By Divine Ogbura
“My period basically makes me invalid for three days. And that's just the truth.”
“Day one. Day two. Day three. Those days don't belong to me, they belong to my period.
There's no movement. No exercise. I can't even really relax, because the pain won't let me. I don't communicate with people much either, not because I don't want to, but because I just can't. Everything gets paused. I'm not exaggerating when I say I become invalid. I genuinely cannot do anything except on serious, extreme medications.
The cramps are bad. Really bad. But it's not just cramps, it's vomiting, diarrhoea, body pain, headaches. My period doesn't come quietly. It arrives and takes over completely. I don't eat on day one at all. Day two is when I start trying, just trying to get something down.”
“The one time I thought I'd cracked it.”
“In secondary school (SS1), my chemistry teacher noticed how bad my cramps were and suggested ginger and hot water. Just chew the ginger, drink the hot water, eat the remaining bits. Simple.
I tried it for a month. And it worked. For a few hours, the pain eased. My period almost seemed to pause. I thought, finally. I've found something.
Then it came back. And when it did, the flow was heavier than I had ever experienced. Blood clots. Constant changing. I must have used four or five pads in one go because it just kept coming.
The next month, I tried the ginger again. It did nothing. My body had rejected it completely, and worse, I think that's around the time my vomiting got worse. Like my body was punishing me for trying to outsmart it.
That's something I've learned about my body over time, and it's one of the most exhausting things about my experience: whatever works one month, doesn't work the next. If something gives me relief, trying it again the following month doesn't just fail, it makes everything worse. My body rejects it and aggravates every symptom.
So every month, I start from scratch.”
“What it has cost me.”
“It is not just pain. It is everything around the pain.
Education. There are days, important days, that my period has simply taken from me. I cannot sit in a classroom, I cannot focus, I cannot be present. I have missed things I cannot get back.
Relationships. On day one and day two, I go quiet. I withdraw. Not because I want to, but because I have nothing left to give. The people around me have learned to read it by now, but that doesn't make it easier to keep explaining.
Employment. The same. You cannot perform when your body is in crisis. And the hard thing is that it's invisible, there is no cast, no visible injury. Just you, managing something that nobody can see, every single month.”
“And then there was the time I collapsed.”
“My period had been so bad, the blood loss, the pain, the not eating, that at some point, my body just gave out. They ran blood tests. The results came back and my blood levels were critically low. That's what months and months of this had done.
I have had my period for years now. I have not had one good experience with it. Not one.
And then there is the length of it.
Seven days. For most of my life, my period has lasted seven full days, sometimes eight. When I first started comparing notes with other people and heard them say three days, four days, I genuinely did not know what to do with that information.
What's wrong with me?
That question sat with me for a long time. Because nobody had told me that variation exists, that some people bleed for three days and some for seven, and that both can be real and valid, but also that some experiences deserve more attention than they get. I just thought I was broken. I just thought this was my life.
Recently it has started to ease slightly, five, six days now sometimes. And that alone feels like a victory. Which tells you everything about what the bar has been.”
And the thing that stays with me, the thing that says everything is that when I walk into my school clinic for treatment, the first thing they ask me is:
‘Is it cramps?’
They already know. They know my name and they know why I'm there. Because I have been there so many times, in so much pain, that it has become the first assumption.
That should not be normal. But for me, for so long, it has been.
“And through all of it, the seven days, the collapsing, the blood clots, the vomiting, the clinic visits, the starting from scratch every single month, there is always someone ready to tell you:
‘It's not that bad.’
‘Just take a paracetamol.’
‘Period pain can't be that serious.’
It comes from everywhere. From men who have never experienced a single cramp in their lives, confidently explaining what your body is and isn't capable of feeling. From other women too, which somehow makes it sting more. Because you expect to be believed by someone who has been there. And sometimes you're not.
That line, "it can't be that bad" I cannot explain what it does to you when you are lying there unable to move, unable to eat, unable to speak to anyone, having already collapsed once from blood loss, and someone somewhere is typing that into a comment box.
It invalidates everything. It makes you question your own body. It makes you wonder again "what is wrong with me?" but this time not because of the pain, because of the shame of not being believed.
This is why stories like this need to exist. Not to compete with anyone's experience. Not to be dramatic. But because silence and dismissal have gone on long enough.
My period is that bad. It always has been. And I am done pretending otherwise.
I'm sharing this because someone needs to hear it said plainly. Your period experience is valid, even the really hard ones. Especially the really hard ones.”
