Why are periods so scary?

Periods. Menstruation. The curse. Whatever you want to call it, it’s the same pain in the backside (or front side I suppose?) that the female gender complain about each month. Learning about it in sex education in junior school, and hearing the complaints of other girls, I thought that the worst thing about it would be the dreaded cramps or that I’d literally be bleeding out of my vagina but when I got it I was actually excited? As sad as that is, I was genuinely happy that I’d finally got my period. I was one of the last of my friends to get it so the excitement of being a woman at long last was definitely real. So what changed? How could I go from being excited about having my period, to being genuinely petrified?

I suppose the only explanation I really have spans from this demon that lives inside my head; anorexia. It was because of anorexia that I lost my period in the first place. When your body becomes underweight and struggles of function, it “shuts down” what are considered to be less vital systems such as the reproductive system, so when my weight plummeted my period inevitably stopped. To begin with, my lack of period didn’t really occur to me – of course I noticed, but it wasn’t as though it made me proud or anything, it was just another consequence of the illness. But after a few months without it, and after talking to other sufferers who’d also lost theirs, I began to feel powerful. It was just like how my eating disorder was my thing; I didn’t have a period when all other girls my age did. Something inside me felt special. I felt powerful that I had so much “control” over my body that it had literally shut down an entire system when, in reality, all I was doing was decreasing my chances of having children when I was older.

The thought of having children one day is one thing which my therapist has used to try to motivate me to increase my intake. If I wanted to have children then I had to gain weight. And I became so motivated to gain this weight to get my period back, yet when I did finally get it back, it just made me never want to eat again. It came so unexpected and completely took me by surprise. I knew that I still wasn’t a healthy weight, that had been reiterated to me on a weekly basis, and yet there was blood in my knickers. Of course, the voice inside my head straight away told me how fat I was. They’re all lying to you. You’re beyond a healthy weight now. Why did you let yourself get fat like that. I then began restricting again because that’s all I know how to do. If I lost weight then maybe my period would go away.

But why did I want it to go away? I had spent so long waiting for it to come back so that I could live the normal life I dreamed of. I didn’t want to damage my body any more. And yet as soon as it returned, I wanted to be right back to where I was.

I’m now in a position where I’m due to come on again soon for my second period since recovery, and a part of me is wishing that I’ve done enough to stop it returning. Why do I let a bodily function determine my recovery? How could I go from being excited about having my period, to being genuinely petrified?