I push open the door of the bathroom stall slowly, holding my breath, wary of the sights awaiting me. Will I be attacked by a dense waft of bitterness and digestive juices, my expectation of white porcelain tainted by smears and splatters of orange, green, brown or black waste?

Fortunately, that is not the aggressor. Unfortunately, there is still an aggressor: Wads of toilet paper protrude from the toilet bowl, choking in a sea of deep red. A colorful roll perches innocently yet ominously on top of the bowl rim below the flusher, bulbous from absorption.

These are the horrors of public bathroom stalls, especially those without waste disposals inside. I’m looking at you, CCNY NAC and Marshak.

I get it—sometimes the toilet won’t flush, and what is left are the remains of an abandoned war zone, toilet versus human. It’s not like anyone wants to show their excrement to the entire world. A problem in plumbing is understandably not an easy fix.

However, solving the issue of not having a disposal in the stall is easy as pie: take it out of the stall and throw it into the communal trash by the sinks.

Oh, but that’s so embarrassing! God forbid anyone finds out that I’m on my period!

Have we still not gotten past that? Since the day Mother Earth endowed us with the pleasure of cramps and hormones, we have had to become accustomed to the fact that yes, we are females, we can carry children inside our bodies, and we need to release our unused eggs. We all know that it is part of being a female and that it is what nature intended. The professor with a Ph. D. washing her hands at the sink has a menstrual cycle; the girl putting on makeup flawlessly at the mirror also has a menstrual cycle; the food service lady at the burrito station also has a menstrual cycle.

Walking out of the stall with a rolled-up pad in hand is nothing to blush or giggle about. On that note, neither is walking into the bathroom with a new tampon or even taking a tampon out of a bag to bring to the bathroom. These are simply ordinary actions that we do for possibly 50 years of our lives, and they should not have to be done in a covert fashion.

We may think that we’re being clever by indifferently leaving our menstrual byproducts in the stall so as to not exhibit ownership of them, but all it does is reinforce the notion that periods are disgusting. Face it: No one wants to see others’ excrement lying around regardless of how natural excrement are. Anything left lying around is pretty sketchy.

We can help to demolish this notion gradually by being responsible for our own waste so that the natural becomes more natural in a socially acceptable way. This way, we don’t have to find out that someone is menstruating by getting slapped in the face by a stranger’s garbage; we find out by seeing our fellow civilians dispose responsibly of their waste. It may take away from the unnecessarily desired confidentiality of it all, but it creates a more comfortable environment for all.

This week I’ll be menstruating, but you bet that my bloody tampons and pads won’t be loitering around in any public stalls.