I got my first period when I was fourteen, sitting in a cinema.
I don’t remember the movie. I just remember the panic. I tied my jumper around my waist and went home.
That was the start of it.
The pain. The blood. The confusion.
I used to leave sleepovers early because I’d bled through my friends’ sheets. I’d say I was tired or homesick. Mostly I was embarrassed.
Every doctor said the same thing — stress, hormones, normal.
Apparently, I just wasn’t good at handling being a woman.
I got into medical school thinking maybe if I understood the body, I could fix mine. I sat through lectures about how to take care of people when I wasn’t even taking care of myself.
It’s hard learning how to diagnose pain while you’re living in it.
It took seven years to be diagnosed with endometriosis. Seven years of being polite about pain.
Most days, I still don’t recognise myself.
My body changes more than the average person’s mood. I’m five foot one and a half, 156 centimetres, and somehow I can feel both tiny and too much at the same time.
And even now — as the founder of a women’s healthcare company — I still feel lost sometimes. I still wake up sad. I still don’t know what to do with all of it.
There’s no neat ending.
