Hysterical!

The body that bleeds

I got my period for the first time, without warning, when I was in the fifth grade. Having requested a full hysterectomy mere months after squeezing me out into the world (no, I didn’t take that decision personally, nope, not at all!), my mom didn’t have any menstrual products in the house, so I had to sit on the toilet, leaking beef soup into the bowl, while she found a kitchen towel that she didn’t mind…