The Last Bleed

A personal essay on menopause and the quiet power of lasts by Rebecca Cardon

February 17, 1989. I was thirteen. I kissed Trooper Law in the woods at school between Spanish and Algebra II, then came home to find matted blood in my white panties. I thought the two were related, that a French kiss had catapulted me into womanhood. The panties said “Saturday” in cursive across the front, though it was Thursday. When I sprinted upstairs to show my mom, she hugged me tight and squealed, “You’re a woman now.” In a span of hours, I had become someone new. The more innocent version of myself began her inevitable demise.

  And now?

Maybe this is the last time I bleed.

  The last time I unwrap a tampon and calculate how long I have before I ruin this outfit. I’ve spent a lifetime bracing for a mess, never knowing whether to grab a regular or a super-duper party sized extra plus. I was never on the pill, so it was always a guessing game, would it show up early? Late? Would it politely excuse itself or make a scene? My period has never been polite. If I had to give her a job, she’d be a foul-mouthed truck driver who spits when she talks and leaves the engine running while she pumps gas just to be an asshole. She usually made her entrance when I wore white, bought new underwear, or sat on someone else’s couch. Other times, she’d vanish entirely, leaving the cotton bone dry and untouched, forcing me to tug her out with both hands like an angry little ghost refusing to leave.

  She loved tricks. Sometimes she showed up a week early, shouting “peek a boo.” Other times she arrived late, sending me panic stricken in the drugstore aisles, clutching pregnancy tests. This was decades before Plan B. The wait was an eternity. I would pee on that little stick, bargaining with my higher power to make better choices.

  She could also be brutal. Clots like murder scenes, cramps that folded me in half, ER trips where I wondered if my uterus was tearing itself apart. Endometriosis was never diagnosed, but I suspected it all along. The body’s quiet sabotage.

  And still, she stayed. Month after month, a messy, relentless companion which also gave me something unexpected: a glimpse into a parallel life I did not choose. Every time she was late, I tried on motherhood in my mind. I pictured holding my newborn, teaching my giggly child the lessons I wished I had learned early; to trust their intuition, to be kind, not to take things personally. I pictured picking out clothes for the first day of school and making Jello and putting baby teeth under pillows. That fantasy would never morph into reality, but sometimes it was nice to visit.

  Strange to think maybe this is the end of that.

  Most of us don’t remember lasts. Not really. They slip away without goodbyes. The last time you rode a bike with training wheels. The last time you went trick or treating. The last time you kissed the boy who broke your high school heart. I don’t remember the last kiss with him, but I remember the first in technicolor: Grapefruit Stripe gum, a black and white polka dot onesie, me leaning out the window of my gray Maxima station wagon while he walked me to the car after a party. I was seventeen, and I can summon that moment like it happened yesterday.

  We don’t mourn the training wheels because we are already wobbling forward on a two-wheeler toward freedom. Trick or treating is traded in for Halloween parties and truth or dare with boys who taste like Dr. Pepper and carry skateboards.

Lasts don’t need our attention; they just need to be replaced. That’s the deal.

  Firsts leave tattoos in invisible ink, permanent even if no one can see them. Lasts tiptoe out of the room. They are more like shedding skin, quiet, gradual, already forgotten before you realize you have outgrown them.

  We love firsts because they show us what is possible. But lasts show us what we have survived. What we have let go of. What we are finally done carrying. Not losses. Transitions. The next rung does not appear until we have stepped off the one below.

  And maybe this is the last. This blood. This monthly ritual that has been with me for thirty-seven years, a true companion. One I never asked for but came to accept. And though I did not want kids, bleeding made me part of the conversation. A member of the team, even if I watched from the bench.

  So, I mark the moment. Sitting on the toilet, I clap, soft at first, then louder. A token of gratitude for thirty-seven years of pain, panic, laughter, resilience, and wonder. For the alternate lives she let me imagine. For the womanhood she thrust upon me in cursive panties on a Thursday. For the angry little ghost who sometimes refused to leave.

If this is her curtain call, she deserves a standing ovation.

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Rebecca Cardon is a writer and fitness professional with a degree in Broadcast Journalism from George Mason University. She gained recognition for her role on Bravo’s Work Out and her third-place finish on the sixth season of The Amazing Race. Her book, Breakups Blow: A Guided Workbook to Help You Break Free, delivers fresh insights on navigating through breakups. She writes weekly essays on Substack under the name Messy Nomad while traveling the world.

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Feminine Hygiene from Getty Images