According to a certain politician, we are all offsprings of rapes and incests. What struck me is that it seems to imply men are doing the majority of the work of propagating to ensure that there are enough babies to go around, and women just have to make the best of it. Gosh, no wonder women are taught to be calm and peaceful, and more responsible, kinder, stay at home, loving, available. Turns out it’s our place to just lay there and wait, then deal with it. Does that sound about right though? What if the page is flipped, and let’s say, women are the hunters, they are the ones who are keeping an eye out for the next viable vessel solely for her own goals? Does that sound vaguely evil now? It does, doesn’t it? And yet, the ones doing the alleged rapes and incests are the ones proliferating. What does that tell you?

But this post is about the period, the other humbling experience every woman must experience. Did we sign up for it? No. Were we prepared for it? For the majority of us, no. Are there any studies done on its impact on young women’s psyche? I haven’t seen any. But I can tell you how it affected me. I believe self-trust is one of the foundations for self-esteem. I was a carefree child, a tomboy, a prodigy even who was preparing for a mathematics contest when my first period occurred. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t know what was happening. It was a public humiliation. I think I still live with that shock. What’s worse, I was keenly aware that my body was not my own. Things happen to it, my brain’s no longer under my control. I was lost in self-doubt and self-hate. And that was just the beginning of the price to pay for being a woman.

“For what’s a woman, what has she got? If not herself, then she has naught.” I learned it the hard way, or maybe, the only way there was: to claim that person for yourself again, to channel the frustrations, to discern the misdirections, to safe-guard that spark that makes you, you. For now, I’m a cruel and un-usual human being, and I’m flowing with it.