I was within the higher range of what’s considered medically normal. But experiencing menarche roughly two years after your friends have is socially awkward, no matter what the medical textbooks say. I didn’t get an official award when we graduated eighth grade. No ribbon to label me as “Last Non-Menstruating Girl.” I didn’t need one. Everyone knew. The boys and the teachers, too. Unspoken things are no less known.

Your doctor can tell you there’s nothing to worry about. Which there isn’t, in a strictly technical sense. You nod along because you understand that science is its own language. An abstract language that has nothing to do with the school hallway. With the bathroom. With the places that pulsate.

You’re already weird, already bullied, already an outsider among your peers. And now your body is conspiring to prove them all right. You’re not normal, and you don’t belong in the teenage world. You’re a freak and a baby, just like they’ve been saying since the third grade.

In retrospect, it does seem cosmically cruel that the unpopular girl should be “the lucky one” who’s destined for a late period. It was a bodily reinforcement of the external message I couldn’t escape. I was already excluded in ways ranging from subtle to dramatic. My slow physical maturity left me further on the outside, for arbitrary reasons bound to biology. Or maybe it wasn’t entirely arbitrary. Had they smelt it on me when we were eight? Had my pheromones exuded “ALAINA IS DIFFERENT”?

Nah, who am I kidding? It was just my weird personality, and that alone. That my body wound up being weird as well, uh, that’s just a cruel quirk of fate! Hahahaha! Hilarious coincidence! Fuck me!!!

Oh, how I despised my self-pity! Almost as much as I hated my lazy vagina that stubbornly refused to bleed. “I’ll stop being whiny if you’ll just do what you’re supposed to!” My vagina refused to comply with my very logical and direct orders, so my angst and spite continued.

I intellectually knew that it was random. But God, it felt so personal. My own body colluding with the narrative that I was defective.

Halfway through my freshman year of high school, the “curse” finally came. What a blessing it was! How welcome was that Shining elevator! I told everyone, including my guy friends, who just politely blinked. They weren’t grossed out so much as confused. Like uh, congratulations? I understood that no one was impressed with me, with the exception of myself and my parents. I was too happy to care. I wanted a participation trophy, for I felt that my patience had earned more than a mere sticker.

I asked a cool girl if she had a pad. She was not only cool but kind. She did indeed have an extra pad and gave it to me with grace. My bleeding had been over for a week by then, so I didn’t even need one. I just wanted her to know that I was like her. I wanted to communicate that we were part of the same club. That I was also an Official Young Woman. Normal, beautifully normal! I kept the pad she gave me in my backpack for weeks. When I finally needed it, opening it felt like receiving a prize. A prize wrapped in plastic I ripped open with my teeth.

I was pregnant at the age of 39. The COVID lockdown was mostly lifted, but the world was not quite fully open. As such, my husband wasn’t allowed to accompany me to my appointments, which was harder for him than it was for me. Once again, I was out of sync with my peers, going through something alone that should have been a communal experience. At the very least, I wanted my husband by my side. Instead, I got doctors and nurses who were warm, but necessarily clinical. Once again, I was an outlier. The spicy part of the bell curve.

The lingering pandemic isolated me, even more than my age did. I held my own hand.

But my baby was growing strong, and that was what ultimately mattered. A little bit of loneliness is nothing in the long run. Not compared to a lifetime with him in it. Who cares how long it took me to get here?

As I heard my son’s heartbeat on the monitor, I wanted to reach back in time and hug that 14-year-old girl, still six months away from her first period. You’re OK, I’d tell her, to the rhythm of my son’s blood. You’re OK. You’re normal. It’s OK. You’re good.

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