I’m 20, my period’s 10 days late, and I’ve been hiding in my dorm bathroom for an hour
The tile is cold through my faded gray sweatpants, the vent above blows that weird dusty heat that makes my nose dry, and the automatic hand dryer keeps kicking on every five minutes for no reason ever since the freshman down the hall blew his nose here 10 minutes ago. I have three pregnancy tests sitting on the edge of the sink, their cardboard boxes a little soggy because my Hydroflask leaked in my backpack on the walk back from the dollar store off campus. The old lady at the checkout squinted at the three boxes and said “You got a big test coming up, huh?” and I just laughed so hard my face hurt and nodded. I wanted to crawl out of my skin right there.
I never thought this would be me. I’m the responsible one, right? I take color-coded notes in all my classes, I call my grandma every Sunday, I got on the pill a year ago specifically so I wouldn’t have to deal with this exact mess. I just… forgot three pills in a row last month. Midterms hit, I was cramming 12 hours a day for my bio exam, my brain was full of menstrual cycle diagrams and cell replication and nothing else. By the time I remembered I’d missed a few, it was too late.
The hookup was one time, after that bio midterm. We went back to his off-campus apartment, both wired from stress and too much cheap vodka mixed with fruit punch. We used a condom, I’m pretty sure I checked it afterward? It’s all a little blurry, honestly. I didn’t think anything of it when I walked back to my dorm at 2am. My period’s always been like clockwork, right? It shows up on the 12th, every month, no exceptions. So when the 12th came and went, then the 15th, then the 20th, I started checking my underwear every 20 minutes like that would make it show up faster.
I know all the reasons it can be late. I literally just got an A on that exam I mentioned, the one that covered the entire menstrual cycle. I can recite how stress suppresses GnRH, how sudden weight loss stops ovulation, how even changing your sleep schedule by a couple hours can throw everything off. I started running every morning this semester for intramural soccer, I lost 8 pounds in six weeks, I’ve been pulling all-nighters so I’m going to bed at 4am most nights. All of that adds up. None of that makes the cold pit in my stomach go away, though. Every time I pull my underwear down after peeing and there’s no blood, my heart drops so far I can feel it in my toes.
Last Tuesday I was in the dining hall, and they had that cinnamon roll French toast I’m obsessed with, and one whiff of it and I suddenly had to run to the bathroom to throw up. My friend Lila asked if I had food poisoning, I said yeah, I ate a bad burrito from the food truck off campus. I couldn’t tell her the truth. I’ve wanted to tell her three times now, when we’re sitting on the common room couch watching Netflix, but my throat closes up every time. She’s the one who always talks about waiting until marriage, I don’t know how she’d react. My mom keeps texting me asking when I’m coming home next weekend, and I keep making excuses about study groups. She’d be upset, not even just about the sex—she’d be mad I “wasn’t careful enough” and messed up the future she’s been bragging about to all her friends. I don’t want to hear that right now.
I keep scrolling Reddit at 2am, reading other girls’ stories, hiding my screen when the RA walks by the common room. Some of them are fine, they got their period two weeks late and everything worked out. Some of them aren’t. I don’t know what I’d do if the test comes back positive. I can’t have a baby. I can’t even keep my stupid succulent alive, I forgot to water it for two weeks and it turned completely brown. I’m not ready to take care of another person. I have an internship lined up at the research lab this summer, I was gonna save up for a trip to New York with my cousin after that. I can’t throw all that away. But abortion… I go to school in Ohio, right? They just passed that 6 week ban. I’d be past 6 weeks by the time I figured everything out, I’d have to drive three hours to Michigan, and I don’t have a car. I don’t know who to ask to take me. It’s all just this messy spinning in my head that won’t stop, even when I try to sleep.
I just realized I’ve been sitting here typing this in my notes app for 45 minutes instead of just peeing on the stick. I keep putting it off. It’s stupid, but it feels like if I don’t take the test, the answer can’t be bad, right? I can just keep pretending it’s just stress, that it’ll show up tomorrow. I’m 20. I’m not supposed to have to figure this out right now. My roommate’s off at her boyfriend’s place for the long weekend, so the dorm’s quiet except for the people partying down the hall. I can hear them laughing through the walls.
Some girl just banged the bathroom door open and ran into a stall crying about her organic chem midterm, so I guess I should wrap this up and go. I’ll take the test in a minute, I think. My legs are numb from sitting on the cold tile, and the crumbs from the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos I ate on the walk here fell all over the floor. I don’t have a neat ending to this. I’m just scared. That’s all.
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