Started at 10...

My period started in the middle of the night. Because I was half asleep, and knew what a period was, I wasn't scared. I just went and got my mum. She never gives emotional support for anything, so I didn't get any then, but she told me how to use pads and helped me clean up.

I still laugh at my naivete, though. That morning in school there had been a difficult maths test, and just afterwards, my first period cramps had started. I assumed that the mental effort had given me back aches! It wasn't an unreasonable leap, but still funny!

I wish there had been more sanitary bins in the school toilets (even though I now use reusable protection). It was horrible to have to wait to use the ones which had bins when other cubicles were free. I hated so much being marked out as different. In my head I was still a little girl like all the others. But this was the last year of primary school, I was the first to start, and only one other girl needed them by the end of the year.