One of the nurses helped me put on a pair of disposable maternity-style briefs and on the end of the bed, I spotted the red and black silk and lace thong I’d bought specially from Ann Summers. Fat lot of good it’s done me, I thought.
I felt everything from panic and shock to amusement at everything that was unfolding. I ended up telling a nurse that I didn’t want my parents knowing I’d had sex because I wasn’t supposed to be having it.
I had my mother’s words ringing in my ears that I shouldn’t be having sex because it’s a taboo in our South Asian culture. We’re taught never to do it with anyone because it’s all boys – or men – want and once they get it, they leave.
‘They’ll make you all these promises,’ my mum told me in Bangla when I was 15. ‘They will tell you they love you or will marry you, so you have sex with them. But once you do, they will break every promise and leave.’
I went to sleep that night in the hospital feeling sick and frustrated. I also hadn’t been able to keep any food down and I couldn’t sleep either.
Every two to three hours, a nurse would check my blood pressure, do a blood test and take my temperature. I also had a catheter attached, which was extremely uncomfortable.
The next day in hospital, I spoke to a gynaecologist and told her I never want to have sex again. She laughed and said this isn’t how sex was supposed to be. ‘When you’re ready, it’ll be so much better,’ she assured me. I felt wary but nodded anyway.
It is important for young women to understand that first time sex is definitely not meant to be inherently painful and not everyone bleeds
I ended up staying in the hospital for two nights, and the bleeding finally stopped the day after I was admitted—sometime after lunch, after my body had already been through more than it knew how to handle. I remember feeling weak, disoriented, and honestly, a little disconnected from everything around me. It didn’t feel real. One moment I had been trying to convince myself that what I was experiencing was “normal,” and the next I was lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by quiet urgency, nurses moving in and out, and the kind of silence that makes you realize something wasn’t right from the beginning.
