**Please note this is not really love related, but meh my blog my rules**

So this has been happening to me since I was 11 years old, and now I’m 31. That’s 20 years I’ve had to suffer this indignation.

You get told as a child, its normal, it happens to us all and it’s nothing to be scared of but I can assure you that having seen Carrie as a young kid I was left in with a clear mind that it would be nothing but horrible. Oh and that girls would throw tampons at me in the changing room.

Yes, I’m talking about periods. Even the word to me is disgusting and I avoid using it all costs. Even with friends it will be “Yea I don’t feel well, I have tummy issues… No not the shits, lady things”. I don’t know when in my head I decided that I couldn’t talk about them like a normal human being but maybe it has everything to do with the stigma I feel when I’m on my period.

This may sound a bit mental, but I’m hoping I’m not the only one that feels like this. When you have your period, there is of course some things you have to do (unless you are on that stopper blocker injection cause then you are running around all like fuck you periods) like purchase tampons or sanitary towels, make sure there is a hot water bottle at hand, painkillers and also an endless supply of chocolate and shit films. But why does the purchasing of such sanitary items bring me out in a sweat (no this isn’t just the increase of hormones which causes me to sweat like a pedophile at a child’s birthday party) and makes me have to go over the plan of how to buy them. I’m a grown woman who is able to pay her own bills and hold down a job so why do I find this such a drama?

For me its the sad pity look you get or the avoid eye contact that the cashier will give you. If we’re honest, when we go to buy condoms you get the look that is a mental high five, that hey you’re getting sex, when its tampons its a quick give me your money, I can’t even make small talk with you look. To be honest, when I’m on my period the last thing I want to do is chat with you, I just want to go home and curl up in the foetal position until I stop bleeding like a stuck pig. But why should I and other women be made to feel like I’m a second class citizen, who shouldn’t be spoken to like a normal person because Aunty Flo has made her monthly gift drop to you?

I’m not suggest I want a parade each time, but I would like a cashier to speak to me in a normal way. I’m not diseased or a criminal, I’m simply the poor bastard whose time of the month it is when they get to have their insides come outside in the most horrific horror movie worthy way.

I would also like to stop this bullshit “woowowowo you’re on your period lets run around in tiny shorts doing skate boarding” adverts. Show me a real woman, who is wearing comfortable pants sitting with a a bowlful of chocolate, several cats and a mascara messed face on her period. Its not the most glamourous view, but at least its honest. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that there isn’t women out sky diving on their periods but come on most of us are in our snuggly pjs cursing the day our we were made a woman at conception. Let’s normalise periods, not have them as this secret club where we have to all pretend that we are happy in mini white shorts, laughing all the time whilst we have to sneak around uttering the word period in hushed tones and acting and being treated like we’ve asked for a back street abortion in the 50s.

There is not only a need to normalise periods to make them less shameful but from a medical point of view we need to talk about them. Research from the Endometriosis UK shows us that 1 in 10 women of reproductive age across the UK have endometriosis, making that over 1.5 million women in total. That’s around about the size of Liverpool City region. What’s even more frightening is that on average it takes 7.5 years from first developing symptoms to diagnosis. Women are suffering in silence because we are too scared to say “Hey, my period is really painful and I’m not sure if this is okay”.

So next time you are talking with friends (male or female) and the subject of periods come up lets make sure we turn that shy and embarrassed downwards glance to a yes you rock even if your downstairs looks like that bit in The Shining.

I’m on my period and raging like a motherfucker and that okay.