The Vagina Dialogues – I Love My Cycle

I love my cycle. Not a motorcycle, not a calendar cycle, not a weather cycle, but my monthly cycle.

Why? When I first got my period, I was 11 and started before all of my friends. I had no one to talk to about it. I would even say it was embarrassing for me. In fact, I didn’t even tell my mom. I just kept sneaking her maxi pads until one day I was in so much pain I lay on my bed crying. Then, I was “caught.” I never had a serious talk with her about it. Inside I hated it. I was already taller than my classmates, developing back in the 4th grade. Starting my cycle only made it worse.

Then in junior high, all the girls were pretty much caught up to each other, and actually NOT having gotten your first period yet was extremely rare. Having your period became something not of shame, but of pride.

Our cycles meant we were all physically women, and no matter how different we all thought we were from each other, it was something that we all had in common. I’d even say it was something to bond over. The other girls in my high school baton twirling squad synchronized our periods and it was something we were tickled by. I’d read somewhere that this happens to women who spend a lot of time together. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but when the first of us announced that her period started, we knew that we would start within the next two or three days. It was like clockwork.

It wasn’t, however, without its downfalls: having to wear “grandma panties” to school, bulky maxi pads, loose-fitting clothes, dark clothes for fear of bleeding through, inability to participate in physical sports, and cramps. We would complain to each other about these issues and knew that if men had vagina, they could understand our pain.

As a woman now, I still get the cramps, I still have to wear the waist-high panties, and I still occasionally bleed through. However, my cycle has taken on a whole new meaning to me.

1) It means responsibilities of womanhood – making sure I’m regular, making sure I take care of my body, making sure I take the right precautions during sex (anal deposition, cum play, or swallowing hahaha), and overall ensuring, my insides are pristine. As a kid my biggest concern was making sure I always had feminine protection at all times.

2) Power – Feeling the first bit of involuntary flow between my legs every month reminds me that I am a still a giver of life. And even though men are givers of life as well, I think that women hold a bigger puzzle piece to the mystery of human life. We only get one egg a month versus the hundreds of millions of sperm men lose in the same time period. Women get to chose who allow between their legs, thus choosing who is potentially worthy enough to fertilize her egg.

3) There is still the element of bonding, but not with my friends. As a mother, I look for ways to bond with my kids, and this is probably the easiest way. I relish the moments when they come to me and ask for advice and there’s nothing more fulfilling than knowing my life experience will be passed down to them.

4) Sexual diversity. You always hear about guys not getting sex because their women were on their periods, and I admit, I bought into it. When Ryan and I first got married, being on my period meant he would get a blow job (in retrospect, it was a piece of crap bj now compared to the ones he gets now). We didn’t explore other ways for him to cum. We didn’t know about deepthroating. We didn’t have an anal regiment. We didn’t have coconut oil massages with happy endings. We didn’t have two people that didn’t care if a little blood got on them and had vaginal sex regardless of what time a month it was.  Little did I know, vaginal intercourse during my cycle felt amazing and made my orgasms much more intense.  But that was because I was still a girl. As a woman, my arsenal is diverse and full of things that I never imagined I could do.

I’m at that point where I embrace the things that I used to cringe at. The day I get hot flashes because I’m going through “the change” will be a sad one for me. It will mean I’m getting older, no longer with the option to make humans, and I may end up in a crying fit lasting for days. By then, however, I know I will find another subject to report on, one that will give me just as much joy. I just hope it’s not triple laugh lines or cottage cheese thighs.

TAGS: sex during my period, sex during my menstrual cycle, sex during my cycle, bloody sex, bloody mary