I guess I was lucky, because I've never been ashamed to bleed. Any sense of "delicacy" I had, I got over at an early age. Now I carry my tampons around in a clear plastic bag, say "I'm bleeding" rather than use some pathetic euphemism, and at home the box of tampons sits on top of the toilet in full view.
I attribute this partly to my own general Bitchiness (hey, might as well take credit where credit is due) and partly to my mother's sensible attitude about this and all other bodily functions. She answered my ten- year-old self's random question about "sex" with a full ten-year-old- level education about sexual intercourse, babies and menstruation. (At the time, of course, I thought it was *so gross* what people do to get babies, but I soon changed my mind...)
When my first period finally came, I went and told my mother and my aunt, and they just smiled and said "Welcome to the club!" Then my mother showed me what I needed to know about pads and belts (OK, so I'm dating myself here) and left me to my own devices (so to speak). I didn't try tampons until years later, but since then I've never looked back -- I just use a thin supplementary pad on the heaviest days.
I've also been lucky about PMS -- no real horror stories to tell there; at most I get a little constipated and a lot horny. (Once, though, I had really bad cramps, so I do know what it's like.)
Lucky, or smart, in my choice of partners too -- none of them has been particularly squeamish about blood on the sheets or about having sex at "that time of the month". (There's a euphemism for you -- but one of the less offensive ones, IMO.)
But none of that is to say that my menstrual life has been at all normal. I had irregular periods from the start, and it just got worse until, at 22 or so, I was bleeding for two or three weeks running, about every three months. Naturally, medical science did not have an answer for me. I didn't want to go on the pill (doses were much higher and more dangerous in those days), so I fell into the hands of two endocrinologists at my HMO who used me as a guinea pig in their hormone- treatment experiments.
They had a theory that, since my blood tests showed high androgen levels (tsk, tsk! Not ladylike at all! I *was* ashamed of that), that what I needed was *more* androgens taken artificially to suppress my body's natural production of them (not that they used the word "natural" there...) Their pills did nothing at all for me, and oddly enough, the docs themselves didn't seem that interested.
It was a year and a half later when I made an appointment to see them and fill them in on the failure of their experiment. They said, "oh no, you don't have to keep taking those". (Well, OK, I was young and ignorant at the time, and actually believed in the solemn sacredness of a doctor's prescription.)
After that, I just suffered with it for another eight years, and finally did go on birth-control pills (by then they'd become much safer). With the pills, I bleed regularly and moderately, but I sometimes think of getting off them just to see what would happen next.
BTW, what's with the "strawberries"? Mine come out in long, rubbery tubes, reminiscent of dark-red calamari, if anything. I love the color of them, and the slippery feel of them between my fingers.