The Hormone Diaries | Part 1: The Symptoms

For a while now I’ve been watching YouTube channels and reading blogs that are either very daring with the topics they discuss, or are becoming more open about talking about female health. My experience has been quite sheltered as my friends and I rarely discuss these things, which is definitely a cultural issue. I was mostly inspired by Hannah Witton’s new series The Hormone Diaries to share my own story.

Honestly I’m a bit nervous about writing this for some reason. It would be so easy for people to criticise me for letting things go this long without doing anything, and honestly I just don’t have many people in my life who openly talk about things like periods or sex so it is relatively new to me.

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a doctor, nor have I seen one in regards to anything I’m going to talk about in this post so everything is just based on my personal experience over the last 15 or so years.

I’m hoping that writing about this and hopefully having more open discussions with people both online in real life will help me overcome some fears and blocks I have about these issues. If talking about female health isn’t your thing, feel free to skip this post and enjoy the rest of your day.

My First Period

Like every girl, I remember the day I first got my period. Luckily for me, it was a Sunday and I was at home. I had been playing in the morning with my brother while my mum was with her friends outside having lunch, I went to the toilet and noticed blood on my underwear. I was immediately scared and horrified, took them off and called my mum into my room. I shut the door and basically shoved them at her and I froze – I didn’t say a word. My mum was pretty good about it and showed me what to do with a pad and we basically continued the day as normal. There was something different about mum though – I was angry that I could tell she had told her friends that were over as to me it was a really embarrassing and personal thing that I felt should remain private. Later that afternoon we had to pick my brother up from rehearsals for a school production and I remember talking with my group of friends while we waited and just thinking to myself, “Do they have their periods? Am I a woman now? I want to tell them. Can I tell them?” I didn’t end up saying anything and never heard about periods again until over a year later while sitting on a basketball court with a large group of girls and the subject was brought up. I just listened to what everyone else was saying and didn’t contribute at all.

My most embarrassing period story was in grade 6 – it must have been two months or so after I got my first period, and I got up to go to little lunch with the rest of the class when I noticed blood on the seat. I tried wiping it off with a tissue but it just smeared around a bit. I waited behind until the teacher left and then swapped my chair with Laura Scott’s. She was the popular, pretty girl and her chair just happened to be one of the closest to mine. After I successfully swapped the chairs around, I went to lunch with the rest of the kids, went to the toilet to put some toilet paper in my underwear, and then carried on the day.

In high school my friends and I rarely spoke about periods. It just wasn’t a place that we went to in our conversations the vast majority of the time. Periods are something that we often deal with alone and try to sweep under the rug because society tells us that it’s not okay to talk about it, despite the vast majority of women going through it every month for half their life. I’ve been fortunate that the years of my life when I have experienced a normal cycle, I never had any pain or cramps – the only pain was the fact that I had a period at all and had to deal with it. I remember barely getting my period during high school and when I did I was really self-conscious about it, although I was self-conscious about everything at the time.

When Everything Changed

My first year of university was when I noticed my body start to change. My cycles were extremely irregular and had been for a few years, then one day on the bus I noticed the hairs on my arm were really long and dark. I was so embarrassed and just wanted to get rid of it so I started shaving it, which I still do now (I’m planning on getting laser hair removal at some point). Not long after that I noticed that I had started growing dark hairs both on and underneath my chin. I got really self conscious about it and again, started shaving every day to get rid of it. It grows so fast that by the time I get home from work I need to shave it again.

It’s really weird and personal to be writing about these things when I’m still going through them. I don’t have the answers and I don’t have the cure. I haven’t even been officially diagnosed. I’m hoping that by sharing my story I will gain enough courage and support to go and see a doctor so I can finally get this issue out of control and pay attention to it. It’s like my body has been shouting at me for 5 years and I am only now starting to listen. On a smaller level, I experience many mood swings despite not experiencing a period, and I definitely experience a cycle due to other signs that I’ve noticed (moods, smells, etc), but I just don’t menstruate.

I’m not sure when my next update will be but I want to keep you in the loop along this journey towards health and fertility. It’s scary because I don’t know what the future holds. Will I be on medication? Will the hair removal work? I’m not sure, but I know that I am determined to get these things under control and that I really want to make sure that I am in the best health possible so that I can definitely have babies and hopefully reverse my PCOS symptoms.