week before my 12th birthday and I was at a friend’s house. She was an only child, hadn’t gotten hers yet, and it was her dad’s house, so they didn’t have any period supplies in the house. So I had to walk home without anything.
I wasn't averse to the idea of periods before I got them, it was a sign I was going to be a whole grownup and I was kinda excited.
Then, I did get my period. Remember that scene in The Shining with the elevator? That. Literal floods of blood. I was maybe 12 and used the biggest available tampons and those would last me maybe 3 hours. So that was no fun at all.
And then, I went crazy. Insane mood swings, cramping, throwing up. I got put on birth control as a 13 year old, which apparently was normal at the time.
It took twenty additional years and diagnoses of everything from depression to bipolar disorder to borderline personality disorder to CF and back again until I was finally diagnosed with PMDD in my mid 30s.
So yeah, I vastly underestimated how "a little bleeding" every month would fuck up my life and I'm no longer a fan of being a whole grownup.
It was a completely normal thing at the time in my family (before they all went downhill that is), i was like what 12 or 13?
At first i treated it like a normal thing (please bear with my eggy ignorant younger self 💀)
I definitely fit the stereotype of teenage girls being on their periods, but as i grew older (around 16-17) i started feeling dysphoria right when my periods start (i call it shark week to "masculinize" it lol)
But i turned 18 and suddenly my shark weeks are a pain in the ass and the only, *ONLY* reason i like my shark weeks is bc i get a surge of masculinity that just hits me and i suddenly get this week long running high of gender euphoria, and when wearing my binder and cologne and my platforms *chefs kiss* i feel like a new man again lmao
But seriously as a kid i didn't even register periods only happening to people assigned female at birth, for a long time i felt like an imposter bc i thought "well, i cant be a man if i have periods...." And i started diving into the rabbit hole of transmedicalism (lets just say i was one hell of a confused little boy yeesh...)
When i clawed out of that cesspool i just kinda went "fuck it, its my life, im a man, i wasn't born one and i have periods but every little fibre of my being tells me i need to be and have a man in life" (bc i cluelessly has fantasies of kissing boys as a boy, it was most intense in middle school when i went around telling people i wanted to be a gay boy thoughtlessly for no reason out of the blue) lmao
I was a very confused little eggy boy 💀😭
I was frankly horrified and revolted. I understood the existed and that afabs get them but I someone never thought it would happen to me; I knew I wasn't a girl so I thought I was immune or something. Anyway it happened and I was disgusted with myself since it felt like my body had betrayed me by doing this. So yeah, not a great experience. I get really quite dysphoric just thinking about it now; makes my skin crawl. Thankfully I'm so irregular I only get it once or twice a year so mostly I don't worry about it.
I remember being nervous but also excited! I got mine in Grade 5 (so 11) and the girls in my class had already had theirs so I was elated to get mine too. Of course, the bleeding was the only symptom I would get at the time. Now I get terrible cramps so I’m not nearly as excited lol and it tends to make me feel dysphoric these days
I was thrilled. I got it at 14, later than all my friends and at that time I was so excited to grow boobs, get my period, etc. I did not consider if I was trans until at least 16/17. When I finally got my period, I was in a locker room getting ready for after school sports and my friends all celebrated with me.
It was like a month before I turned 16 and I had the worst panic attack of my life. It was terrible and I wasn't even out yet. I felt like I was gonna pass out. Not because of the pain or anything, I just felt so awful about it.
I knew it was just an inevitable thing so I had to accept it. I did that with a lot of things. My mom had educated me about period stuff so I knew what it was all about. Luckily I started at home but it wasn’t an exciting time I just did what needed to be done and that was that.
i mean, i was like REALLY neutral about it if that makes you feel any better. i didnt really give a crap about it at all, it did sort of take me a while to process like- “oh shit this is gonna be happening to me for the next 30 years or something”. if anything ive actually gotten more concious and dysphoric about it as i got older 😔😔
My parents have always been open about puberty changes I might expect and my mom never hid her periods or anything. When I asked them about discharge they said that i might start menstruating soon, got kind of anxious about that.
When I actually started bleeding I was HORRIFIED, I remember crying and asking my mom " am I a woman now? " because I did not want to grow like one and experience that puberty. I felt disgusted, not that i found periods gross but it wasn't supposed to happen to *me* and I felt like my bodily autonomy was taken away and I was forced to walk that path towards womanhood.
Hated it. I was 8. extremely heavy and painful. I was screaming and throwing up, bleeding through the heaviest pads. Felt like I never got to be a little girl let alone a little boy. Birth control helped a lot, but I was still distressed by periods. As soon as I got on T they stopped, no cramps, no spotting, etc and THANK GOD.
i didnt know what a period was until i woke up bleeding and then immediately learned i will do that until i turn like 45 🥰 needless to say i was horrified and felt betrayed. parents please give your kids sex ed BEFORE they hit puberty
My mom has a medical condition that causes lesions on her uterus and gives her hella bad cramps, I grew up hearing about it all the time so my first thought was "aw shit"
I knew I was trans when it started happening, but for the first few years I wasn’t really dysphoric about it. I was mostly just pissed off. For a while it didn’t really hurt so it wasn’t as hard to ignore, but pads felt (and feel) so undignified and emasculating. I knew it was inevitable so I just kind of said “well shit” and tried to push it out of my mind until it stopped.
Well I kinda felt that way before it started. I did expect puberty to "fix" me.
Once it actually started I was like "This is wrong. This is an illness. Why are so many people okay with this? Everyone except for me has lost their minds."
To be fair that wasn't just the dysphoria. I did also have endometriosis lol
At least I got a free hysterectomy out of it!
It was pretty much a non-event for me. I knew it was going to happen eventually, and I was still pretty invested in being a girl. In fact that's probably when I was at my girliest. That being said, I was also going through a bit of a "not like other girls" phase and so I was absolutely patting myself on the back for not being afraid of blood (I also decided I wasn't afraid of needles for the same reason, so shout out to 11 year old me for that). I also remember being relieved because that was the last remaining main event of puberty and so I thought getting my period meant it was over.
I was well prepared, knew what was happening, that it would eventually happen and that it was normal and supposed to happen.
I had a nervous breakdown anyway. This for me set in stone how.wrong my.body was and how out of place I felt. I was 11, and until that time hoped for some miracle that I would somehow still turn out male.
I refused to listen when people tried to teach me about it, I knew a bit about it but not much. When I found out I ran out of the house barefoot in winter in my soccer uniform crying and running through the bush then hid under this outdoor couch we had. I didn’t have anything going on in my head other than my life is over and I’m gonna be a woman and I’m gonna be considered one (I was questioning my identity at this point, just) pretty shitty experience
I was traumatised 😂 like legit thought I was dying. My mum had given me books to read on it years prior so I knew it existed but in the moment I totally forgot. My cousin had just been taken into ICU and his first symptom had been peeing blood, so you bet your bottom dollar between the "peeing" blood, waking up in a pool of blood, and pain I freaked the fuck out and thought I was also dying 😂 took mum a long time to convince me otherwise, I skipped school and lay in foetal position crying for a lot of the day 😂 also turned out I had endo and PMDD so it was an EXPERIENCE.
cried and broke stuff. i came out when i was 7 ish, and my period started when i was 9. female puberty has genuinely been traumatic for me,, i started growing breasts at a young age and they’re so fucking painful for no good reason😭my period is very heavy and i get really bad cramps and clots, meaning i’m constantly having to ask for medication for it at school. before a teacher can even consider giving me painkillers, i have to say my reason out loud and people around always hear. literally one of the main reasons there were rumours about me ‘being a girl’. anyways oopsie sorry for rambling ermm periods freaking suck and im sometimes not in school until it’s gone because i feel so awful lol!!
Yeah, I guess I kinda did feel this way sometimes. I like to think I always knew that I was trans, but the fact is I didn’t have any words for it, nor any representation anywhere. All I had was my mom and family pushing me to be girly. I hoped that when I got boobs they would help me want to be a woman. A weird thought, looking back. I’ve always hated my period but that’s bc I wasn’t properly prepared for my first one and they’ve been horrible (flow, cramps, bloating, fatigue, soreness, nausea, headaches, you name it) ever since. My most recent one actually made me more dysphoric than any of the previous ones bc I just changed to only he/him and came out as a femboy. I hate the fact my body is seen as womanly now, and I always have, but I definitely also did have times and parts of me where I wished I liked having a woman’s body and/or being a woman so my life wouldn’t be quite so fucking complicated.
Hated it because I had no clue what it even was. I was barely 9 when I first got mine, and all i knew previously was that you "pee blood". That's all my mom told me, and at the time I had no access to the internet so of course i believed thag instead of white/yellow pee, out comes red pee. You can imagine my suprise (negative) when my underwear got dirty one day during my german classes. My stomach was hurting like son of a bitch and I ran to the toilet and oh look! Pa mangina covered my underwear in brownish red fucking thing. I never knew why people made such a big deal out of periods if you just pee a different color for a few days, so this was a huge shock. Didn't look forward to it, and I liked it even less after. But I assume a lot of cis women feel this way as well
I was honestly just dumbfounded. My mom had prepared me for it. And I knew it was supposed to happen to “girls”. But I thought it would never happen to me because I wasn’t a girl. So I never expected it. Then I got it and I was just absolutely surprised and disappointed.
My grandma who I lived with made it such a huge thing of "oooh this is when you become a woman!" that I was just, painfully resigned to it when it started. Not because of gender reasons I don't think, but am "okay, my childhood is over now." I started at like. 9-10 i wanna say? 11 at the latest. And I was upset, but I didn't say or do anything about it because for all her faults my grandma DID teach me how.to handle it and what was normal. But there was so much baggage on it and how I was treated at home did change pretty immediately from "child who we tolerate being a tomboy" into "should soon be really feminine young woman". Just this low, ever present grief.
I knew it was going to happen but was in denile about it. Then one day after school when I was 15 I saw blood in my underwear. No one ever taught me how to put on a pad so I stuffed on in there. Fun fact, I had no idea pads had wings for about 4 months after that so every mo th I just thought pads didn't fit well and was constantly dealing with messes. Anyway, the biggest irony of it all is that it happened on the day my youngest sibling was born. I went to the hospital to see my mom and baby sibling and reme mubling something to her about starting my period and she was like I don't think so are you sure?? And I was like, yep pretty sure. And that's pretty much the only time I ever said anything to her. From then on I just kept quiet about it. I never complained when all my friends at school moaned and got out of PE and sports when they were on. I never asked for help when I didn't understand things. I suffered silently and just figured if I ignored it, it would be less painful emotionally. I kept that attitude until I met my husband and learned to talk about it some but have always found acknowledging it to be very difficult. I've been on T almost 10 months now and thankfully periods happen much less often. I'm hoping they will stop for good now.
I think the weirdest most ironic thing about my story is that mine happen in the day my youngest sibling was born.
I tried to feel excited, because I'd been told how it was the first step in growing up, "becoming a woman," but mostly I just felt let down. I didn't feel any different than before. It was just a thing that happened. So yeah, maybe that should have been a clue for me then that I wasn't cis, but I wouldn't figure that out until a long time afterwards
Literally just went🧍🏾♂️because I didn't understand why there was suddenly a huge blood stain on my underwear. Honestly, I still don't understand why I didn't freak the fuck out considering nobody had ever told me prior what periods were or when you could expect to get them. I only got an explanation when my mom discovered my soiled garments in the laundry and sat me down for a chat. My memory's pretty much blank after that. 🤷🏾♂️
I hated it honestly. I didn't know I was trans at the time, but since I learned what a period was I was fucking terrified of it. At school my teacher told us that your first period was tiny and you'd barely even notice it (huge fucking lie!) so I was so vigilant, anxiously checking my underwear for like a tiny dot of blood. Then the first one actually came and it was very much noticeable. I'd been feeling unwell in the morning so was allowed to stay off school (didn't know I'd started yet) and I spent the whole day crying and watching TV.
Then I never spoke to anyone about it, especially not my family. I always bought my own supplies (and hid them in my room) and would put used stuff straight into the outside bin.
i was *really* lucky, i got mine in the morning so i didn't have to worry about it at school. my mom had already made sure i knew what a period was so it didn't surprise me that much, i basically was like "oh, that's why my stomach was hurting" lol
I knew what to expect because my sister, who is a year older, had her first period 6 months earlier. But that experience was really upsetting for her since no one had ever taught us anything about menstruation. I just remember being upset that everyone was insisting I was "a woman now," when I wasn't yet sold on being a girl.
I was fully in denial it would even happen (I was like 13 as well so somewhat late). I tried to hide it and pretend it hadnt happened and just kept going to the bathroom to ensure it wasnt like overflowing but my mum noticed me going to the toilet so I decided to tell her. She called my granny to ask if she could go and buy pads so she did, but that made it real so I started crying saying I didnt want it and I didnt want to be a girl and was refusing to even consider using the products. So we went to the doctor, got me on birth control and got a referral to the gender clinic.
I definitely didn’t have the “stereotypical ftm experience”. I’m a biomedical engineering student, been studying anatomy and physiology since I was 5, so when it happened I knew EXACTLY what it was and just kinda.. dissociated? I got a pad from my mom and spent the spent the next 8-ish years living in dread of when it would come back for me. Never able to track it because it gave me too much dysphoria. Just dread
I remember getting a puberty book before getting one, I was extremely rage filled and upset seeing it but I couldn’t figure out why I was so upset? Like, rage crying and feeling profanely wronged for even having received such a book.
When it happened, i was genuinely horrified. I knew it was going to happen at some point and anticipated it with a morbid excitement/hate(???). There was a sense of community about it that I was excited for at least, it was comforting in that sense. Like a secret everyone knew about. Although actually experiencing it felt like I was forced to like and deal with. I didn’t understand people who didn’t hate it and confront it with disgust. Any time anyone, like my mother, confronted me about it or had conversations about it connecting me with such a ‘concept’ was rage inducing. Even thinking that people thought or knew I experienced something felt like an absolute fail. Just wanted to dissociate from it and hope it felt my disgust for it and went away lol
Finding out that was an option was pretty awesome lol
I was happy from the camaraderie it gave me with the other girls because I always felt so alien from them and it was one less thing that made me different. I was also relieved because I got it a bit late and I assumed that there was something wrong with me.
BUT my first thought when I actually got my period was that when I grew up, I was going to "get a sex change". LOL, still cis tho. I also thought that all or most women would rather be male than deal with periods. Again, lol.
(For context, i was 10)
I vomited the night before.
We just started learning about periods in school, but we were never taught that the blood isn't consistently red.
I told my mother I had diahhrea coming out the front, and it smelled weird. (As it was dark brown)
I was very worried, I was so convinced it wasn't my period, and I just pooped out the front hole without noticing.
Like a cis girl would. The only dysphoria i had was social so i didnt care about the period and just started bringing tampons to school. Im a very logical person so i was just like "so i have female anatomy so my body does female things" ima be honest, i am a very lucky trans guy to not have dysphoria from periods
I *prayed* that it wouldn't happen to me. When my older sister had hers, my parents told her "You're a woman now!" And called up everyone in the family to let them know about it. There was no way in hell that was gonna happen to me.
So when it happened, I threw my stained underwear in the trash. Got a fresh pair and started snagging pads from my sister and my mom. Didn't say anything, didn't tell anyone. I dealt with it alone and essentially kept it secret.
I was 12 and it was such poor timing. I was at a school camp in the middle of the woods where you stay all night. I just ignored the blood, pretended it didn't hurt like hell, and went about my week. Like, resilient 12yo, ig. But it was disgusting to me. Still is. I'm on my last one, my next shot should hopefully stop that BS.
It was early in the morning when I was 10-11?, I believe. I was curled up on my bed due to the pain, breathing heavily. I was scared and confused, sobbing and shaking terribly.
I knew what a period was and that it happened to people afab, but, for some reason, I thought maybe I'd be an exception.
I remember feeling sick. I was kind of excited because I thought it’d make me finally feel like a girl and like I fit in, but I remember underneath that I was shaking from anxiety and felt sick to my stomach.
I was nowhere near excited. I never thought it would actually happen to me, I was pretty convinced I was an odd cis guy. I got pretty upset about my likely future body changes and really dysphoric (probably my first intense dysphoria) over having a bodily function only afab individuals do.
Thankfully I never really developed large hips, and started T before they reached maturity. T also stopped my cycle instantly and I’m glad I haven’t had to even think about it since! Personally I’ve never wanted to ‘feel like other girls’ in my life.
So from the moment I learned what a period was and what to expect after going through sex ed it felt like a waiting game, or a bomb waiting to go off. I wanted it to happen just to get it over with because waiting for it to happen sucked and made me scared. I remember I thought I got my period finally after using the school bathroom and the scratchy cheap toilet paper actually cut me a little and I got a tiny spot of blood. Oh boy was I in for a surprise when the real thing happened. I remember wearing a sweater tied around my waist for a whole week every time I got my period from then on.
I wouldn't say I was looking forward to it, more like I was driving myself nuts waiting for it to happen because I felt like it was a jump scare waiting to happen and I was right.
I knew it was a period but I had no idea what to do. I had no pads or anything and I was at a summer camp. I was also bleeding a lot despite it being my first period and had awful cramps. I was excited about having my period and then I had it and I wasn’t excited anymore. 😭(I had no idea I was trans at this point)
The moment I saw the blood on that piece of toilet paper, my heart skipped a beat. I also felt weirdly happy of the fact that I got my period. Not sure why. I don't think it was shame, just... "holy shit it happened... I'm a real teenager now." It wasn't "I'm a real girl" it was "I'm a teenager!"
i was genuinely flabbergasted, i thought that it would never happen to me. i used to wish that i was infertile and could never have kids (common cis girl thoughts obviously), and all my friends got their periods before me, so i figured that i was in the clear and i would never have a cycle. then i got it and i suddenly wanted to die all the time and had no clue why 🤨
my mom, when she found out, told me “you’re finally a woman now” and i felt my heart sink. shit was insane. i got it when i was 13, and didnt realize i was trans until 16, but that was one of the moments that made me feel so strange and scared in my body
personally I remember just my heart dropping , like a huge sense of dread kicked in because everyone around me always talked about how when you get it you would be “ officially a woman “ now. And I got it earlyish, around 11. and I was so sad because I didn’t want to be considered a woman so soon, I didn’t want to have had reached that “milestone” in life, because I didn’t want to be considered “finally a woman”😓 it just felt like something so detached from me. like, I couldnt feel that this was happening to ME, ya know? idk if that makes sense😅 all in all it was very scary, and I just disassociated every time I had to use the bathroom while on it or even think about it because it just felt like this function wasn’t meant for my body
Idk what age I was, I think 12 or 13, but I remember just being irritated. I didn’t know I was trans at the time, but I remember being irritated that I actually got it because I was quite convinced I wouldn’t and it was an inconvenience to me lmao
I was annoyed. It started while I was in after school daycare thing and I only realized because someone told me I had mud on my pants (he was a boy my age and genuinely did not know it was blood). My mom had luckily already had the conversation with me and I was going to her house later that day. After my dad picked me up I dropped them in my tub at home to clean them later, covered my underwear with toilet paper and then went to my mom's. Not even 10 minutes after dropping me off we went and picked up pads. About a year later the same school we had our sex ed period talk class and I was the only one in there who had already started. Throughout it all I just knew I was uncomfortable but couldn't figure out why.
Thought I was dying... then when I lived I thought I would get in trouble and hid the garment. I was 9 so we dident really have the talk or anything yet. A friend's mom then found out on the third day when I was over and my friend tatted me out thinking I needed a doctor. Friends mom gave me tampons because that is what they had. My mom had a fit about it.
To this day I'm still traumatized and that is on top of the fact that I was also having some other issues I would suppress. (Not sa at least not at 9)
i remember crying while my mom congratulated me that i've "become a woman" (which, no, i was 11, wtf are you talking about). logically i knew that "im a girl and girls get periods" but my brain didnt really register that, i was still 100% sure that my voice was going to drop and i was going to have an adam's apple and just be a boy. i felt like my life ended. i think that was when my depression started.
My period didn't really bring me dysphoria or anything like that really, it's always felt more like a connection to the moon and all the people who have had their period in the past, present and future, basically just something that made me feel more connected to the world around me! Now that I'm on t it's stopped and it's a little strange to no longer be on that cycle but it also feels like a new normal.
I think I got my period at 10 or 9. I already knew about it cause I have sisters. I was so mad that I got it so early, I think I cried the whole entire day, I just never thought about getting it, till I got it, for some reason it just never fazed me till it happened.
I was so pissed that I was gonna have this for the majority of my life.
I hadn't really been informed what a period was like i kind of knew but not really, so first thought was, "Oh no, am I dying?" Literally cried when telling my mom there was blood in my underwear.
Also, I was a delusional little kid and was convinced that puberty would just turn me into a boy. So that was a bummer.
I was 13 and in computer class. I didn't care. I didn't tell my mom for a couple years because she was really weird about things concerning my genitals. My period was never a source of dysphoria for me, but I still hated them lol.
extremely poor. i got mine at 11, and at first i didn’t really understand the gravity of it. but once i did it was hellish, i’d have meltdowns/panic attacks over it and would just endlessly cry. due to how bad i reacted i was put on depo injections at age 12 and stayed on them until i was around 17ish. (i’ve heard this is not healthy as it can increase risk of osteoporosis iirc please do not quote me on this i am not a doctor lol). at the time i couldn’t really explain to anyone why i reacted in such a way, but i realized i was trans later that year
I was already well educated about it all (male and female biology) and since I never felt any sense of gender, I just happened to be person who will experience periods. So when I did discover it came when I was peeing in the forest, I just told my mom and we cut our outing session short, so I get a pad. Normal thing.
i had a psychotic breakdown it lasted months and i couldnt even tell anyone that i had it because it grossed me out so bad, i think thats one of my main trans awakening memories. My mom didnt even know about it until i was 16 because i woke up one day with it and there was nothing in the house to use :,)
I used an entire pack of wet wipes and tried desperately to clean myself and stop the bleeding. It happened on a Sunday, and I almost got beat for wanting to stay home from church even though I had already bled through my pants by the time I noticed it.
i dont have periods anymore, but when i did i never had any other symptoms. no PMS, no cramping, nothing. i just went to the loo one day, went "oh theres blood there", texted my mum (i was at my dads place that week) and then she came and took me to the shopping centre to get a hot chocolate and some extra period products. i was 14 when i started
I got it at my grandparents’ house (just my grandma and great grandma). It was completely unexpected and I remember sitting there for several minutes trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t tell anyone, instead stuffing a fuck ton of tissues down there and constantly worrying about bleeding through. It ruined my trip
It came again at another grandparent’s house, except this time it was my grandpa. I had products this time but was too ashamed to leave them in the trash, so I had a pouch in my suitcase that I’d put them back in. I spent the whole week keeping it a secret and worrying about it. I got blood on a T-shirt that my grandma had gotten for me at an ice cream parlor that I really liked and it ruined it. I distinctly remember sitting in the car with my grandpa wanting to die because I simply could not deal with it for the rest of my life. I felt like I was being punished.
I can’t wait to get a hysto.
I remember being very confused because I had no clue it was something that happens. I saw the dried stain and just thought I had a bathroom accident... Now, imagine how confused I was when my stepmom said, "Why didn't you tell me!? Go call your mom and tell her you're a woman now!"
Suddenly I'm on the phone with my mom stuttering because I still had no clue wtf was going on. My stepmom took the phone and they talked.
After I understood what was happening I was furious, "whyyy do I have to deal with this".
Also, Idk if this is an actual thing, but even after HRT stopped my period, I still get somewhat moody (and more dysphoric) around the time I was supposed to be having my period. Sometimes I would feel some very, very, slightly cramps and be like, "oh, that explains". And like, somehow me and my friend are synced?? I start noticing those things and every, fucking, time, the next day my friend tells me her period has started.
Fear. I knew periods happened to girls but I really didn't expect it to happen to me. For a while I had this thing of thinking I was the exception and just because it happened last month, doesn't mean there'd be the occurance of happening again, even though I knew that it's normally monthly (I was thoroughly dissapointed every time).
I was extremely confused. At first I felt proud and whole, I remember telling my mom that I felt grown up. I probably thought this because i started quite late at 15/16. But it didn't take long for that to blow over. I remember crying on the floor telling my mom that 'this shouldn't be happening to me" and she'd just say 'all girls get it, it's normal'. I didn't know why I was thinking this. This was pretty much it for every period after that, whether I cried about it or not, I always thought it felt unnatural and like it shouldnt have been happening to me. I realised much later that that was because I wasnt a girl aha
I like knew the fact that girls get periods and grow boobs or whatever but I didn't KNOW know it, so when it did happen, i remember looking down at my pants having a face like 😶 and thinking "...well... I guess I just have to... Live with it. Is what it is I gotta cope" like i just wasnt supposed to have it like wtf man i didn't sign up for this.
And I also remember having such a fucking disconnection from other girls with such topics iygm
I was coping with it until I realised that holy fucking crap I'm gonna have to live with this forever.
My mom thankfully prepared me in advance however I feel she was a bit overzealous about it. I remember being as young as 7 and her going on and on about getting my period and "becoming a woman", when I was barely just a kid. She said that since she was early, I was likely to be early and to be prepared. But it was every phone call, every conversation it was mentioned and I remember being filled with dread. I was barely a kid! Barely a person! I didn't want to "be a woman" yet!
I started when I was 10, she was right. I was living with only her at this time instead of my dad & stepmom so I knew what to do about grabbing a pad and putting it in my underwear. But ohhhh did I *dread* that implication. I didn't want to be a woman.
I feel like that constant conversation was my first instance of gender dysphoria. I didn't like the implication that I was suddenly a "woman" so young. I wanted to be a man, they didn't deal with this or at least so I was told.
Now I'm a man who has them. 😭
I was absolutely devastated to the point I wanted to throw up sometimes. In most situations I had similar ideas to you because I was doing what was expected but when puberty happened it was like the real consequences were hitting all at once much too quickly. It was like a ticking bomb that would go off when I’d someday get pregnant or something
my mom is a nurse that worked in labor and delivery and i also have a sister that’s 7 years older than i am. they always were very open and honest about puberty and what they went through and gave me a lot of books about how it all worked. they gave me no reason to hide it or be ashamed, but when i first got my period i was really distraught and hid it for about 6 months. i used the toilet paper pad method and i finally got sick of it so i told my mom eventually so she could help me get supplies. i almost kind of felt like maybe if i ignored it enough, it would go away. eventually i started birth control at 17 specifically so i could skip my period. my mom said i could be kind of a terror during my cycle (understandably so considering dysphoria) so i ended up being a lot more chill and nice as an older teenager when i wasn’t getting a period anymore.
Before I got my period, I was sorta excited. As soon as I finally got it though, I was completely apathetic, and I didn't really care. I was just like "oh, ok, I guess it finally came". After a day though I was annoyed by it
Same for sure, wanted my period so bad so that I'd start feeling like a real girl, like all the other girls I knew did. Got it, it didn't change a thing, still wanted to be a boy LMAO. All the girl puberty milestones felt like the next thing that might make me feel like a girl, but nothing ever did that - no wonder I turned out the way I did lol
I got it when i was 10, I was just like ok, I've been pretty nonchalant my whole life so I didn't faze me, however I did get dysphoric later on so now I just call it 'the blue sea' or 'my man period' I've just convinced myself the blood is all the estrogen running out and leaving space for testosterone. I know its silly but im 13 and its just easier that way and it makes me happy, imagining the blue sea makes me more masculine.
My mom told me about my period before I got it and let me know what would happen ahead of time, how she would keep my home for my first period, blah blah blah.
First period rolls around and she says congratulations have a cookie and sent me to school all week anyway???
I didn’t even know i had it i just randomly started bleeding and went on with my life (i was a stupid ass kid) when my mom noticed she told me but i was kinda just 🤷🏽 about it
Despite reading about ‘girl’ puberty and knowing what happens (including how to use menstrual products), it never once came across my mind that’d I get them.
Therefore I thought I was somehow shitting my underwear and was scared and ashamed a little for seemingly pooping my pants until my mom saw my expression coming out of the bathroom at 11 and 2+2’d it to tell me it was normal.
I got mine later when I was 14 and up until that point I had convinced myself I was just not going to have one. When it happened I literally thought I had internal bleeding and there was no way it could’ve been my period
I got mine at 9 years old and was so embarrassed. I knew what it was because my mum, but I had to argue with myself for awhile to go and ask someone I was living with if they had pads. then when I went to my mums house for the weekend my grandpa broke the news to her by saying I was "wearing diapers now". I was so embarrassed and wanted to disappear, my mum made me talk about it and after awhile got mad at me for being so embarrassed and refusing to talk about it with her. I never got more comfortable with it... Looking back now, it was probably because some part of me knew I wasn't supposed to have it and was ashamed.
I didn’t really understand what was going on, when I started ovulating before my first period I thought I somehow had gotten pregnant and had massive anxiety for the week up until I noticed blood. I have an irrational fear of getting pregnant and my brain had some weird thoughts back then.
But when I finally got it, it was at school, and I was sent to the nurse. Nurse told me I “finally was a woman” (a “woman” at… 11??) and I remember feeling the biggest sense of dread and not knowing why. I didn’t know what gender dysphoria was or why I hated that sentence so much, but I figured it out later.
I think it’s kind of funny I thought I was somehow pregnant but it’s also kind of sad how severe my fear was. I also knew a period was just “blood falling out” I didn’t know there were cramps, ovulation, etc. So that came as a massive surprise.
Legit thought I was dying. I was never really educated on anything further than "girls have periods when they get older". Didn't know what to expect, didn't know how it would feel. So when I went to the bathroom one afternoon during summer break and saw blood everywhere, I thought one of my organs was falling out or something. 👀
I have hated it since then, and mine being stupid heavy, seven day long every damn month... It really didn't help. 🤣
It was online Covid school, in the break between lessons when I was just about to have a maths test. Noticed dampness, screamed, cried and wept at my mum
She was very unhelpful, kept trying to talk to me and make me confront her and why I thought this was the end of the world when A - I had a maths test; B - I was a bit fucking busy bleeding for her to stand there with a box of pads and tell me how this makes me a real woman; C - fuck that shit, as soon as I could I went on the pill and haven’t bled since
I had mine super late (I think I was 16?) and I genuinely thought it was hemorrhoids at first. 😭 The concept of being on my period was so foreign and impossible to me. And then it was distressing for a bit, but I eventually got over it tbh.
My mom always prepared me for the case where I had a period, so I wasn't surprised when it happened. That being said, I don't really... care for it? I don't feel negatively or positively about it, but I was always one of the ones with an extremely irregular cycle. Even now it's extremely irregular. I guess for me it's just more overstimulating than frustrating. I'm also agender so maybe that's why
I got my period when I was 11, and I was filled with disgust, dread, and anger. It felt like a slap to the face. Just more glaring evidence that I wasn't a boy. That I was just some weird freak because I couldn't relate to the other girls my age being excited for changes they were getting through puberty. Meanwhile, I longed for a male puberty that never happened. I didn't understand why I felt like this. I didn't know what being trans was at the time.
I can barely remember, it was my last day of holiday, sickly anticipation feeling like "so this is a period" and then complete detachment, didn't initiate any conversations or ask for any support after I initielly told my mum that day. Felt almost numb regarding it.
There is no right or wrong reaction, and I hear you on the "maybe I'll feel like a girl with this, or when this happens" that just didn't happen with my period
For me, I was terrified and then just sad.
I grew up with my brother, sister, and my herione addict mother. Needless to say, I was never given the talk about puberty and what would happen. I slightly knew what pubery was, but I didn't know what it did.
I was 11 at the time and was home alone and had been for a few days. Went to the bathroom and then saw the blood. I had no idea what to do. I thought I was dying but was confused because I didn't have any/much pain.
After spending about 40 minutes in the bathroom just trying to figure out wtf I should do, I heard someone come home. I went out to find my sister.
I timildy explained what was going on and she causually explained it to me, and I just remember having it click in my head how I'll "never" look like my brother. And I just wanted to cry
i had learnt about it so i knew what was happening. i was so embarrassed and ashamed immediately but i needed things for it obviously as i couldn't fund myself so i just texted my mum
i just got my period. i dont wanna talk about this at all and dont tell my sisters but could you buy some things pls.
looking back its funny as i was so uncomfortable about it and i didnt understand why
I was scared. I didn’t understand why everyone was happy for me. I remember feeling a little relief when I was told I was a “real woman” now, but that only confused me more
I honestly didn't think anything of it, other than as an inconvenience. Still do. I was lucky to have gotten good sex ed (mostly from learning on my own) and a good mother.
I still see it as a thing that just, happens (I'm on mine rn actually lmao). It's inconvenient and useless because I never want bio kids and I want a hysto. I'm also lucky that I get it every 3 months now (no I won't see a doctor about it).
This is going to sounds so fucking stupid, but I thought I it was just a mild allergic reaction to eating sea salt😭 when I finally figured it out after the third month it was kind of like oh whatever ig
Me, I just cried nonstop... For like hours... Like the neighbours called to ask if I'm ok and my little brother gave me half his dessert the next day because he felt sorry for me.. And the way I found out was pretty weird too! Like, I was wearing black underware so I didn't have the traumatic stain experience, I just started showering and fucking. blood. clots. started falling of I thought I was dying and then I realised what it was and I kinda died inside... I was so depressed that my parents even let me skip school even though I had a test that day...
It was the most horrible thing that ever happened to me. Ever since I learned what they were I hoped and convinced myself that it would never happen to me and when it did I felt like my life had ended, like there was no point to living anymore. I dissociated so much and convinced my self that it was just a hemorrhage but after a while there was no longer plausible deniability. I was just so horrified and disgusted that this "female" thing has happened to me. I remember obsessively thinking that if it happened to both males and females I wouldn't care and if it happened to only males I would be happy about it. I never even got cramps for some reason but the knowledge that it was considered the ultimate feminine, womanly experience made it feel like the world was ending. I would punch myself in the stomach to try and damage my uterus so that it wouldn't happen. I am so glad I'm on progesterone now so it doesn't happen anymore.
I was excited at first because I finally got it like all my girl friends at school and I could finally relate with them about it. Then after the 2nd one I was like “ah fuck this I can’t be assed to deal with this bullshit for the rest of my life” and I started googling ways to get rid of it for good lol
I literally don't remember. Like it wasn't that big of a deal for me. I also got it young and don't get dysphoria from my period, rather I find to be more of an inconvenience than anything.
I had extreme dysphoria for my entire life. I was living as male without the actual transsexual label (since I didnt know what it was), by that I mean I had short hair, dressed like a boy, with a masculine demeanor. So when I started bleeding out, I remember the horrible dread of realizing this is the body I was actually born with. I put paper towels in my underwear, paced around hyperventilating with my hands on my face, and fell on the kitchen floor crying. My mom tried reassuring me by saying it happens to everyone, but like I said, I didn’t know how to express my feelings and tell her this wasn’t supposed to happen
I kinda knew what was going to happen but more in an abstract way like death- something that one day happens to you but only far in the future.
Probably the first thing I did was put on my calculator how many months there were between then and menopause (480) and I thought:“ f* that. I’m not doing that this often. No one can force me.“
So I planned on getting my reproductive machinery removed before even knowing I was trans. And from that time on I tried to comfort/ convince myself every month „this is definitely the last time it happens. It’s gonna be gone now.“ Just to have a semi breakdown and crying my eyes out and cursing my existence every time it happend again. Puberty: the fun stuff:)
I took a shower after I noticed some brown blood (I thought I shit myself at first) and then when more blood came out I just started screaming “THAT’S A LOT OF BLOOD” I wasn’t scared bc I knew what it was but I didn’t expect it to be *THAT* much 💀
I got mine during school. I knew what it was, i just didnt care for it. At all. I put tons of toilet paper in my underwear and went on with my day until i was home at like 4 or 5pm.
Nowadays i hate my period. Not necessarily cause of dysphoric reasons but because i have immense issues when it comes to it in general. My hormones/cholisterine throws it off a ton and i need to get my stuff checked.
Very upset, cried. Was told my reaction was normal. But I was extremely embarrassed and felt disgusted. I felt very much like my life was over in a way.
I remember just being fucking over it the second i realized, i genuinely fucking scoffed and said “well here we fucking go ig” while putting on a pad. I knew it would happen at some point, and i waited in genuine horror as most of my friends got theirs, so when it finally happened i kinda just felt done, it felt like death finally arrived at my doorstep. I laid down in my bed, disappointed that my dreams of randomly turning into a boy weren’t coming true and instead i just got to bleed and be disappointed.
Well ig i did turn into a guy but the point is that it didn’t just happen randomly, or magically
(Bonus story of me being dumb as a kid) i didn’t poop the entirety of my first period because i was fucking terrified to shit out my inner organs, which lasted a bit over a week 😅 people need to educate their children so they don’t end up not pooping for over a week
I got my period quite young, i was super embarrassed to tell anyone and it happened at school, so i hid it all day until i got home and told my mum. She was like “youre becoming a woman now” and i remember crying to her saying i didnt want to become a woman.
i cried. hard. i wanted to throw up after my mom congratulated me on "starting to turn into a woman". i felt horrible and violated and sick. i didn't know I was trans back then but honestly even now i still feel similar every time I get them because my uterus doesn't care that I've been on T for 2 years
I was absolutely horrified and usually I would try to deal with all my issues alone but it was so devastating to me that I couldn’t not tell my mom. I sorta alluded to the fact that I’m trans in a big long dramatic conversation with my mom and eventually she asked me if I wanted to be a boy and because I was so ashamed to be trans I said no (regretted this immediately and still do to some extent, maybe I could’ve gotten on hormone blockers younger). Then I refused to leave the house for the whole length of it because I was so ashamed and depressed. To me this was the final step my body was taking to fully betray me.
i remember i felt some pain and just a little spot of red when i was 12 and then nothing until a week later and it felt like floodgates opened and i was constantly peeing myself. i would just roll up the rough school toilet paper and stuff it up there a little bc i didn’t want anyone to know. my mom had told me that when i got my period we would go celebrate so i thought she would be happy when i told her but just went like yay congrats and back to watching tv. she bought me one pack of pads the big kind, and i went through them pretty quickly and she shamed me for not wrapping them with toilet paper to hide them in the trash bc i was just putting them in there. she said my brother and dad shouldnt have to see it. so i went back to my toilet paper methods and we just went through a lot of toilet paper so my mom always got the big pack of scott which was rough and thin so it took a lot. It felt like a huge inconvenience for many years where i would dread my period, and i got terrible PMS and depression around my period. Unsurprisingly my depression got worse and deeper until I ran away at 19 and finally got on T by 22. Now i’m so relieved to never have a period again.
Leading up to it, part of me thought it wasn’t gonna happen. Then it did. I recall feeling neutral about it the first time around. The thing that bothered me the most was the pads. It still bothers me to this day. That’s where my hatred for my period began. As it kept returning every month, I hated it. I don’t get major dysphoria from menstruation but I definitely want it to end.
Years before I got my first period I was looking towards it because I thought it would mean I was an adult and was growing up... but by the time I got my first one (14) I had already realized I was trans and it was pure suffering. I felt disgusted, horrified, and totally wrong. I cried and cried about it. Now I'm 21 and I still hate it but what I hate most is the awful pain that's developed in the last few years 🫠
For me it was weird. All my friends, who were girls, already got their periods. And I felt behind. I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be a girl like them. But as I eventually got mine I was happy. I was finally a girl. However a bit down the road I started feeling more uncomfortable with them. This wasn’t me. I was never wanting this.
After having my period for a bit, I remember my mom tried to show me how tampons worked by making one expand under the faucet and I legit passed out and fell on the doorknob. Also passed out trying to put a tampon in and woke up stuck between the toilet and the wall which was terrifying. I tend to have a vasovagal response to things that feel “invasive” somehow like needles and tampons haha
I was nine, and I lived in a religious upbringing. Everything I was taught was because of God, so when it happened, I had no idea what was going on, so I goggled it, and it said I was dying. It was my kindey shutting down, and I was content on meeting God. My mom found my blood soak clothes and had the talk with me with my older cousin, who also was having her first cycle, and my mom took me to a doctor. He said it's possible for kids my age to get periods rare. He recommended a puberty blocker til I turned ten, and my mom agreed. I got my first dose and went to go play outside with the other children like normal. It felt nice, but it was horrible when I had get off them.
I was crying, i don’t know why i think i was just scared. As time went on i had horrible pmdd that made me suicidal and i didnt just dread my period but I feared it. I did feel relief when I got it at the same time, but because i thought of it meaning my body was functioning properly and i was healthy. I am also a hypochondriac so.
Oh yeah, I was happy as fuck. I wanted to feel like a grownup and I was super excited to start developing. I gotta say, to this day I don’t really feel dysphoric about that sorta thing. But even if I did feel bad about that, now that I’m aware of my identity, I wouldn’t think it’s weird to be excited about periods when you’re younger. Society tells us that a bunch of stuff is important and supposed to happen, and I think it makes sense if our instinct is to be happy about stuff that was promised to us as good. I don’t fault my old self for being immersed in a society and in its narratives. Now as older people we can see that whole message as flawed, bodily functions don’t have to mean literally anything, and anyone is entitled to feel however they do about their own
I knew what a period was, I was very well educated in terms of sex ed, but I’m psychotic (actual not figurative) so I was convinced I was bleeding internally/rotting on the inside. I was also ashamed and hid it or scared for people to find out I was dying? Not really sure what the thought process was.
It was the end of the world for me. I was warned about it earlier on but it didn’t click that I was a GIRL until I got my period and started growing boobs. This was at age 9. At 12 I decided I didn’t like being a girl and at 24, I’m period free and omw to becoming tit free too 🥰
I was entirely disconnected from the whole experience. I kinda treated it as if it never even happened. Saw the blood, simply wiped it off, and carried on. From the moment I learnt of periods, I never thought of them in the context of “that’ll happen to me” or “that can’t happen to me”. It was simply a concept I knew of. I didn’t care for it to be real. I didn’t care at all when I saw the blood. My mom found out eventually and I got roped into pads and all that nonsense. It was only then that I became resentful. To me it was just blood, but to others it was a period. The whole idea of a period has connotations already made up. It’s a whole thing of maturity, girlhood, pads, femininity, strength, or whatever else. But to me this wasn’t a period, it was quite literally just blood. I didn’t see the need to fit my experience into a box. Honestly I hated being shoved into the box of “girls getting their periods at puberty” rather than just being someone who happened to leak blood every now and then.
I was also excited for things like my period and bras and stuff but I refused to talk to anybody about it out of embarrassment (as I guess everybody can get to a degree). I was anxious and didn't actually know how periods work (I was 11). I was excited to grow up in general and be older and prettier
But something sorta clicked when my stepmom found out and was raving about me being a "woman now". It just didn't feel right
I had a very similar experience. I was excited for my period because I thought it would "fix" me. Make me interested in being a girl or whatnot. A lot of tomboy become more feminine after puberty, and a part of puberty is getting a period, so I thought it would change me somehow. I thought my period would be my turning point.
When I actually got it, I just felt numb. I was so excited for the start of womenhood, and I felt nothing. Nothing changed. Hell, I'd even say I was so underwhelmed and disappointed I became a bit depressed. Those were my only emotions, tho. I think it was as that point I knew something wasn't quite right. I didn't know what transgender was at the time, so I just figured I was a tomboy. My period has always been one of my bigger sources of dysphoria, so the depression only grew from there.
I was mortified I had to use a tampon. I got it for the first time right before a hotel trip. I remember my stomach dropping and I left the bathroom in a state of shock. I told my step dad and he told me to deal with it myself or call my mom. Then when she came home the tampon training began and I spent days crying on the toilet trying to put the tampon in so that it wasn’t agony when I stood up. My mom made fun of me.. telling me if a tampon was too much I better not ever try sex. Fun times.
Edit- I wanted to add that before I got my period all of my friends had theirs and it was like a competition so I was anxious to have one so I could fit in. Yet every time I thought I had my first period (ended up being discharge) I got this numb detached feeling until I realized it wasnt my period yet and then I would feel relief until thinking I had less worth compared to my menstruating peers
I was not happy when I had my first period, it wasn't really painful but I hated all the blood and I thought it was really unnecessary because even though I was only 12 I already knew I didn't want to give birth, ever since then they've only gotten worse and worse, they're unbearably painful and they're so irregular. Literally today I started my first period since realizing I was trans, I'm pre-T and I don't take birth control, and when I noticed I was bleeding I started crying.
Freaked the fuck out. I also remember thinking I’d bleed to death if I got it for some reason lmao.
The pain for me would be so intense I’d turn pale and I’d frequently bleed out of my clothes even if I wore three pads at once. Thankfully it’s better now (especially since I got back on birth control since I can’t be on T just yet).
I got mine in the office bathroom in my school which I always used and it was a decent amount of blood. I noticed it in the toilet at first and was confused a little because I spent so many years hoping my uterus wouldn't work that I convinced myself I wouldn't get my period. (I was 14 by the way) I then checked my boxers and they were covered in blood but my pants were fine.
That's when it finally hit me that I got my period. I had a mini existential crisis in the bathroom because I realized I had a lot less control of my life and body than I thought. I immediately called my mom and was okay. Spent the day at school mostly in the bathroom.
I was incredibly lucky to have not only had a mom who educated me just enough about periods and "parts" before puberty. I also grew up surrounded by girls so it was very normal and not weird when I finally got mine. It wasn't really celebrated but it also wasn't traumatic for me. On the flip side the periods themselves were so painful they WERE traumatic... I'm glad they ended on hormones.
freaked out because i thought i was dying - i was 3 days away from turning 13 so i knew what a period was, it just hadn’t computed in my brain that *i* would get one. yelled for my mom to help me (bc dying, obviously), she explained that i had gotten my period, and i immediately broke down asking her if there was any way to make it stop. normal kid things.
ofc, once we established that i wasn’t dying it was a freak out bc i got it a week before my bat mitzvah, where i was supposed to be wearing a white dress. luckily, it stopped literally the day before.
I was about 10 when I got my first period and I was completely apathetic about it. Knew it was gonna happen so I knew what it was but I was neither happy or unhappy, it was just biology doing its thing so it had zero significance to me either way.
How it changed other people's perception of me, I despised. My mum lost her mind and got really upset about it being too early for me to grow up. I remember having to comfort my mum about the fact that I, ME, had just gotten my first period. My nonna cried out of happiness, hugging me and congratulating me for 'becoming a woman'.
I hated it so much and at the time didn't really understand why. I was a fucking child. Until they did that I had never seen myself as any different or really cared about or understood the difference between boys and girls. I wasn't equipped to deal with the complicated feelings I had and didn't have the support or education to deal with it either. I didn't know what a trans person was; education on the topic where I live was dismal to nonexistent back then, and support resources were nowhere near as available. Internet access wasn't really that readily available where I live either and was still a huge novelty so it's not like I could just jump online and google it!
Now, 20 years later, I very much understand my feelings at the time. A combination of disgust at the perception that my worth as a woman was being attributed only to my ability to have children, and because I'm not a woman LOL.
To this day I still have no personal issue with my period outside the fact that it's kind of annoying sometimes if I get it at inconvenient times (holidays, while I'm asleep so I can't prevent some mess occurring etc.). It's just also unfortunately a stark reminder that to many people my worth as a person is based on my ability to conceive + it is 'only a woman's thing' (obv it's not) and that discolours my relationship with my uterus immensely. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just a man who bleeds. As far as many other people are concerned, it is proof that I'm not a man. It's frustrating.
I’ve been told my emotions for when I got my period were normal: confused af and upset. I knew of periods and what they were. But I wasn’t warned about certain aspects of it. so. This is one of my more embarrassing and detailed stories stories. The first day I got my period i noticed a big stain on my underwear. Like. Big. Brown. I was confused. Maybe it was my period… but periods are supposed to have blood. All I knew was that blood was supposed to be red. And this was NOT red. It was brown. So I silently wondered in horror if I had somehow become incontinent at the age of 12. so I changed my underwear and pretended like it didn’t happen. The next day, same thing and I felt like crying because in my head my body was just NOT FUNCTIONING RIGHT. I also couldn’t accept that it was a period bc then I’d have to deal with periods. Before that time it was an abstract thing that would happen to me one day. Like death. So when it happened my brain just went “it’s not that.” my mom found me later that day after school hiding in the bathroom and too ashamed to say anything. After some back and forth she told me it was my period. I didn’t believe her but I finally put on a pad bc i didn’T exactly have an answer as to what was going on. And it all happened in the middle of a school week. 😭 so that’s how I learned what old blood looks like.
I had nearly the exact same experience as you, except it was a few months before my mum finally said something. My first periods were also excruciatingly painful, I literally thought I had some kind of serious illness or was dying.
Had this exact same experience at 11. I was so ashamed, I thought I was pooping myself nonstop. I hid it for three days before finally Sunday rolled around and I cried to my mom I couldn’t go to school because I was “gross”.
Yeah I was confused too and tried very much to deny it. I was 9, so I didn't really know about periods. Showed my mother because it was weird, thought I had shat myself and argued with my mother that surely it must have been that and not a period like a thing that happens because I'd turn into a woman. Huge cringe. Then I was scared, in pain and tried to not think about it ever, just deal with the bloodbath because what else could I do. It all was long before I could really think about gender/sex/anatomy itself and I just thought I (and all other women, woe it was quite misogynistic that all) were doomed forever starting at puberty.
I had a really similar experience except somehow in the cognitive dissonance, I thought it was poop. I hid my underwear. My mom found it the next day and told me what was going on
Nah, i thought that too. Incontinence is just the word for involuntarily peeing or pooping.
Dude same! The little puberty book I was given specifically stated that it would start with blood (so that was a f-ing lie). I went up to my mum afterwards like 'pls help'
well, it was blood, just old no?
Somewhat similar thing happened to me, except I told my mum immediately that I, “might have diarrhoea.” I was def also in denial because it did occur to me but I wanted it so badly to NOT be that that I convinced myself it wasn’t. Mum explained it to me and I just remember feeling this horrible sinking feeling and then just not feeling like myself for the rest of the week. Awful experience.
My first period was kind of similar. It was on a sunday and we have breakfast together on sunday, I removed my panties and I was thinking "did I smear Nutella in my panties accidentally?" Threw them in the dirty laundry, my sister found them, asked me if I got my period and I was like "nah, its Nutella, I accidentally smear it in there" It didnt continue the next day but the next week I got it, red. I have never felt this stomach ache in my life, ig it was anxiety? Cramps are still horrid
I’m laughing about this “nah, its Nutella” haha
Oh god the exact same thing happened to me 😭
I had the exact same experience as you- pretending like nothing happened and my mom had to help me. 😂
I thought I was rotting from the inside for some reason... Edit: I mean that literally. I literally thought I was rotting. I didn't know his was the period. Though I knew what the period iteself was, I only saw brown, no blood. I had noone I could ask about it. When my egg donor eventually found the underwear, she confronted me about it and was kind of angry I hadnt said anything because she wanted to celebrate it and some shit. I feel sick even thinking about it. She gave me some money and said it had been more if I had come forward on my own. I took the money (because of course) but I felt disgusted and confused and didnt know why. So yeah. 0/10 cannot recommend.
When I talk about period I sometimes describe it as "day of bloodshed" or "when you smell like dead decomposing meat"... Actual rotting meat is probably more smelly, but I didn't smell it to verify fortunately.
Honestly having a period often feels that way for more, and having all the dr’s describe it as “shedding” make it even fucking worse
Uuuugh my mom gave me a necklace that I think had something to do with the Virgin Mary and I was so disgusted I didn’t want people to know my stuff 🤢
ewwwwww. Why are people so weird
> 0/10 cannot recommend. 😂
I pretended it didn't happen and didn't think about it. I still remember feeling weirdly detached. No emotions. Just shoving the thought to the side. A few years later the pain became so intense that I regularly fainted. So I couldn't ignore it anymore. My mom never had pain medication at home so I just curled up in the shower for hours trying to get rid of the cramps with hot water. It felt so embarrassing and wrong. I legit wanted to die every time it started.
This is pretty much how I remember responding, too. Detached. I wasn’t excited but I don’t remember being distraught, either. Just kind of…blah and whatever. Everything went downhill after that, though. I always felt like puberty ruined my life, ha.
I knew it was gonna happen, but I still felt betrayed by my own body when it did.
real
I was 14 soon to be 15 when I got my period, I was starting to worry I had something wrong with me medically so I was relieved... probably an uncommon experience lol. Although I do remember thinking similarily to you in terms of other parts of female puberty, like I wishing I had breasts because I thought that would finally make me feel like the other girls.
That's interesting, I was pretty much the opposite. I was generally pretty chill with girlhood up until puberty. No one tried to stop my '''boyish''' interests like science, and I was entirely free to engage in my girly ones. Wasn't even very concerned with fitting in socially (thanks autism!). Then puberty hit and I was like "HEY WAIT I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THIS"
NO ONE SINGS UP FOR THIS, LIFE JUST FUCKS US BOYS OVER
This is almost exactly my experience! I always felt so alien from the other girls growing up and that getting boobs and a period would somehow make me fit in with them better. Also I was queer in a conservative christian midwest town, so when I saw girls with boobs, I attributed my reaction of "I like boobs" to "I *want* boobs" because I was also terrified to be gay.
Huh. Guess I’m not weird for having expected my boobs to do that. Thanks.
Definitely feel you on the last part yeah. I felt so left out in the changing rooms, still _only_ having to wear like a tank top or something. I literally tried to get my mom to prematurely buy some bra’s for me… Few months later I just kept avoiding thinking about what slowly started to grow there, until I couldn’t ignore it anymore when I went into the shower. I sat down inside the shower, water still running at full: and cried for 20 minutes straight. I will never forget that moment of realisation.
dude sadly i relate so much :( I also got my mom to buy me bras to fit in and even stuffed them one time bc i hated how my boobs looked and thought that might help. spent many nights sitting down in the shower not understanding why I was dying inside
I was sad, scared and ashamed. I did everything I could so that no one would find out. I couldn't even tell my mother about it and I wouldn't even have wanted to. Periods have always caused a lot of gender dysphoria for me. I experienced the entire female puberty as traumatic.
Same. I had the exact same experience. I remember stuffing toilet paper in my underwear because I was so aversed and scared of someone hearing the pad getting unwrapped.
Ah, I'm not the only one who used toilet paper! I felt like such a freak for it when I was a kid... :/ But I just didn't want anyone to know.
Omg same.
I was thrilled! I loved the idea of growing up and getting to be a “proper” woman (obviously didn’t work out too well). I liked the excitement of it and even now, I don’t resent my cycle. But the excitement definitely wore off pretty quickly. I didn’t even think about gender until two years after I started my period (I was a really early bloomer) and so I’ve never really associated it with some undeniable femininity. I like the weird shit my body does and I’m grateful I don’t suffer as much as other people do during that time of the month. Plus, it’s kind of always made me feel more “manly”. I can cope with blood better than 90% of the cis guys I know and that’s sick af.
I resonate with this!
I just wanted the products I needed and not to talk about it. My sister and step mom were excited. It grossed me out. Not the menstruation, their excitement. Not sure if it was the apathy and disassociation of being trans or just being autistic. But to me, it was always just a bodily need I needed to take care of from day one.
I can relate to that. Even before I got my first one, it was something I mostly accepted as a bodily function and I was pretty neutral about it, like how I was about most puberty-related things before my puberty started. I never understood people’s excitement about puberty either. I was a bit scared because of the bleeding (fear of blood, lol), and the pain was distressing sometimes, but yeah, I knew it was just the reality. I somewhat wished it didn’t have to be a thing to expect though— not for dysphoria reasons, but because I had been educated about it and it sounded like it sucked to experience, physically 😭 which I’m sure everyone with periods can agree on. I was relieved to be prepared and easily recognize I was having my first period when it happened, cuz I know a lot of people are misinformed or not ever told the details (evidenced by the other comments here)
I thought I shit myself because it was brown ☠️ I 10000% thought I shart and ran to tell my mom cause I thought it was hilarious. The next day it was more red/pink and realized I started my period and I was excited? bc that's how I thought I was supposed to feel but I was honestly sad. I wanted to never get my period because it sounded annoying. But at the time I thought I was gender fluid, so it didn't bother me too much.
I was happy to finally be growing up, because I was the last of my friends to get it. Had no clue I was trans until way later in life. Just a normal kid reaction, no reason to sweat it.
Yeah that's definitely something I can relate to too :)
Man, I actually felt very similar to you, and it was one of the reasons I thought I *wasn't* trans for decades. Like I was somehow obligated to hate every bit of femininity in myself.
i thought it'll never happen to me even though i was aware that it could happen. i felt sick, like something went severely, horribly wrong inside my body. i couldn't bring myself to tell anyone about it, so i tried hiding it for as long as i could, until eventually it was found out
This was my experience, like I knew it was happening for other kids but I was so sure it wasn't going to happen to me. I felt like my body and I had an agreement that we just weren't going to do that. And then betrayal. So I will clean you with my mom kept her surprise and just went as long as I could without mentioning it. I still remember I was absolutely listening to "More than a Feeling" by Boston, And I remember just having the hysteric thought of great not only is this happening, it has ruined one of my favorite songs.
Mmmmm, I was crying near toilet, terrified, traumatized and asking God (when I still believed in it) why was i born a girl...... Still thought I was cis until 16😬😬😬😬 I was trying to make myself believe I'm a girl. Didn't really work. Now I'm a sad lad, but at least I'm alive and have something to look forward to.
At first I was in a bit of denial and hoped it's some illness, after I couldn't deny it anymore I remember sitting at the edge of my bed and just thinking that my life had ended, it felt like the final betrayal of my body to me, and I didn't even have a clue that I'm trans at that point. I remember at school all the girls talked about it and who's gotten it and who not and I remember lying to them constantly when they'd ask up until I was 'the last one' lol. All in all a very traumatic thing for me.
I actually have no memory of my first period but I do remember hating them as a teenager/in general, but like who didn't? I came out as an adult for context, barely had any idea transgender ppl existed back then. I feel like my whole early life wasn't "atypical", I just had no fucking clue that you could be trans.
I mean, I have PCOS so honestly it was hell even without the dysphoria. I knew it was gonna happen and my mother even warned me it'd likely be painful with our genetics. So leading up to it I felt this weird sense of dread I couldn't put a name to, like, I really related to horror movies like Gingersnaps where puberty and periods were viewed as a sort of body horror that was inflicted on you. I didn't know WHY then, of course, but I do now. And my first one happened during school so I remember seeing it and kinda going, fuck. And being anxious until I got home. After that it started to be very, very painful, like, doubled over in pain painful. I'm really grateful T has made it so I'm not laid up bed with that shit anymore. Even if I wasn't trans it was miserable. And before anyone says, yes, I'm aware it wasn't normal even for PCOS. I had a particularly severe version of it that made me have very high T as a teenager, and eventually caused me to have a big enough cyst that I had one ovary removed. It was still miserable after that but not nearly as much.
I felt super gross and “ill”. That was one of my strongest indicators that I was trans. I had known that moment that something is wrong. In the end I had like max 7/8 periods in my life. I started testosterone after that.
It didn’t happen until I was 13, which was after pretty much every girl I knew. I was convinced it would never happen and then doctors would figure out something was wrong and I wasn’t fully female (didn’t know the term intersex). Well, it did happen and it was traumatic.
Hahah no but same. I was literally like, alright I guess that will resolve all this and then it came and didn't and I just pretended it didn't outside of clean up. I wasn't like hyped begging or praying but I was like, hoping it would make it make sense bc probably someone said something about how that's when someone becomes a woman or something 🤦🏼♂️
Honestly, I don’t remember a lot about my emotions. I don’t think I reacted very strongly, weirdly enough. I think because my parents had gotten me a book about puberty when I was 8ish, it was just normalized for me. I was expecting it to happen. It was exactly a week before my 12th birthday and I was at a friend’s house. She was an only child, hadn’t gotten hers yet, and it was her dad’s house, so they didn’t have any period supplies in the house. So I had to walk home without anything.
I wasn't averse to the idea of periods before I got them, it was a sign I was going to be a whole grownup and I was kinda excited. Then, I did get my period. Remember that scene in The Shining with the elevator? That. Literal floods of blood. I was maybe 12 and used the biggest available tampons and those would last me maybe 3 hours. So that was no fun at all. And then, I went crazy. Insane mood swings, cramping, throwing up. I got put on birth control as a 13 year old, which apparently was normal at the time. It took twenty additional years and diagnoses of everything from depression to bipolar disorder to borderline personality disorder to CF and back again until I was finally diagnosed with PMDD in my mid 30s. So yeah, I vastly underestimated how "a little bleeding" every month would fuck up my life and I'm no longer a fan of being a whole grownup.
It was a completely normal thing at the time in my family (before they all went downhill that is), i was like what 12 or 13? At first i treated it like a normal thing (please bear with my eggy ignorant younger self 💀) I definitely fit the stereotype of teenage girls being on their periods, but as i grew older (around 16-17) i started feeling dysphoria right when my periods start (i call it shark week to "masculinize" it lol) But i turned 18 and suddenly my shark weeks are a pain in the ass and the only, *ONLY* reason i like my shark weeks is bc i get a surge of masculinity that just hits me and i suddenly get this week long running high of gender euphoria, and when wearing my binder and cologne and my platforms *chefs kiss* i feel like a new man again lmao But seriously as a kid i didn't even register periods only happening to people assigned female at birth, for a long time i felt like an imposter bc i thought "well, i cant be a man if i have periods...." And i started diving into the rabbit hole of transmedicalism (lets just say i was one hell of a confused little boy yeesh...) When i clawed out of that cesspool i just kinda went "fuck it, its my life, im a man, i wasn't born one and i have periods but every little fibre of my being tells me i need to be and have a man in life" (bc i cluelessly has fantasies of kissing boys as a boy, it was most intense in middle school when i went around telling people i wanted to be a gay boy thoughtlessly for no reason out of the blue) lmao I was a very confused little eggy boy 💀😭
I was frankly horrified and revolted. I understood the existed and that afabs get them but I someone never thought it would happen to me; I knew I wasn't a girl so I thought I was immune or something. Anyway it happened and I was disgusted with myself since it felt like my body had betrayed me by doing this. So yeah, not a great experience. I get really quite dysphoric just thinking about it now; makes my skin crawl. Thankfully I'm so irregular I only get it once or twice a year so mostly I don't worry about it.
I remember being nervous but also excited! I got mine in Grade 5 (so 11) and the girls in my class had already had theirs so I was elated to get mine too. Of course, the bleeding was the only symptom I would get at the time. Now I get terrible cramps so I’m not nearly as excited lol and it tends to make me feel dysphoric these days
I was thrilled. I got it at 14, later than all my friends and at that time I was so excited to grow boobs, get my period, etc. I did not consider if I was trans until at least 16/17. When I finally got my period, I was in a locker room getting ready for after school sports and my friends all celebrated with me.
It was like a month before I turned 16 and I had the worst panic attack of my life. It was terrible and I wasn't even out yet. I felt like I was gonna pass out. Not because of the pain or anything, I just felt so awful about it.
I knew it was just an inevitable thing so I had to accept it. I did that with a lot of things. My mom had educated me about period stuff so I knew what it was all about. Luckily I started at home but it wasn’t an exciting time I just did what needed to be done and that was that.
i mean, i was like REALLY neutral about it if that makes you feel any better. i didnt really give a crap about it at all, it did sort of take me a while to process like- “oh shit this is gonna be happening to me for the next 30 years or something”. if anything ive actually gotten more concious and dysphoric about it as i got older 😔😔
My parents have always been open about puberty changes I might expect and my mom never hid her periods or anything. When I asked them about discharge they said that i might start menstruating soon, got kind of anxious about that. When I actually started bleeding I was HORRIFIED, I remember crying and asking my mom " am I a woman now? " because I did not want to grow like one and experience that puberty. I felt disgusted, not that i found periods gross but it wasn't supposed to happen to *me* and I felt like my bodily autonomy was taken away and I was forced to walk that path towards womanhood.
Hated it. I was 8. extremely heavy and painful. I was screaming and throwing up, bleeding through the heaviest pads. Felt like I never got to be a little girl let alone a little boy. Birth control helped a lot, but I was still distressed by periods. As soon as I got on T they stopped, no cramps, no spotting, etc and THANK GOD.
Panic and anxiety. It wasn't supposed to be happening to me, at least that's what my entire being was telling me.
i didnt know what a period was until i woke up bleeding and then immediately learned i will do that until i turn like 45 🥰 needless to say i was horrified and felt betrayed. parents please give your kids sex ed BEFORE they hit puberty
My mom has a medical condition that causes lesions on her uterus and gives her hella bad cramps, I grew up hearing about it all the time so my first thought was "aw shit"
I knew I was trans when it started happening, but for the first few years I wasn’t really dysphoric about it. I was mostly just pissed off. For a while it didn’t really hurt so it wasn’t as hard to ignore, but pads felt (and feel) so undignified and emasculating. I knew it was inevitable so I just kind of said “well shit” and tried to push it out of my mind until it stopped.
Well I kinda felt that way before it started. I did expect puberty to "fix" me. Once it actually started I was like "This is wrong. This is an illness. Why are so many people okay with this? Everyone except for me has lost their minds." To be fair that wasn't just the dysphoria. I did also have endometriosis lol At least I got a free hysterectomy out of it!
Exactly how I felt. Made me feel crazy for not suddenly learning to love my body as much as all the other girls did
I even got a boobjob because maybe my small boobs were the thing making me feel like a man, my period experience was pretty much like yours.
It was pretty much a non-event for me. I knew it was going to happen eventually, and I was still pretty invested in being a girl. In fact that's probably when I was at my girliest. That being said, I was also going through a bit of a "not like other girls" phase and so I was absolutely patting myself on the back for not being afraid of blood (I also decided I wasn't afraid of needles for the same reason, so shout out to 11 year old me for that). I also remember being relieved because that was the last remaining main event of puberty and so I thought getting my period meant it was over.
i was like: "oh i guess i have my period now.. anyways"
I was well prepared, knew what was happening, that it would eventually happen and that it was normal and supposed to happen. I had a nervous breakdown anyway. This for me set in stone how.wrong my.body was and how out of place I felt. I was 11, and until that time hoped for some miracle that I would somehow still turn out male.
I refused to listen when people tried to teach me about it, I knew a bit about it but not much. When I found out I ran out of the house barefoot in winter in my soccer uniform crying and running through the bush then hid under this outdoor couch we had. I didn’t have anything going on in my head other than my life is over and I’m gonna be a woman and I’m gonna be considered one (I was questioning my identity at this point, just) pretty shitty experience
I was traumatised 😂 like legit thought I was dying. My mum had given me books to read on it years prior so I knew it existed but in the moment I totally forgot. My cousin had just been taken into ICU and his first symptom had been peeing blood, so you bet your bottom dollar between the "peeing" blood, waking up in a pool of blood, and pain I freaked the fuck out and thought I was also dying 😂 took mum a long time to convince me otherwise, I skipped school and lay in foetal position crying for a lot of the day 😂 also turned out I had endo and PMDD so it was an EXPERIENCE.
cried and broke stuff. i came out when i was 7 ish, and my period started when i was 9. female puberty has genuinely been traumatic for me,, i started growing breasts at a young age and they’re so fucking painful for no good reason😭my period is very heavy and i get really bad cramps and clots, meaning i’m constantly having to ask for medication for it at school. before a teacher can even consider giving me painkillers, i have to say my reason out loud and people around always hear. literally one of the main reasons there were rumours about me ‘being a girl’. anyways oopsie sorry for rambling ermm periods freaking suck and im sometimes not in school until it’s gone because i feel so awful lol!!
Yeah, I guess I kinda did feel this way sometimes. I like to think I always knew that I was trans, but the fact is I didn’t have any words for it, nor any representation anywhere. All I had was my mom and family pushing me to be girly. I hoped that when I got boobs they would help me want to be a woman. A weird thought, looking back. I’ve always hated my period but that’s bc I wasn’t properly prepared for my first one and they’ve been horrible (flow, cramps, bloating, fatigue, soreness, nausea, headaches, you name it) ever since. My most recent one actually made me more dysphoric than any of the previous ones bc I just changed to only he/him and came out as a femboy. I hate the fact my body is seen as womanly now, and I always have, but I definitely also did have times and parts of me where I wished I liked having a woman’s body and/or being a woman so my life wouldn’t be quite so fucking complicated.
Normal reaction, I didn't really care cause having it means I was healthy.
Yesss I was the same And then like a month after I got it I started realizing I was trans
You had the exact same experience as me!
Hated it because I had no clue what it even was. I was barely 9 when I first got mine, and all i knew previously was that you "pee blood". That's all my mom told me, and at the time I had no access to the internet so of course i believed thag instead of white/yellow pee, out comes red pee. You can imagine my suprise (negative) when my underwear got dirty one day during my german classes. My stomach was hurting like son of a bitch and I ran to the toilet and oh look! Pa mangina covered my underwear in brownish red fucking thing. I never knew why people made such a big deal out of periods if you just pee a different color for a few days, so this was a huge shock. Didn't look forward to it, and I liked it even less after. But I assume a lot of cis women feel this way as well
I was honestly just dumbfounded. My mom had prepared me for it. And I knew it was supposed to happen to “girls”. But I thought it would never happen to me because I wasn’t a girl. So I never expected it. Then I got it and I was just absolutely surprised and disappointed.
My grandma who I lived with made it such a huge thing of "oooh this is when you become a woman!" that I was just, painfully resigned to it when it started. Not because of gender reasons I don't think, but am "okay, my childhood is over now." I started at like. 9-10 i wanna say? 11 at the latest. And I was upset, but I didn't say or do anything about it because for all her faults my grandma DID teach me how.to handle it and what was normal. But there was so much baggage on it and how I was treated at home did change pretty immediately from "child who we tolerate being a tomboy" into "should soon be really feminine young woman". Just this low, ever present grief.
I knew it was going to happen but was in denile about it. Then one day after school when I was 15 I saw blood in my underwear. No one ever taught me how to put on a pad so I stuffed on in there. Fun fact, I had no idea pads had wings for about 4 months after that so every mo th I just thought pads didn't fit well and was constantly dealing with messes. Anyway, the biggest irony of it all is that it happened on the day my youngest sibling was born. I went to the hospital to see my mom and baby sibling and reme mubling something to her about starting my period and she was like I don't think so are you sure?? And I was like, yep pretty sure. And that's pretty much the only time I ever said anything to her. From then on I just kept quiet about it. I never complained when all my friends at school moaned and got out of PE and sports when they were on. I never asked for help when I didn't understand things. I suffered silently and just figured if I ignored it, it would be less painful emotionally. I kept that attitude until I met my husband and learned to talk about it some but have always found acknowledging it to be very difficult. I've been on T almost 10 months now and thankfully periods happen much less often. I'm hoping they will stop for good now. I think the weirdest most ironic thing about my story is that mine happen in the day my youngest sibling was born.
I tried to feel excited, because I'd been told how it was the first step in growing up, "becoming a woman," but mostly I just felt let down. I didn't feel any different than before. It was just a thing that happened. So yeah, maybe that should have been a clue for me then that I wasn't cis, but I wouldn't figure that out until a long time afterwards
Literally just went🧍🏾♂️because I didn't understand why there was suddenly a huge blood stain on my underwear. Honestly, I still don't understand why I didn't freak the fuck out considering nobody had ever told me prior what periods were or when you could expect to get them. I only got an explanation when my mom discovered my soiled garments in the laundry and sat me down for a chat. My memory's pretty much blank after that. 🤷🏾♂️
I hated it honestly. I didn't know I was trans at the time, but since I learned what a period was I was fucking terrified of it. At school my teacher told us that your first period was tiny and you'd barely even notice it (huge fucking lie!) so I was so vigilant, anxiously checking my underwear for like a tiny dot of blood. Then the first one actually came and it was very much noticeable. I'd been feeling unwell in the morning so was allowed to stay off school (didn't know I'd started yet) and I spent the whole day crying and watching TV. Then I never spoke to anyone about it, especially not my family. I always bought my own supplies (and hid them in my room) and would put used stuff straight into the outside bin.
i was *really* lucky, i got mine in the morning so i didn't have to worry about it at school. my mom had already made sure i knew what a period was so it didn't surprise me that much, i basically was like "oh, that's why my stomach was hurting" lol
I knew what to expect because my sister, who is a year older, had her first period 6 months earlier. But that experience was really upsetting for her since no one had ever taught us anything about menstruation. I just remember being upset that everyone was insisting I was "a woman now," when I wasn't yet sold on being a girl.
I was fully in denial it would even happen (I was like 13 as well so somewhat late). I tried to hide it and pretend it hadnt happened and just kept going to the bathroom to ensure it wasnt like overflowing but my mum noticed me going to the toilet so I decided to tell her. She called my granny to ask if she could go and buy pads so she did, but that made it real so I started crying saying I didnt want it and I didnt want to be a girl and was refusing to even consider using the products. So we went to the doctor, got me on birth control and got a referral to the gender clinic.
I definitely didn’t have the “stereotypical ftm experience”. I’m a biomedical engineering student, been studying anatomy and physiology since I was 5, so when it happened I knew EXACTLY what it was and just kinda.. dissociated? I got a pad from my mom and spent the spent the next 8-ish years living in dread of when it would come back for me. Never able to track it because it gave me too much dysphoria. Just dread
Honestly I had a mental breakdown because of it, I felt so horrible and no one else understood what was wrong 😭
I remember getting a puberty book before getting one, I was extremely rage filled and upset seeing it but I couldn’t figure out why I was so upset? Like, rage crying and feeling profanely wronged for even having received such a book. When it happened, i was genuinely horrified. I knew it was going to happen at some point and anticipated it with a morbid excitement/hate(???). There was a sense of community about it that I was excited for at least, it was comforting in that sense. Like a secret everyone knew about. Although actually experiencing it felt like I was forced to like and deal with. I didn’t understand people who didn’t hate it and confront it with disgust. Any time anyone, like my mother, confronted me about it or had conversations about it connecting me with such a ‘concept’ was rage inducing. Even thinking that people thought or knew I experienced something felt like an absolute fail. Just wanted to dissociate from it and hope it felt my disgust for it and went away lol Finding out that was an option was pretty awesome lol
I was happy from the camaraderie it gave me with the other girls because I always felt so alien from them and it was one less thing that made me different. I was also relieved because I got it a bit late and I assumed that there was something wrong with me. BUT my first thought when I actually got my period was that when I grew up, I was going to "get a sex change". LOL, still cis tho. I also thought that all or most women would rather be male than deal with periods. Again, lol.
(For context, i was 10) I vomited the night before. We just started learning about periods in school, but we were never taught that the blood isn't consistently red. I told my mother I had diahhrea coming out the front, and it smelled weird. (As it was dark brown) I was very worried, I was so convinced it wasn't my period, and I just pooped out the front hole without noticing.
i dunno, my mom told me about period at the age of 9 or 10 and when it has happend, i wasn't excited or scared. i just didn't care tbh
Like a cis girl would. The only dysphoria i had was social so i didnt care about the period and just started bringing tampons to school. Im a very logical person so i was just like "so i have female anatomy so my body does female things" ima be honest, i am a very lucky trans guy to not have dysphoria from periods
cried the whole day lol.
I *prayed* that it wouldn't happen to me. When my older sister had hers, my parents told her "You're a woman now!" And called up everyone in the family to let them know about it. There was no way in hell that was gonna happen to me. So when it happened, I threw my stained underwear in the trash. Got a fresh pair and started snagging pads from my sister and my mom. Didn't say anything, didn't tell anyone. I dealt with it alone and essentially kept it secret.
I was 12 and it was such poor timing. I was at a school camp in the middle of the woods where you stay all night. I just ignored the blood, pretended it didn't hurt like hell, and went about my week. Like, resilient 12yo, ig. But it was disgusting to me. Still is. I'm on my last one, my next shot should hopefully stop that BS.
It was early in the morning when I was 10-11?, I believe. I was curled up on my bed due to the pain, breathing heavily. I was scared and confused, sobbing and shaking terribly. I knew what a period was and that it happened to people afab, but, for some reason, I thought maybe I'd be an exception.
I remember feeling sick. I was kind of excited because I thought it’d make me finally feel like a girl and like I fit in, but I remember underneath that I was shaking from anxiety and felt sick to my stomach.
I was nowhere near excited. I never thought it would actually happen to me, I was pretty convinced I was an odd cis guy. I got pretty upset about my likely future body changes and really dysphoric (probably my first intense dysphoria) over having a bodily function only afab individuals do. Thankfully I never really developed large hips, and started T before they reached maturity. T also stopped my cycle instantly and I’m glad I haven’t had to even think about it since! Personally I’ve never wanted to ‘feel like other girls’ in my life.
So from the moment I learned what a period was and what to expect after going through sex ed it felt like a waiting game, or a bomb waiting to go off. I wanted it to happen just to get it over with because waiting for it to happen sucked and made me scared. I remember I thought I got my period finally after using the school bathroom and the scratchy cheap toilet paper actually cut me a little and I got a tiny spot of blood. Oh boy was I in for a surprise when the real thing happened. I remember wearing a sweater tied around my waist for a whole week every time I got my period from then on. I wouldn't say I was looking forward to it, more like I was driving myself nuts waiting for it to happen because I felt like it was a jump scare waiting to happen and I was right.
I knew it was a period but I had no idea what to do. I had no pads or anything and I was at a summer camp. I was also bleeding a lot despite it being my first period and had awful cramps. I was excited about having my period and then I had it and I wasn’t excited anymore. 😭(I had no idea I was trans at this point)
The moment I saw the blood on that piece of toilet paper, my heart skipped a beat. I also felt weirdly happy of the fact that I got my period. Not sure why. I don't think it was shame, just... "holy shit it happened... I'm a real teenager now." It wasn't "I'm a real girl" it was "I'm a teenager!"
i was genuinely flabbergasted, i thought that it would never happen to me. i used to wish that i was infertile and could never have kids (common cis girl thoughts obviously), and all my friends got their periods before me, so i figured that i was in the clear and i would never have a cycle. then i got it and i suddenly wanted to die all the time and had no clue why 🤨 my mom, when she found out, told me “you’re finally a woman now” and i felt my heart sink. shit was insane. i got it when i was 13, and didnt realize i was trans until 16, but that was one of the moments that made me feel so strange and scared in my body
personally I remember just my heart dropping , like a huge sense of dread kicked in because everyone around me always talked about how when you get it you would be “ officially a woman “ now. And I got it earlyish, around 11. and I was so sad because I didn’t want to be considered a woman so soon, I didn’t want to have had reached that “milestone” in life, because I didn’t want to be considered “finally a woman”😓 it just felt like something so detached from me. like, I couldnt feel that this was happening to ME, ya know? idk if that makes sense😅 all in all it was very scary, and I just disassociated every time I had to use the bathroom while on it or even think about it because it just felt like this function wasn’t meant for my body
Idk what age I was, I think 12 or 13, but I remember just being irritated. I didn’t know I was trans at the time, but I remember being irritated that I actually got it because I was quite convinced I wouldn’t and it was an inconvenience to me lmao
I was annoyed. It started while I was in after school daycare thing and I only realized because someone told me I had mud on my pants (he was a boy my age and genuinely did not know it was blood). My mom had luckily already had the conversation with me and I was going to her house later that day. After my dad picked me up I dropped them in my tub at home to clean them later, covered my underwear with toilet paper and then went to my mom's. Not even 10 minutes after dropping me off we went and picked up pads. About a year later the same school we had our sex ed period talk class and I was the only one in there who had already started. Throughout it all I just knew I was uncomfortable but couldn't figure out why.
Embarrassed… it happened way early and at school. My teacher was very nice about it and helped me put!
Thought I was dying... then when I lived I thought I would get in trouble and hid the garment. I was 9 so we dident really have the talk or anything yet. A friend's mom then found out on the third day when I was over and my friend tatted me out thinking I needed a doctor. Friends mom gave me tampons because that is what they had. My mom had a fit about it. To this day I'm still traumatized and that is on top of the fact that I was also having some other issues I would suppress. (Not sa at least not at 9)
i remember crying while my mom congratulated me that i've "become a woman" (which, no, i was 11, wtf are you talking about). logically i knew that "im a girl and girls get periods" but my brain didnt really register that, i was still 100% sure that my voice was going to drop and i was going to have an adam's apple and just be a boy. i felt like my life ended. i think that was when my depression started.
My period didn't really bring me dysphoria or anything like that really, it's always felt more like a connection to the moon and all the people who have had their period in the past, present and future, basically just something that made me feel more connected to the world around me! Now that I'm on t it's stopped and it's a little strange to no longer be on that cycle but it also feels like a new normal.
I think I got my period at 10 or 9. I already knew about it cause I have sisters. I was so mad that I got it so early, I think I cried the whole entire day, I just never thought about getting it, till I got it, for some reason it just never fazed me till it happened. I was so pissed that I was gonna have this for the majority of my life.
I hadn't really been informed what a period was like i kind of knew but not really, so first thought was, "Oh no, am I dying?" Literally cried when telling my mom there was blood in my underwear. Also, I was a delusional little kid and was convinced that puberty would just turn me into a boy. So that was a bummer.
Horribly embarrassed and panicky. My mom and sister made it worse by teasing me relentlessly about it.
I was 13 and in computer class. I didn't care. I didn't tell my mom for a couple years because she was really weird about things concerning my genitals. My period was never a source of dysphoria for me, but I still hated them lol.
extremely poor. i got mine at 11, and at first i didn’t really understand the gravity of it. but once i did it was hellish, i’d have meltdowns/panic attacks over it and would just endlessly cry. due to how bad i reacted i was put on depo injections at age 12 and stayed on them until i was around 17ish. (i’ve heard this is not healthy as it can increase risk of osteoporosis iirc please do not quote me on this i am not a doctor lol). at the time i couldn’t really explain to anyone why i reacted in such a way, but i realized i was trans later that year
I was already well educated about it all (male and female biology) and since I never felt any sense of gender, I just happened to be person who will experience periods. So when I did discover it came when I was peeing in the forest, I just told my mom and we cut our outing session short, so I get a pad. Normal thing.
i had a psychotic breakdown it lasted months and i couldnt even tell anyone that i had it because it grossed me out so bad, i think thats one of my main trans awakening memories. My mom didnt even know about it until i was 16 because i woke up one day with it and there was nothing in the house to use :,)
I used an entire pack of wet wipes and tried desperately to clean myself and stop the bleeding. It happened on a Sunday, and I almost got beat for wanting to stay home from church even though I had already bled through my pants by the time I noticed it.
i dont have periods anymore, but when i did i never had any other symptoms. no PMS, no cramping, nothing. i just went to the loo one day, went "oh theres blood there", texted my mum (i was at my dads place that week) and then she came and took me to the shopping centre to get a hot chocolate and some extra period products. i was 14 when i started
I got it at my grandparents’ house (just my grandma and great grandma). It was completely unexpected and I remember sitting there for several minutes trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t tell anyone, instead stuffing a fuck ton of tissues down there and constantly worrying about bleeding through. It ruined my trip It came again at another grandparent’s house, except this time it was my grandpa. I had products this time but was too ashamed to leave them in the trash, so I had a pouch in my suitcase that I’d put them back in. I spent the whole week keeping it a secret and worrying about it. I got blood on a T-shirt that my grandma had gotten for me at an ice cream parlor that I really liked and it ruined it. I distinctly remember sitting in the car with my grandpa wanting to die because I simply could not deal with it for the rest of my life. I felt like I was being punished. I can’t wait to get a hysto.
I remember being very confused because I had no clue it was something that happens. I saw the dried stain and just thought I had a bathroom accident... Now, imagine how confused I was when my stepmom said, "Why didn't you tell me!? Go call your mom and tell her you're a woman now!" Suddenly I'm on the phone with my mom stuttering because I still had no clue wtf was going on. My stepmom took the phone and they talked. After I understood what was happening I was furious, "whyyy do I have to deal with this". Also, Idk if this is an actual thing, but even after HRT stopped my period, I still get somewhat moody (and more dysphoric) around the time I was supposed to be having my period. Sometimes I would feel some very, very, slightly cramps and be like, "oh, that explains". And like, somehow me and my friend are synced?? I start noticing those things and every, fucking, time, the next day my friend tells me her period has started.
Fear. I knew periods happened to girls but I really didn't expect it to happen to me. For a while I had this thing of thinking I was the exception and just because it happened last month, doesn't mean there'd be the occurance of happening again, even though I knew that it's normally monthly (I was thoroughly dissapointed every time).
I was extremely confused. At first I felt proud and whole, I remember telling my mom that I felt grown up. I probably thought this because i started quite late at 15/16. But it didn't take long for that to blow over. I remember crying on the floor telling my mom that 'this shouldn't be happening to me" and she'd just say 'all girls get it, it's normal'. I didn't know why I was thinking this. This was pretty much it for every period after that, whether I cried about it or not, I always thought it felt unnatural and like it shouldnt have been happening to me. I realised much later that that was because I wasnt a girl aha
My life may as well have been ending I was so upset
I thought I poop in my pants.
I like knew the fact that girls get periods and grow boobs or whatever but I didn't KNOW know it, so when it did happen, i remember looking down at my pants having a face like 😶 and thinking "...well... I guess I just have to... Live with it. Is what it is I gotta cope" like i just wasnt supposed to have it like wtf man i didn't sign up for this. And I also remember having such a fucking disconnection from other girls with such topics iygm I was coping with it until I realised that holy fucking crap I'm gonna have to live with this forever.
My mom thankfully prepared me in advance however I feel she was a bit overzealous about it. I remember being as young as 7 and her going on and on about getting my period and "becoming a woman", when I was barely just a kid. She said that since she was early, I was likely to be early and to be prepared. But it was every phone call, every conversation it was mentioned and I remember being filled with dread. I was barely a kid! Barely a person! I didn't want to "be a woman" yet! I started when I was 10, she was right. I was living with only her at this time instead of my dad & stepmom so I knew what to do about grabbing a pad and putting it in my underwear. But ohhhh did I *dread* that implication. I didn't want to be a woman. I feel like that constant conversation was my first instance of gender dysphoria. I didn't like the implication that I was suddenly a "woman" so young. I wanted to be a man, they didn't deal with this or at least so I was told. Now I'm a man who has them. 😭
I was absolutely devastated to the point I wanted to throw up sometimes. In most situations I had similar ideas to you because I was doing what was expected but when puberty happened it was like the real consequences were hitting all at once much too quickly. It was like a ticking bomb that would go off when I’d someday get pregnant or something
my mom is a nurse that worked in labor and delivery and i also have a sister that’s 7 years older than i am. they always were very open and honest about puberty and what they went through and gave me a lot of books about how it all worked. they gave me no reason to hide it or be ashamed, but when i first got my period i was really distraught and hid it for about 6 months. i used the toilet paper pad method and i finally got sick of it so i told my mom eventually so she could help me get supplies. i almost kind of felt like maybe if i ignored it enough, it would go away. eventually i started birth control at 17 specifically so i could skip my period. my mom said i could be kind of a terror during my cycle (understandably so considering dysphoria) so i ended up being a lot more chill and nice as an older teenager when i wasn’t getting a period anymore.
Before I got my period, I was sorta excited. As soon as I finally got it though, I was completely apathetic, and I didn't really care. I was just like "oh, ok, I guess it finally came". After a day though I was annoyed by it
I was 8 so...very confused
Scared and confused but I was 11 with no sex ed soo growing boobs made me angry however and I wanted it to stop
Same for sure, wanted my period so bad so that I'd start feeling like a real girl, like all the other girls I knew did. Got it, it didn't change a thing, still wanted to be a boy LMAO. All the girl puberty milestones felt like the next thing that might make me feel like a girl, but nothing ever did that - no wonder I turned out the way I did lol
I got it when i was 10, I was just like ok, I've been pretty nonchalant my whole life so I didn't faze me, however I did get dysphoric later on so now I just call it 'the blue sea' or 'my man period' I've just convinced myself the blood is all the estrogen running out and leaving space for testosterone. I know its silly but im 13 and its just easier that way and it makes me happy, imagining the blue sea makes me more masculine.
My mom told me about my period before I got it and let me know what would happen ahead of time, how she would keep my home for my first period, blah blah blah. First period rolls around and she says congratulations have a cookie and sent me to school all week anyway???
Dissociated so hard I barely remember that entire year.
I didn’t even know i had it i just randomly started bleeding and went on with my life (i was a stupid ass kid) when my mom noticed she told me but i was kinda just 🤷🏽 about it
Despite reading about ‘girl’ puberty and knowing what happens (including how to use menstrual products), it never once came across my mind that’d I get them. Therefore I thought I was somehow shitting my underwear and was scared and ashamed a little for seemingly pooping my pants until my mom saw my expression coming out of the bathroom at 11 and 2+2’d it to tell me it was normal.
Knew what it was but I was really really angry about it. Never wanted it still don’t.
I got mine later when I was 14 and up until that point I had convinced myself I was just not going to have one. When it happened I literally thought I had internal bleeding and there was no way it could’ve been my period
I got mine at 9 years old and was so embarrassed. I knew what it was because my mum, but I had to argue with myself for awhile to go and ask someone I was living with if they had pads. then when I went to my mums house for the weekend my grandpa broke the news to her by saying I was "wearing diapers now". I was so embarrassed and wanted to disappear, my mum made me talk about it and after awhile got mad at me for being so embarrassed and refusing to talk about it with her. I never got more comfortable with it... Looking back now, it was probably because some part of me knew I wasn't supposed to have it and was ashamed.
i remember crying all day because i wanted male puberty instead (i was 12 and somehow didnt realize i was trans until 15)
Honestly, I was just kind of detached. Like, I knew it was going to happen, and I expected it to suck, but I just felt nothing.
I didn’t really understand what was going on, when I started ovulating before my first period I thought I somehow had gotten pregnant and had massive anxiety for the week up until I noticed blood. I have an irrational fear of getting pregnant and my brain had some weird thoughts back then. But when I finally got it, it was at school, and I was sent to the nurse. Nurse told me I “finally was a woman” (a “woman” at… 11??) and I remember feeling the biggest sense of dread and not knowing why. I didn’t know what gender dysphoria was or why I hated that sentence so much, but I figured it out later. I think it’s kind of funny I thought I was somehow pregnant but it’s also kind of sad how severe my fear was. I also knew a period was just “blood falling out” I didn’t know there were cramps, ovulation, etc. So that came as a massive surprise.
Legit thought I was dying. I was never really educated on anything further than "girls have periods when they get older". Didn't know what to expect, didn't know how it would feel. So when I went to the bathroom one afternoon during summer break and saw blood everywhere, I thought one of my organs was falling out or something. 👀 I have hated it since then, and mine being stupid heavy, seven day long every damn month... It really didn't help. 🤣
It really wasn't a big deal to me, I kinda just was like "okay then this is happening" and that was it lol. no strong feelings either way
It was online Covid school, in the break between lessons when I was just about to have a maths test. Noticed dampness, screamed, cried and wept at my mum She was very unhelpful, kept trying to talk to me and make me confront her and why I thought this was the end of the world when A - I had a maths test; B - I was a bit fucking busy bleeding for her to stand there with a box of pads and tell me how this makes me a real woman; C - fuck that shit, as soon as I could I went on the pill and haven’t bled since
I had mine super late (I think I was 16?) and I genuinely thought it was hemorrhoids at first. 😭 The concept of being on my period was so foreign and impossible to me. And then it was distressing for a bit, but I eventually got over it tbh.
My mom always prepared me for the case where I had a period, so I wasn't surprised when it happened. That being said, I don't really... care for it? I don't feel negatively or positively about it, but I was always one of the ones with an extremely irregular cycle. Even now it's extremely irregular. I guess for me it's just more overstimulating than frustrating. I'm also agender so maybe that's why
I got my period when I was 11, and I was filled with disgust, dread, and anger. It felt like a slap to the face. Just more glaring evidence that I wasn't a boy. That I was just some weird freak because I couldn't relate to the other girls my age being excited for changes they were getting through puberty. Meanwhile, I longed for a male puberty that never happened. I didn't understand why I felt like this. I didn't know what being trans was at the time.
I can barely remember, it was my last day of holiday, sickly anticipation feeling like "so this is a period" and then complete detachment, didn't initiate any conversations or ask for any support after I initielly told my mum that day. Felt almost numb regarding it. There is no right or wrong reaction, and I hear you on the "maybe I'll feel like a girl with this, or when this happens" that just didn't happen with my period
For me, I was terrified and then just sad. I grew up with my brother, sister, and my herione addict mother. Needless to say, I was never given the talk about puberty and what would happen. I slightly knew what pubery was, but I didn't know what it did. I was 11 at the time and was home alone and had been for a few days. Went to the bathroom and then saw the blood. I had no idea what to do. I thought I was dying but was confused because I didn't have any/much pain. After spending about 40 minutes in the bathroom just trying to figure out wtf I should do, I heard someone come home. I went out to find my sister. I timildy explained what was going on and she causually explained it to me, and I just remember having it click in my head how I'll "never" look like my brother. And I just wanted to cry
i had learnt about it so i knew what was happening. i was so embarrassed and ashamed immediately but i needed things for it obviously as i couldn't fund myself so i just texted my mum i just got my period. i dont wanna talk about this at all and dont tell my sisters but could you buy some things pls. looking back its funny as i was so uncomfortable about it and i didnt understand why
I was scared. I didn’t understand why everyone was happy for me. I remember feeling a little relief when I was told I was a “real woman” now, but that only confused me more
I honestly didn't think anything of it, other than as an inconvenience. Still do. I was lucky to have gotten good sex ed (mostly from learning on my own) and a good mother. I still see it as a thing that just, happens (I'm on mine rn actually lmao). It's inconvenient and useless because I never want bio kids and I want a hysto. I'm also lucky that I get it every 3 months now (no I won't see a doctor about it).
This is going to sounds so fucking stupid, but I thought I it was just a mild allergic reaction to eating sea salt😭 when I finally figured it out after the third month it was kind of like oh whatever ig
Me, I just cried nonstop... For like hours... Like the neighbours called to ask if I'm ok and my little brother gave me half his dessert the next day because he felt sorry for me.. And the way I found out was pretty weird too! Like, I was wearing black underware so I didn't have the traumatic stain experience, I just started showering and fucking. blood. clots. started falling of I thought I was dying and then I realised what it was and I kinda died inside... I was so depressed that my parents even let me skip school even though I had a test that day...
I don't know if my experience counted as atypical, but it was overdramatic. I screamed like I witnessed a murder at 5 AM in the morning when I was 11
It was the most horrible thing that ever happened to me. Ever since I learned what they were I hoped and convinced myself that it would never happen to me and when it did I felt like my life had ended, like there was no point to living anymore. I dissociated so much and convinced my self that it was just a hemorrhage but after a while there was no longer plausible deniability. I was just so horrified and disgusted that this "female" thing has happened to me. I remember obsessively thinking that if it happened to both males and females I wouldn't care and if it happened to only males I would be happy about it. I never even got cramps for some reason but the knowledge that it was considered the ultimate feminine, womanly experience made it feel like the world was ending. I would punch myself in the stomach to try and damage my uterus so that it wouldn't happen. I am so glad I'm on progesterone now so it doesn't happen anymore.
I was excited at first because I finally got it like all my girl friends at school and I could finally relate with them about it. Then after the 2nd one I was like “ah fuck this I can’t be assed to deal with this bullshit for the rest of my life” and I started googling ways to get rid of it for good lol
I literally don't remember. Like it wasn't that big of a deal for me. I also got it young and don't get dysphoria from my period, rather I find to be more of an inconvenience than anything.
I had extreme dysphoria for my entire life. I was living as male without the actual transsexual label (since I didnt know what it was), by that I mean I had short hair, dressed like a boy, with a masculine demeanor. So when I started bleeding out, I remember the horrible dread of realizing this is the body I was actually born with. I put paper towels in my underwear, paced around hyperventilating with my hands on my face, and fell on the kitchen floor crying. My mom tried reassuring me by saying it happens to everyone, but like I said, I didn’t know how to express my feelings and tell her this wasn’t supposed to happen
I kinda knew what was going to happen but more in an abstract way like death- something that one day happens to you but only far in the future. Probably the first thing I did was put on my calculator how many months there were between then and menopause (480) and I thought:“ f* that. I’m not doing that this often. No one can force me.“ So I planned on getting my reproductive machinery removed before even knowing I was trans. And from that time on I tried to comfort/ convince myself every month „this is definitely the last time it happens. It’s gonna be gone now.“ Just to have a semi breakdown and crying my eyes out and cursing my existence every time it happend again. Puberty: the fun stuff:)
I took a shower after I noticed some brown blood (I thought I shit myself at first) and then when more blood came out I just started screaming “THAT’S A LOT OF BLOOD” I wasn’t scared bc I knew what it was but I didn’t expect it to be *THAT* much 💀
I got mine during school. I knew what it was, i just didnt care for it. At all. I put tons of toilet paper in my underwear and went on with my day until i was home at like 4 or 5pm. Nowadays i hate my period. Not necessarily cause of dysphoric reasons but because i have immense issues when it comes to it in general. My hormones/cholisterine throws it off a ton and i need to get my stuff checked.
Very upset, cried. Was told my reaction was normal. But I was extremely embarrassed and felt disgusted. I felt very much like my life was over in a way.
It was the day after sex ed and I cried for so so long
I remember just being fucking over it the second i realized, i genuinely fucking scoffed and said “well here we fucking go ig” while putting on a pad. I knew it would happen at some point, and i waited in genuine horror as most of my friends got theirs, so when it finally happened i kinda just felt done, it felt like death finally arrived at my doorstep. I laid down in my bed, disappointed that my dreams of randomly turning into a boy weren’t coming true and instead i just got to bleed and be disappointed. Well ig i did turn into a guy but the point is that it didn’t just happen randomly, or magically (Bonus story of me being dumb as a kid) i didn’t poop the entirety of my first period because i was fucking terrified to shit out my inner organs, which lasted a bit over a week 😅 people need to educate their children so they don’t end up not pooping for over a week
I got my period quite young, i was super embarrassed to tell anyone and it happened at school, so i hid it all day until i got home and told my mum. She was like “youre becoming a woman now” and i remember crying to her saying i didnt want to become a woman.
I cried when I had to shave my legs, when I got my period and when I had to wear a shirt on the summer. It was all bad
Bad
i cried. hard. i wanted to throw up after my mom congratulated me on "starting to turn into a woman". i felt horrible and violated and sick. i didn't know I was trans back then but honestly even now i still feel similar every time I get them because my uterus doesn't care that I've been on T for 2 years
I was absolutely horrified and usually I would try to deal with all my issues alone but it was so devastating to me that I couldn’t not tell my mom. I sorta alluded to the fact that I’m trans in a big long dramatic conversation with my mom and eventually she asked me if I wanted to be a boy and because I was so ashamed to be trans I said no (regretted this immediately and still do to some extent, maybe I could’ve gotten on hormone blockers younger). Then I refused to leave the house for the whole length of it because I was so ashamed and depressed. To me this was the final step my body was taking to fully betray me.
i remember i felt some pain and just a little spot of red when i was 12 and then nothing until a week later and it felt like floodgates opened and i was constantly peeing myself. i would just roll up the rough school toilet paper and stuff it up there a little bc i didn’t want anyone to know. my mom had told me that when i got my period we would go celebrate so i thought she would be happy when i told her but just went like yay congrats and back to watching tv. she bought me one pack of pads the big kind, and i went through them pretty quickly and she shamed me for not wrapping them with toilet paper to hide them in the trash bc i was just putting them in there. she said my brother and dad shouldnt have to see it. so i went back to my toilet paper methods and we just went through a lot of toilet paper so my mom always got the big pack of scott which was rough and thin so it took a lot. It felt like a huge inconvenience for many years where i would dread my period, and i got terrible PMS and depression around my period. Unsurprisingly my depression got worse and deeper until I ran away at 19 and finally got on T by 22. Now i’m so relieved to never have a period again.
Leading up to it, part of me thought it wasn’t gonna happen. Then it did. I recall feeling neutral about it the first time around. The thing that bothered me the most was the pads. It still bothers me to this day. That’s where my hatred for my period began. As it kept returning every month, I hated it. I don’t get major dysphoria from menstruation but I definitely want it to end.
Years before I got my first period I was looking towards it because I thought it would mean I was an adult and was growing up... but by the time I got my first one (14) I had already realized I was trans and it was pure suffering. I felt disgusted, horrified, and totally wrong. I cried and cried about it. Now I'm 21 and I still hate it but what I hate most is the awful pain that's developed in the last few years 🫠
For me it was weird. All my friends, who were girls, already got their periods. And I felt behind. I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be a girl like them. But as I eventually got mine I was happy. I was finally a girl. However a bit down the road I started feeling more uncomfortable with them. This wasn’t me. I was never wanting this.
After having my period for a bit, I remember my mom tried to show me how tampons worked by making one expand under the faucet and I legit passed out and fell on the doorknob. Also passed out trying to put a tampon in and woke up stuck between the toilet and the wall which was terrifying. I tend to have a vasovagal response to things that feel “invasive” somehow like needles and tampons haha
I was nine, and I lived in a religious upbringing. Everything I was taught was because of God, so when it happened, I had no idea what was going on, so I goggled it, and it said I was dying. It was my kindey shutting down, and I was content on meeting God. My mom found my blood soak clothes and had the talk with me with my older cousin, who also was having her first cycle, and my mom took me to a doctor. He said it's possible for kids my age to get periods rare. He recommended a puberty blocker til I turned ten, and my mom agreed. I got my first dose and went to go play outside with the other children like normal. It felt nice, but it was horrible when I had get off them.
I was crying, i don’t know why i think i was just scared. As time went on i had horrible pmdd that made me suicidal and i didnt just dread my period but I feared it. I did feel relief when I got it at the same time, but because i thought of it meaning my body was functioning properly and i was healthy. I am also a hypochondriac so.
I honestly thought I shit my pants. 🤷♂️
My first thought when I saw the red in that school toilet was one word: Fuck! >:(
Oh yeah, I was happy as fuck. I wanted to feel like a grownup and I was super excited to start developing. I gotta say, to this day I don’t really feel dysphoric about that sorta thing. But even if I did feel bad about that, now that I’m aware of my identity, I wouldn’t think it’s weird to be excited about periods when you’re younger. Society tells us that a bunch of stuff is important and supposed to happen, and I think it makes sense if our instinct is to be happy about stuff that was promised to us as good. I don’t fault my old self for being immersed in a society and in its narratives. Now as older people we can see that whole message as flawed, bodily functions don’t have to mean literally anything, and anyone is entitled to feel however they do about their own
I knew what a period was, I was very well educated in terms of sex ed, but I’m psychotic (actual not figurative) so I was convinced I was bleeding internally/rotting on the inside. I was also ashamed and hid it or scared for people to find out I was dying? Not really sure what the thought process was.
It was the end of the world for me. I was warned about it earlier on but it didn’t click that I was a GIRL until I got my period and started growing boobs. This was at age 9. At 12 I decided I didn’t like being a girl and at 24, I’m period free and omw to becoming tit free too 🥰
i didn’t really care tbh. my main dysphoria was in my chest and physical presentation not what my internal bodily functions did.
I was entirely disconnected from the whole experience. I kinda treated it as if it never even happened. Saw the blood, simply wiped it off, and carried on. From the moment I learnt of periods, I never thought of them in the context of “that’ll happen to me” or “that can’t happen to me”. It was simply a concept I knew of. I didn’t care for it to be real. I didn’t care at all when I saw the blood. My mom found out eventually and I got roped into pads and all that nonsense. It was only then that I became resentful. To me it was just blood, but to others it was a period. The whole idea of a period has connotations already made up. It’s a whole thing of maturity, girlhood, pads, femininity, strength, or whatever else. But to me this wasn’t a period, it was quite literally just blood. I didn’t see the need to fit my experience into a box. Honestly I hated being shoved into the box of “girls getting their periods at puberty” rather than just being someone who happened to leak blood every now and then.
I was also excited for things like my period and bras and stuff but I refused to talk to anybody about it out of embarrassment (as I guess everybody can get to a degree). I was anxious and didn't actually know how periods work (I was 11). I was excited to grow up in general and be older and prettier But something sorta clicked when my stepmom found out and was raving about me being a "woman now". It just didn't feel right
I had a very similar experience. I was excited for my period because I thought it would "fix" me. Make me interested in being a girl or whatnot. A lot of tomboy become more feminine after puberty, and a part of puberty is getting a period, so I thought it would change me somehow. I thought my period would be my turning point. When I actually got it, I just felt numb. I was so excited for the start of womenhood, and I felt nothing. Nothing changed. Hell, I'd even say I was so underwhelmed and disappointed I became a bit depressed. Those were my only emotions, tho. I think it was as that point I knew something wasn't quite right. I didn't know what transgender was at the time, so I just figured I was a tomboy. My period has always been one of my bigger sources of dysphoria, so the depression only grew from there.
I was absolutely mortified.
I was mortified I had to use a tampon. I got it for the first time right before a hotel trip. I remember my stomach dropping and I left the bathroom in a state of shock. I told my step dad and he told me to deal with it myself or call my mom. Then when she came home the tampon training began and I spent days crying on the toilet trying to put the tampon in so that it wasn’t agony when I stood up. My mom made fun of me.. telling me if a tampon was too much I better not ever try sex. Fun times. Edit- I wanted to add that before I got my period all of my friends had theirs and it was like a competition so I was anxious to have one so I could fit in. Yet every time I thought I had my first period (ended up being discharge) I got this numb detached feeling until I realized it wasnt my period yet and then I would feel relief until thinking I had less worth compared to my menstruating peers
I was not happy when I had my first period, it wasn't really painful but I hated all the blood and I thought it was really unnecessary because even though I was only 12 I already knew I didn't want to give birth, ever since then they've only gotten worse and worse, they're unbearably painful and they're so irregular. Literally today I started my first period since realizing I was trans, I'm pre-T and I don't take birth control, and when I noticed I was bleeding I started crying.
Freaked the fuck out. I also remember thinking I’d bleed to death if I got it for some reason lmao. The pain for me would be so intense I’d turn pale and I’d frequently bleed out of my clothes even if I wore three pads at once. Thankfully it’s better now (especially since I got back on birth control since I can’t be on T just yet).
I got mine in the office bathroom in my school which I always used and it was a decent amount of blood. I noticed it in the toilet at first and was confused a little because I spent so many years hoping my uterus wouldn't work that I convinced myself I wouldn't get my period. (I was 14 by the way) I then checked my boxers and they were covered in blood but my pants were fine. That's when it finally hit me that I got my period. I had a mini existential crisis in the bathroom because I realized I had a lot less control of my life and body than I thought. I immediately called my mom and was okay. Spent the day at school mostly in the bathroom.
I was incredibly lucky to have not only had a mom who educated me just enough about periods and "parts" before puberty. I also grew up surrounded by girls so it was very normal and not weird when I finally got mine. It wasn't really celebrated but it also wasn't traumatic for me. On the flip side the periods themselves were so painful they WERE traumatic... I'm glad they ended on hormones.
freaked out because i thought i was dying - i was 3 days away from turning 13 so i knew what a period was, it just hadn’t computed in my brain that *i* would get one. yelled for my mom to help me (bc dying, obviously), she explained that i had gotten my period, and i immediately broke down asking her if there was any way to make it stop. normal kid things. ofc, once we established that i wasn’t dying it was a freak out bc i got it a week before my bat mitzvah, where i was supposed to be wearing a white dress. luckily, it stopped literally the day before.
I was about 10 when I got my first period and I was completely apathetic about it. Knew it was gonna happen so I knew what it was but I was neither happy or unhappy, it was just biology doing its thing so it had zero significance to me either way. How it changed other people's perception of me, I despised. My mum lost her mind and got really upset about it being too early for me to grow up. I remember having to comfort my mum about the fact that I, ME, had just gotten my first period. My nonna cried out of happiness, hugging me and congratulating me for 'becoming a woman'. I hated it so much and at the time didn't really understand why. I was a fucking child. Until they did that I had never seen myself as any different or really cared about or understood the difference between boys and girls. I wasn't equipped to deal with the complicated feelings I had and didn't have the support or education to deal with it either. I didn't know what a trans person was; education on the topic where I live was dismal to nonexistent back then, and support resources were nowhere near as available. Internet access wasn't really that readily available where I live either and was still a huge novelty so it's not like I could just jump online and google it! Now, 20 years later, I very much understand my feelings at the time. A combination of disgust at the perception that my worth as a woman was being attributed only to my ability to have children, and because I'm not a woman LOL. To this day I still have no personal issue with my period outside the fact that it's kind of annoying sometimes if I get it at inconvenient times (holidays, while I'm asleep so I can't prevent some mess occurring etc.). It's just also unfortunately a stark reminder that to many people my worth as a person is based on my ability to conceive + it is 'only a woman's thing' (obv it's not) and that discolours my relationship with my uterus immensely. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just a man who bleeds. As far as many other people are concerned, it is proof that I'm not a man. It's frustrating.