My life without periods

I’m thirty-six years old and I don’t have periods. I have had them. I just don’t have them regularly. Here’s a bit of my story. I don’t want pity, and I don’t want advice. But I realised today that I don’t know anyone else with a story like mine, so I decided to tell it.

My first period

My first period arrived while I was in the cinema in Streatham watching Men In Black in the summer of 1997. I must have been 13 or just 14, since I’m a July baby. I was wearing white very short shorts. Thankfully, nothing leaked, and I didn’t notice until I got home and went to the loo. I pulled my knickers down and saw the blood. A rush of excitement and adrenaline – maybe even joy. “Mum!” I called downstairs. “I’ve got my period!” The blood made sense of the weird feeling I’d been having in my tummy and my knickers. Mum was at the front door flirting with a door-to-door salesman. He was selling overpriced J-cloths. She didn’t run upstairs to celebrate with me. She just stood at the door laughing and flirting awkwardly.

Failed tampon attempts

I heard on a podcast the other day that tampons look like bullets. It’s true! I remember trying and failing to use tampons. They hurt so much when I tried to insert them inside my body. I tried and tried. I hated wearing pads and my mum used tampons and I wanted to just be able to put something inside me and forget about it for a few hours and still be able to go swimming. One day I tried for the umpteenth time and it went in! I realised i’d been getting the angle wrong all this time and that’s why it was so agonising. I’d been pushing the thing against the wall of my vagina. Ouch. Tampons with applicators made things so much easier. Sometimes I left them in for too long and worried about getting Toxic Shock Syndrome. Other times I would take one out to change it and I had hardly bled into it at all. Sometimes I could feel them leak. Other times they left me feeling all dried out. Did women design tampons? I very much doubt it.

I didn’t think about the environmental impact then. We just didn’t really think or talk that much about things like that in the mid-nineties. I didn’t even realise that you shouldn’t flush your tampons down the loo. Nobody told me.

Blood after sex

One time, when I was fifteen or sixteen, a boyfriend caught his nail on me when he was touching me and I started to bleed all over his bed. It was so, so, so excruciatingly embarrassing. I sat in the bath and cried and cried. The blood was different to period blood. Brighter and redder, it poured from the cut and wouldn’t stop.

Sex on my period

It was very hard as a teenager to discern how I felt about having sex on my period independent of how whoever I was with felt about it. When a boyfriend said he didn’t mind or that he wanted to, I felt comfortable with it. I would like to know how I feel about it now, as an adult woman. The problem is I don’t bleed, so I don’t have an opportunity to see how I feel.

Irregular periods

My periods were, right from the word go, very irregular and erratic. I would have two in a month, followed by nothing for ages. Eventually I got so tired of this, plus I was sexually active, so when my doctor suggested I go on the Pill, I agreed. Taking the Pill was a burden, but it did regulate my cycle. I bled on cue every month. I alos read about women who would take two months’ Pills without the week off to let themselves bleed. I didn’t know if this was healthy or not, but I think I might have tried this once or twice. Bleeding was messy, and I was happy to skip it.

I rarely took the Pill at the same time each day, as you’re supposed to, and I would often forget for two or three days in a row, followed by a frantic ‘Shit, shit, shit’ as I tried to figure out what to do. “I don’t like condoms,” guys would say. Yeah, well, I don’t like having to put a load of chemicals and hormones into my body just so that when you have an orgasm I don’t end up carrying your baby.

The end of my periods

When I went into rehab, a year into recovery and at the absolute limits of my abilities to cope with being in the world, my Pill prescription ran out. I decided to just… stop taking it. I waited for my periods to return. One month passed, then two, then three. Nothing. I went to the doctor and was told this was perfectly normal. I’d been on the Pill for about four years at this point, and had had anorexia and binge eating disorder. “Come back if you’re still not getting it after six months,” I was told. I was then told the same thing about 12 months (still nothing), and then 18 months. I started to worry. I wasn’t drinking, my weight was stable, I was in recovery and doing okay. Why wasn’t i bleeding every month? They started to run tests on me to see if everything was okay. Nothing wrong with my womb. Nothing wrong with my fallopian tubes. I would get these stabbing pains where I think my ovaries are meant to be, and they were going to investigate that but then I left the UK and went to New Zealand and Sydney, where I lived for almost a year. I never completed the tests.

The morning after pill

I took the morning after pill twice in Australia. It was a precaution. I didn’t know whether I could get pregnant, but just in case… I went to the pharmacy. I was judged both times. Why do women have to be the ones doing the work? Why are our choices scrutinised?

Side note: I saw an amazing t-shirt last week. Plain white tee, with the following slogan on it in printed block capitals:

GIRLS LIKE TO CUM TOO

Hate the spelling. Love the message. Yes. Yes we do.

Return of the blood

In my twenties, my periods returned. They were light, but they were back. I felt relieved. I spent most of my twenties pretty adamant that I was never going to have kids, but it was nice to know my body was doing what it was meant to be doing. I never went back to have more tests done though. I looked into it once when I visited the doctor but they had no record of me ever having gone for all those tests. I definitely didn’t make it up.

The coil

When I got with my ex-husband, I didn’t want to go back onto the Pill, for all the reasons I listed above. I also didn’t want to use condoms long-term. They’re just crap. I don’t like them. I also didn’t want to have the IUD (in the arm) because many women gain weight on it, sometimes up to two stone. I learned about the Mirena coil and decided to get one put in. I learned that they could make your periods heavier or lighter. Mine were very light, and the coil made them go away completely. Once again, just as when I was nineteen to twenty-something, I no longer bled each month.

It was fucking agony having it put in, but an afternoon of pain for five years of contraception? It was a no-brainer. I was doubled over in aching pain for the rest of the day. But once it was in, it was in, and not bleeding felt 99% like a blessing and a relief. Who wants to bleed every month if they don’t have to?

But… what’s this? Broodiness?

In my late twenties I became somewhat broody. I was still pretty sure I didn’t want kids, but my nephew was born and that really, really impacted me. I decided to have my coil out after a few years of having it in. Having a coil taken out is far less painful than having one put in. It was as if I could feel my body exhaling with relief at having this unknown object removed from it. I had a few light periods. Relief. My body might be able to get pregnant. Ultimately, we decided not to try, for lots and lots of reasons. Eventually I had a second coil put in, which I have to this day. The coil means once again that I don’t bleed.

Now, I am 36-and-a-half. I don’t bleed every month, but I’m pretty sure I have a cycle: a time comes when I just want to sleep a lot and eat chocolate. It’s hard though, really monitoring the cycle. I think my boyfriend is more perceptive of it than I am.

I don’t really miss bleeding. I know some women like it. They experience it as a release, a kind of cyclical cleanse. It does make me think that perhaps I’ve missed out on part of the experience of being a woman. But really, this is my experience of being a woman.

There is, of course, the question of fertility. Is my body able to be pregnant or not? At 36, not bleeding is more directly linked than ever before to the future possibility of biological motherhood. I hope that my body is capable of it, if it’s something I decide I want to do in the future. I would like to be able to be pregnant. I would like to be able to have that option. I know many women struggle, and right now, I have no idea if that will be my story too. It’s a big unknown.

The deepest question

In my darkest moments, I have wondered whether I have so deeply rejected my own mother that I’ve willed my body not to allow me to become one to such an extent that I cannot. I do not know if this is the case, because I do not know whether my not having periods are because something is wrong or because I have the coil. It’s interesting to watch yourself go through years and years of your life carrying questions, the answers to which you do not seek out.

No period, no period products

Not having periods has meant that I don’t use a lot of disposable period products, such as tampons or pads. I have not filled landfills (or the oceans, sorry fishies for my mistakes when I was younger) with sanitary products. The new wave of eco-friendly products – the Moon Cup, Thinx and Wear ‘Em Out pads (designed and launched this year by my incredible friend Lauren, who is seriously going to disrupt the mainstream with this product) – is largely irrelevant to me. I have no need for a moon cup. I have no need for any of this stuff.

I am the only woman I know who has experienced this.

My life without periods has been fine. But I wonder what sense I’ll make of it in another five to ten years.

Your comments on this piece are welcome, but please honour my request to not give me advice on this one. It’s a deeply personal subject and I’m happy with how I’m navigating it. Thank you.

(Photo by Josefin on Unsplash. Thank you, Josefin. They do look like bullets.)