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I Tried A Menstrual Cup So You Don’t Have To

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I’m notoriously bad at changing tampons. I know that’s disgusting and I’m probably going to get toxic shock syndrome some day, but I don’t care. I have limited space in my bar bag, so there’s no way in hell I’m wasting precious space on extra tampons. And forget putting them in my pockets. I struggle enough to get guys, the last thing I need is them thinking that the tampon-shape protruding from my skinny jeans is actually a scrawny-ass dick. Or a tampon.

Pretty much no matter where I go, when I need a tampon, I don’t have one. So I was pretty fucking psyched to hear about the Diva Cup. If you don’t know it is, here’s the lowdown: it’s basically a cup that you shove into your vagina when you’re on your period. It fills with blood and only has to be emptied and cleaned every 12 hours.

I figured it was the answer to all my period related prayers, so I got my mom’s credit card out and ordered one on the spot. I began to look forward to my next period, and not just because it would confirm I wasn’t pregnant.

My lady gates opened and the flooding began on a late Friday afternoon, and after thanking the Gods above that I wouldn’t be a mother for many, many more years, I rushed home to insert my Diva Cup.

I ripped open the package and immediately tossed everything, instructions included, into the trash. As someone who has been actively using a vibrator for almost a year, I figured I would have no problem getting a tiny little silicon cup into me. Holy shit, was I wrong. Figuring out the insertion process makes building Ikea furniture seem like you have a boyfriend to do it while you stand in the corner and offer useless advice. There is folding, twisting, and the use of vaginal muscles involved.

After struggling for ten minutes, all my enthusiasm for my period cup had waned, but I finally got it set and settled. It was a little uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t need to worry about changing it, so I was game. I quickly changed into my slutty bar outfit that would still hide my bloating and headed to the pregame, to which I was already extremely late.

After much drinking and telling my my friends about the magic cup that was holding all my blood (“No more carrying tampons! No more worries! Periods are great!”), we headed to our favorite bar with nothing in our purses but fakes, makeup and cash.

After hours of drunken exploits, I headed to the bathroom to make new friends and drunkenly fix my makeup.

When I got in there and through the hoards of drunk girls to the mirror, one glance told me that something was very, very wrong. The dark wash on my jeans was darker than it should be.

I pushed past the girls waiting in line for the stalls, murmuring about “really needing to get in there” and confirmed what I already knew. The inside of my pants looked like a murder scene. The Diva Cup, with all it’s lofty promises, was not collecting any of the spillage.

“How much blood am I losing?” I thought, alarmed for my own safety. “I can’t have bled out twelve hours worth of protection in just three, can I?”

I tried to clean up some of the mess with toilet paper, but no amount of wading or blotting could save me. With literal blood on my hands, my night was over. I had to get out of there.

I washed my hands and sent a quick text to most sober member of my group, calmly explaining I had an emergency and had to head home. And then I took off like a roadrunner, pushing my way through couples making out, knocking the drinks out of the hands of people double fisting and squeezing my way through the crowd to the door.

When I got back to my apartment, I hopped into the shower and started to fish the damn Diva Cup out of my vagina. It’s much smaller than you would think, so I had to actively search for it. As I rooted around for it, the water changed from a pale red to a much cleaner city water color, but my panic didn’t subside. Where the fuck was my Diva Cup?

As someone who has been told by a number of men that I don’t have a very large vagina, it’s pretty alarming to lose something up there. A google search told me I would need to relax all the muscles in my vagina, which I don’t know how to do because I’ve never done fucking kegels, and take deep breaths. After going through what I assume is the same process as giving birth, I finally found the tip of it.

With one final yank, I managed to get the fucker out of me and quickly realized the problem. In my haste to make it to my pregame, I had shoved the damn cup into my lady bits still FOLDED in half. Apparently, if I had read the instructions, I would have learned out that you’re supposed to turn it a thousand times until you feel it expand within you.

Instead of the Diva Cup forming a cup, it was a Diva Funnel. All the blood in my body wasn’t collected in a nice, singular location. Instead, it formed a nice ramp and turned my body into a nasty slip-n-slide, effectively ruining my going out jeans, my night, and my dreams of divadom.

I’ll just risk toxic shock and stick to tampons.

Image via Shutterstock

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totalsistermove

Everything you want in a sister, sorority or biological - funny, hardworking, pretty but not in an super obvious way. Essentially, a funnier Elle Woods who is constantly having a bad hair day. Questions, concerns, videos of dogs and coupons for Thai food can be sent to [email protected]

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