00:00I'm just standing there in a white closet with like red blood hand marks like all over the walls.
00:09I think we should really be talking about periods more.
00:11Talking about periods is so important because A, everyone has one.
00:16B, we all have the problems with periods that everyone else has.
00:21Periods are unpredictable.
00:23I threw my boyfriend at the time a surprise birthday party.
00:27Naturally, we were 18. Hormones were raging.
00:30So we were trying to have sex like everywhere that we possibly could.
00:34It was at his sister's house and found a closet.
00:38And the closet was one of those closets like if you open the door, the lights went on,
00:43but you couldn't control whether the lights were on or off.
00:45So we shut the door behind us, had sex in the complete dark.
00:49And I think like halfway through, I got this like sense that something smelling a little off.
01:00When you are having sex periods, smell differently.
01:04He goes to open the door and like I'm just standing there in a white closet with like red blood
01:13hand marks like all over the walls.
01:16Like it literally looked like somebody got murdered in there.
01:19He stayed in the like closet and I ran to the bathroom, got all the wet toilet paper and like
01:25like crazily scrubbed the walls clean.
01:29And it was fine. Nobody knew that this story happened until right now.
01:34I was sitting in a music theory class and I'm wearing this like cute little urban outfitter's skirt.
01:39Of course it's beige because you only wear beige when you get your period.
01:43And I can hardly keep track of my geometry homework.
01:46So obviously I don't know when my period's coming.
01:48And I stand up to turn to my homework and one of my friends leans over and is like,
01:51um, you're bleeding straight through your skirt.
01:53Three of my friends converge around me and form this little herd and herd me to the bathroom so that
01:59no one can see the back of my skirt.
02:00I run into a bathroom stall, take off my skirt, throw it over the top, have them run to the
02:07sink and wash blood out of my skirt and then drying it under the hand dryer.
02:12They throw it back to me.
02:14At this point it's just like wet and stained instead of just stained.
02:17We walk out and they herd me back to music theory and I had texted one of my friend's boyfriends
02:22to tell the teacher that I was having lady problems.
02:25And so of course by the time I get back to class the entire 50 person class knows what happened.
02:30And they're all laughing.
02:32And fast forward a year later my music theory teacher posts on my Facebook wall and is like,
02:37happy birthday to the girl on the rag.
02:39So my story is actually about my first period ever.
02:42It was a few days after my 11th birthday and I was going to a baptism that day.
02:47So my period started in the middle of the day and I was so stressed out.
02:51I was really scared.
02:52I didn't tell anybody.
02:53I didn't want to take the attention away from such a big thing.
02:56And, you know, I used the go-to strategy of wadding up loads of toilet paper and stuffing it in
03:03my underwear.
03:03And sat in church for three hours like that and I was just scared to tell my mom, to tell
03:08my sisters.
03:09I didn't know what they would say.
03:10I didn't know if they could help me.
03:11You know, I just couldn't live with toilet paper in my underwear for a week.
03:16So I had to finally tell my mom and she looks at me and she says,
03:19I knew this was going to happen.
03:20Both of your sisters had their period a few days after their 11th birthday.
03:24I don't know why.
03:24You just didn't tell me.
03:25But the taboo around it.
03:27I was also one of the first of my friends to get my period.
03:30So just knowing that I didn't have a peer to relate to in that way was a little bit scary
03:35too.
03:35Periods are unpredictable and bodies do really weird things.
03:38And at the end of the day, if you're happy and it feels good, who gives a fuck what happens?
03:47I really think the moral of the story is educating girls early on.
03:51Make sure they know that this is something that most people go through.
03:55The more we can have these conversations, the earlier we can do it.
03:58The less kids will be scared to talk about it and the easier it'll be when we get older.
04:02Being the kind of friend and finding the kind of friends who will literally wash blood out of your skirt
04:08is the most powerful thing.
04:10And the more of those friends you can be and have, the better.
