15 Fun Facts About Menstruation

• It doesn’t matter even if it’s like 3am in the morning, you’ll always feel it, when the mensies have come around for a visit. You will be awoken out of your beauty sleep, with an unusual but familiar (bloody) knock in the pit of your uterus.
  

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• Your normal is actually a mini blood festival that happens for about 7 days inside your panties (think more like: a messy color run).
  

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• Even though you’ve never had sex in your whole entire life, you discover your inner whore body doesn’t care and still aches for some action.
  

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• You’ve never been burnt with a hot iron rod but somehow that is the only way, you can think of describing the sharp pain you feel when you’re on your periods. I mean your private(st) part should NEVER feel like it’s on fire fam, that’s just not right!
  

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• Emphasis: Period pains are not a joke hey, it literally feels like surviving an unnecessary death every single month.
  

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• It isn’t a very consistent ‘time of the month’ kind of situation as everyone will have you believe, the festival occasionally changes the schedule depending on your stress levels that month.
  

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• You can never confidently wear a white skirt or any clothes that are worn on your bottom half actually because the calendar fever does not have any manners.
  

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• The mensies have absolutely no respect for your clean linen as well.
  

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• You cry over every little damn thing that exists in this world. It’s ridiculous, you suddenly become this weakling who sees the need to weep because normal life moments suddenly become misdiagnosed as hopelessly heartbreaking and sad.
  

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• Then there’s being easily irritable and annoyed, you might from time to time have to snap at at-least one (almost always deserving) human being during your special time of the month, just to iron out those hormonal knots.
  

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• Then of course we have the migraines, the weird cravings, the loss of appetite, the hankering thirst, and the intolerance you’ll have with stupid people… oh wait we don’t have to be on our period to experience the last one.
  

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• And by the way, have I mentioned how it takes years to finally choose a brand that suits your flow? Basically for the longest time ever, it’s other people with their personal preferences who buy your pads for you.
  

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• Sadly being on your mensies also means you can have babies BUT obviously it doesn’t necessarily mean you should submit to the maternal calling.
  

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• I got mine while playing dolls with my siblings at about 11, I reported the unusual happenings in my underwear to my young mother. She gave me a pack of pads and said I mustn’t tell my younger sisters about it. I know for a fact that this kind of awkward exchange between mothers and daughters still exists.
  

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• My aunt begged my mother to put me on contraceptives when she found out I joined the grown ups with the mighty leak (I did mention I was 11 right?) Thank goodness my mom refused this advice… Teenage pregnancy is a real and critical issue in our society that some parents might unfortunately feel should be solved with enforcing the contraception doctrine on their children even before they discover sex for themselves.
  

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  Getting my period has become an accepted part of my life, and even though it shows up every month without fail, not a cycle goes by that I don’t almost always wish it away. It is a big inconvenience that can make me really moody and cranky but month after month, I put on my big girl panties and accept it as an unpleasant part of my womanhood. Some days I am not so grim about it and choose to embrace it as a sign of life that I carry within me. So instead of resenting my flow, in this post I acknowledge its power and find a fun, light-hearted side to the whole experience.

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  Cover Photo By: Lutendo Malatji