I’m 20 and I missed my period, and I don’t know what to do right now
I’m sitting on the cold tile of my dorm bathroom right now, and my left sock has a hole in the toe that I keep digging into the grout. The heating in this building is broken half the time, so it’s either way too hot or way too cold; right now it’s way too hot, and my back is sweating through my old high school soccer hoodie. There’s a half-eaten bag of salt and vinegar chips sitting on the edge of the sink, I opened them an hour ago when I got back from the library, and I haven’t touched them since. My roommate is at her ochem study group, she won’t be back for another two hours, so I’ve got all the privacy in the world, but I still can’t make myself open the box in my lap.
It’s six days late. I know that exactly, because I’ve checked my period app twelve times today. The app says there’s a 2% chance I’m pregnant. Two percent feels like a hundred right now. The app also keeps popping up with little tips like “Stress is the number one cause of late periods for people your age!” like that’s supposed to make me feel better. Thanks, app. Cool. I know that. It doesn’t help.
I know I gave myself plenty of reasons for it to be late, honestly. I’ve had three midterms in ten days, I’ve been surviving on iced coffee and those cheap microwave burritos from the vending machine, I pulled two all nighters last week. I went to that indie music festival two weeks ago, forgot to pack my pill box, missed two active pills by accident. When I remembered I doubled up like the pamphlet says, but I guess that doesn’t always work, right? And then that night, the condom slipped. We didn’t notice until after. I brushed it off at the time. I told myself it was fine, I was on the pill, I’d taken the extra, nothing bad was going to happen. Stupid. So stupid.
I drove 45 minutes to a Planned Parenthood outside the next town the next day anyway, because I didn’t want to go to the campus clinic— the receptionist there is my roommate’s cousin and she posts all the campus tea on her Instagram stories. I waited three hours to be seen, sat next to a mom with a toddler who kept staring at my chipped nail polish and waving, and I just stared at my shoes the whole time. Plan B can mess up your cycle, right? The leaflet says it can make it early or late. So that’s another reason it could be late. But why hasn’t it shown up yet?
I bought three tests, just to be sure. First one was from the dollar store down the street by the laundromat. The old guy who runs it is friends with my dad, they go to the same barbershop every Saturday. I grabbed the test, then shoved a bottle of lavender lotion and a peanut butter granola bar on top of it on the conveyor belt, and he still scanned the test first, and bagged it by itself. I wanted to crawl into the crack between the floor and the soda cooler. I mumbled something about my car being parked wrong and left before he could ask how my parents were doing. Second test was from the campus pharmacy, twelve dollars, way more expensive, but I didn’t know anyone working there, so that was better. Third is the Clearblue one my best friend from home sent me— she Venmoed me for it and told me to just get it over with already, but I can’t.
I texted Sam, my boyfriend, two days ago when I realized how late it was. He goes to school two hours away, we do long distance. He said he’d get the bus up this weekend, he’d come with me, whatever happens. That’s nice, I guess, but all his texts have been like “are you sure you counted right?” and “could you have mixed up the dates from last month?” and it feels like he’s already saying it can’t be his fault, it must be your mistake, even though I know he’s just panicking too. I love him, I do, but right now I kind of wish he’d just shut up and get here already instead of sending me ten question marks every hour.
My roommate knocked on the door ten minutes ago. She said she heard me in here, asked if I was okay. I told her I had really bad diarrhea— that’s the universal go-to lie for when you don’t want to tell anyone you’re panicking about being pregnant, right? She left a ginger ale and a roll of Tums outside the door, that’s so her, she’s the nicest person ever, and I still can’t tell her. What if it’s positive? What if I have to move out mid-semester, or drop out, or something I can’t plan for? My parents don’t even know I’m sexually active. They pay my tuition, they keep telling me college is for my degree, not for boys, if I’m pregnant they’ll probably be so mad they’ll cut me off. I want to be a physical therapist, I’ve been working toward this since I was 16, I can’t just put that on hold. I don’t even know what options I have here, with the new laws that passed last month. I don’t want to think about that right now.
I got taro boba yesterday on the way back from my midterm. I took one sip and suddenly I had to run to the bathroom to throw up. I never throw up. I love taro boba, I get it every single Friday. That’s when I really started panicking. Before that I was just kind of jittery, after that my stomach hasn’t stopped twisting. I scroll TikTok at 2am when I can’t sleep, all these girls my age telling their stories, half of them say “it was just stress, mine was 10 days late nothing happened” and the other half say “I was 20 and didn’t find out until I was 12 weeks” and I can’t stop reading them, even though they just make me more scared.
The unopened test is still sitting in my lap, the box crinkled where I’ve been squeezing it for the past 20 minutes. The girl down the hall is playing that new Taylor Swift song, singing it so loud the walls vibrate. Someone just dragged a metal laundry cart down the hallway, it clatters over the loose tile by the vending machine. Everything out there is totally normal. Everyone else is just going about their day, studying, getting coffee, planning their spring break trips to Florida, and I’m sitting here on a bathroom floor can’t even make myself pee on a stick.
People keep saying 20 is supposed to be the best time of your life, right? You’re supposed to be having fun, finding yourself, all that. No one tells you how much of it is just sitting alone in a bathroom scared out of your mind, not knowing what to do next. I keep telling myself it’s probably fine. It’s just stress, it’s just the Plan B messing up my cycle, I’m overreacting. But what if I’m not? I don’t have a neat little ending for this. I’m still just sitting here. I think I’m gonna try to work up the courage to open the box in another minute. Maybe. (Word count: 1172)
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