When I first started menstruating, I got terrible cramps. Based on what other people had told me about periods and puberty, I thought this was normal. I mean, everyone had cramps. For years, I spent a week every month in unbearable pain that kept me from eating and getting out of bed in the morning. I thought passing out due to excruciating pain in the abdomen was something that everyone went through during their period.

I would wake up during the week and just stay in bed crying and unable to move from my curled-up position under my blankets. I would miss days of school at a time because I just couldn't stand to get up. Heating pads, Midol, and ibuprofen would occasionally work to minimize the pain, but in the end were rather useless. I got cramps the week before, of, and after my period and still didn't think anything of it

It wasn't until I was a senior in high school that I realized that there might be something wrong.

The more I spoke with people about the pain I was feeling, the more I realized that it was unusual. No one really seemed to understand the level of pain I was experiencing, telling me that they usually took an Advil and went on with their day. It was around then that I started to think that maybe my pains weren't regular menstrual cramps.

I met with my general practitioner and I explained to her what was going on. She decided to prescribe me with some more powerful prescription pain medicine. I thought that would be the end of my issues, but it wasn't. I was still suffering from the same pain as always and it was hardly quelled by my new drugs.

It was at this point that I began getting mad.

I couldn't help but feel anger towards my own body for causing me this amount of pain. It was my body, after all, that refused to react to any of the pain medication that I was taking. I felt like every little thing that I did was useless. I knew it wasn't my fault or anything I was doing, but it really seemed like it was.

I went back to my doctor and told her that nothing was working, then she gave me a new option: birth control. She explained that by taking birth control pills and simply skipping my placebo week I would simply not have a period. She only wanted me to do it for four months at a time, so I'd still get my period three times per year, but it made a world of difference.

Yes, I still have severe menstrual pain and no, we still don't know what exactly is causing it, but because my health insurance provides birth control, I can live (mostly) pain-free for nine out of ten months in a year.

Birth control is health care and it's important that we don't forget that.