I bled womanhood for the first time.
In a moment, I became a little too grown to be called a girl, my sister felt. And in the same moment I also became a woman too little for her pain, my mother sighed. Well back then I was scared, terrified at the catastrophe of my body which my mind could not even decipher. It seemed like there came an end to my freedom of wearing white skirts to school and climbing the walls in my neighborhood. So much of my usual that I was told I would lose. But my hindi teacher one friday, on discovering my stained skirt and ashamed teary eyes taught me a great lesson not all 5th grade girls would know. She told me I can't give in, that I need to wear my stained skirt with pride as a sign of my evolution and that my bleeding means inceptions not terminations. Enlightened and strengthened by my blood since that time, that grade I have never felt my periods as pain but prestige.
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