From ages 9 to 11, I was convinced that I would never have boobs. I teased my older sister mercilessly for having her own without much foresight into the fact that one day she would be able to tease me right back.

The first time I got my period was in the bathroom of my middle school in seventh grade. Living in a house with a single father, I didn’t know much about what a period was except that it involved bleeding. After finding blood in my underwear that morning, I went to the school nurse and told her, “I think I’ve got my period.”

“What do you mean you think?” she said

“Well, there’s blood, ” I told her.

She showed me how to put a sanitary pad on, demonstrating on the faucet on the sink in the nurse bathroom. She then gave me a bunch of pamphlets and sent me on my way. The pad was quite a bit too big for me and extremely uncomfortable. After leaving the nurse’s office, I opted to sit on the bathroom floor and read the pamphlets instead of going to class. My interpretation of the explanation the pamphlet gave about unfertilized eggs being ejected from the body was to conclude that dead babies were coming out of me. It was an extremely emotional day as I struggled with physical discomfort and guilt over the dead babies. Did this mean I needed to have sex to save them? I’m not ready for that!

Adolescence is that time in your life when everything that you thought would never happen to you and didn’t seem important suddenly happens, and feels important. Just when you feel like you have settled into your body and mind and are confident in who you are and what you look like, everything starts to change.

Your chest hurts because breasts are growing in, you suddenly find yourself having to wear uncomfortable padding in your underwear for a few days each month and on top of that, your emotions are ready to burst forth at the slightest prod and you are suddenly more uncomfortable and self-conscious about everything you say and do. At least, that is how it feels in the beginning.

Although change is often scary and off-putting, it also opens doors to new and exciting experiences. When you were very young, simple everyday experiences were new and exciting — like pressing the button on the elevator or learning how to swing on the monkey bars. As you reach the age of 9 or 10, those experiences become commonplace. In a way, adolescence throws you back into those younger years of new challenges, only this time it’s buying your first bra or having your first kiss. And this time, although those new experiences will not be new forever, you will start to make decisions about whether or not you want them to last in the long term. You will learn how to work toward making something bigger and better than simply an exciting experience. You’ll build lasting relationships, or learn a language with plans to visit places where it’s spoken. Even though boobs and periods and all of that stuff may seem like a tremendous burden, you can at least look at it as a symbol. Along with those bodily changes, your mind will develop as well, and the world will grow around you. The future will seem more real than it ever had before because you gain the ability to work toward it.