(Content Warnings: gender dysphoria, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, blood.)

I’m terrified I’m about to get my period again, so let’s talk about why.

I started menstruating towards the end of middle school, which felt embarrassingly late at the time. It only took a few months for me to realize that my period was not the beautiful unfurling of womanhood that had been promised to me, the unhappy little trans kid – instead, it was a reoccurring nightmare of bloating, pain, and blood.

Jesus fuck, the blood… nobody warned me I’d feel like a criminal stuck at the scene of their own crime, constantly trying to mop up the evidence and weeping at the futility of it all. If I was ever indiscreet about my affliction, I was mocked by my peers and admonished by adults; “womanhood” was just a filthy secret I was tasked with containing even though it poured out of me with a vengeance.

The vague warnings I was given about PMS (“you’ll probably act bitchy”) did not prepare me for the exhausted despair and unbearably itchy rage that it brought. My cycle-summoned misery was often even more debilitating than the nausea-inducing cramps, and it magnified my preexisting depression. Both times I was forcibly hospitalized during high school for suicidal ideation, I was PMSing and didn’t realize until later.

From the very beginning, though, my period was inconsistent. I never had any idea when it was coming because it jumped all over the calendar and lasted a completely random number of days. Because my periods were so devastating emotionally, this became a unique kind of torture; every bad mood became something to fear, because it could be heralding my period. As I got older, I would sometimes go an entire month or two without one – then it would be back to terrorize me into crying in public restrooms at work.

When I was 23, I had one of the worst years of my life. I lost my house, separated from my partner, quit my job, and then – after tentatively starting to see each other again – spent a month by my partner’s side as they nearly died in the hospital. Somewhere in the chaos, the gaps between periods became longer and more frequent. I’d go five months without one, and sometimes only bleed for a day or two when it finally arrived.

A few years ago, my period basically stopped altogether.

I can’t afford health insurance so I can’t say for sure why this happened, though I have some google-fueled guesses (PCOS is at the top of the list, since – among other things – I also started growing facial and chest hair.) But if I’m being honest, there aren’t a lot of whys that I wouldn’t choose over having to endure regular periods. While I do spot sometimes and have PMS or cramping when my partner’s about to start theirs, I’ve only had two actual periods in the last two years, and it’s almost enough to make me believe in a god…

Only almost, because my most recent period was last month.

I started spotting, but since it wasn’t enough to even warrant a pad, I didn’t think anything of it. Over the course of a day I kept bleeding, and my partner suggested maybe I was getting a full period – I was furious at them for even suggesting it. But then I woke up from a nap and discovered I had bled all the way down my leg.

I freaked out.

It feels ridiculous to complain about getting a period when most folks with uteruses get them regularly for a majority of their life, often with far worse symptoms than mine. But fuck, last month was traumatizing. Blood pouring out of your body is fucking traumatizing! I try to boost and encourage folks who want to celebrate menstruation and battle social stigma (because treating people like filthy inconveniences for a natural biological function is terrible and should be challenged) but I don’t find anything beautiful about it. It hurts and it’s messy and it makes me feel less than human. I’m literally crying as I type this, because getting my period last month was the lowest I’ve felt in a long time. I wanted to die. I felt like I was already halfway there. Dazed, listless, bleeding out like an open wound.

In the years it was gone, I’ve learned more about why it upset me so much. I’ve realized my desperation and subsequent failure to feel connected to womanhood was because I’m not a woman. At least not most of the time. Menstruating was held up as something powerful and feminine, and as a teenager I’d hoped it would finally make me whole. But all it ever did was make me feel more disconnected from my body. Betrayed by my insides.

I’ll never forget how I felt the first time I watched stand-up comedian Cameron Esposito’s periods routine on Youtube. “My body. Is smashing my body. Out of my body. Using my body,” Esposito screamed into the mic, and even as I howled with laughter, I felt something inside me ease. I had never heard someone proportionately complain about the gross, painful reality of periods. Esposito yells a lot during her stand-up, but something about the raw volume of her voice as she discussed shedding her uterine lining made me feel like the internalized shrieking I’d been doing for all of my post-puberty life was finally manifested somewhere. I laughed so hard I cried, and then I just cried.

I don’t know how I managed to keep functioning as well as I did when I was getting my period regularly. I don’t know how anyone manages. Last month I spent two weeks scaring the shit out of my partner because I was so out of it. I barely left our bed. It was only extended family obligations that finally stirred me out of my stupor, and even then I didn’t start feeling human again until a week ago.

But the past few days, I’ve felt… off. A little too easily irritated, a little too aware of my body, a little too achy in my bones. Maybe I’m just fixating because I’m terrified I’ll get my period again; maybe I’m about to start PMSing. Even if it doesn’t happen again this month, I’ll still be spending a long time terrified by every odd stomachache and mood swing, because I can’t pretend it doesn’t happen to me anymore.

But I can talk about it. I can type these words. I don’t have to internalize the screaming anymore. And that helps.