Menopause Rant

I'd like to tell you what an absolute pain in the butt this thing is, but like all changes you have no chance of getting around, no one cares. The older women all wish they had your miniscule problems to deal with. They are all slowing down, losing hearing, eyesight, motor functions; a few rampant fat cells and hot flashes, moodiness--they wish they still had your problems. And younger women? They don't want to know about this! Yuck! They still have boyfriend, husband, baby, job problems. Don't overload them with more stuff they can do nothing about. Other women your own age are mainly interested in competitive symptomology: "What? You only woke up twice? I routinely have soaking night sweats three or four times a night!" And it's true, I don't have it that bad. Several warming trends per day, nothing sweaty (yet), minor sleep disturbances, a voracity for carbs, the fabled sag of the ass that many women started to notice in their thirties only began for me last year (54!). Men don't want to know. They are uninterested because it doesn't happen to them, or so squeamish they can't bear to hear about it. Something like labor stories. Oh, and my one experience in labor was also too easy--only four hours, no epidural, no C-section, not even an episiotomy. Now an episiotomy is when they make a small cut in the birth canal--you don't want to hear more? Why not? Come back here! I haven't even gotten to the discomforts of mastitis . . .

HOT

Now that it would be technically
True, if someone were to say
"She's hot"
The flash subsides
The glow remains
Her body is
A livable city
Subject to a strange
Weather pattern.
Can she blame
Global warming?
Better to open a window,
Turn on a fan.
A world-class city
In a heat wave is still
A world-class city.

The Indignities Continue

Down in the hormonal hellhole, hopefully just visiting, not planning to stay. I want to devour the world's donuts, chocolate, cheese, olives and wine, pasta, hamburgers, salmon and croissants. I grit my teeth through each day. I want to want to exercise, but I do not. So I don't. My neck is tight. My shoulders hurt. My jaw feels like a vise. Yoga, hot baths, physical therapy--yeah, I should, shouldn't I? But I don't want to. My thighs are stippled with new blossoms of fat cells, butter- and sugar-filled globules crowding each other under my skin like bunched grapes. I see them and I think "I should cut back," but I don't. Lucky I don't smoke. Menopause: the ultimate unfairness. Wasn't it bad enough that you had to bleed once a month for forty years? That if you missed one period you panicked? That when for two years, you finally wanted to conceive you didn't? Or was it couldn't? And now that you can finally get off that merry-go-round, which you 100% regard with great relief, it's like you're seasick. Moody, nauseous, sleep-disturbed, howling with hunger for those things you know are not good for you, angry that all the control and reason you used to have at your pinpoint disposal has flown out the window. And you can look forward to at least a year of this, when a month or two is more than you can imagine surviving.
On top of this, you are a lucky rich woman who has nothing to complain about. Everyone, but everyone, has more and better reasons to complain. Your elders crumble, your children strive and pine, suffer through first love or heartache, and you, you're sitting pretty in the place you love to be, surrounded by love and having gotten all the best things in life--a good family, a good man, a good son, all good from here on in, and then this chemical--this hormone--sandbags you from behind. Whap!
The new you, an angry, complaining, inventive whiner who won't shut up, or eat less. Nor can you really believe that it matters all that immensely what your thighs look like, because--who's looking? Anybody worried about 55-year-old thighs has got to be the shallowest person on earth. And you, you may be menopausal, but you're not shallow. Not yet.

Another reason not to jog

. . . is stress incontinence. The kind where if you cough really hard, or sneeze so the roof flaps even a little, or just try to run in place as part of a shape-up routine your son is roping you into, a little bit of pee is forced past the sphincter. That little ring of muscle is all that keeps you from one of the major horrors of homelessness. You can get a surgeon to tie you a little tighter in that area with a noose of surgical thread, but I prefer to just not jog. Now why should this formerly snugly fitting biological washer begin to relax? It's not like a baby came out of that hole and stretched it out so bad it can never go back. You can Kegel it up to a tighter fit, to some extent, but part of the aging process is this progressive relaxation of what used to be tight and firm and I don't think Botox in that area can do anything positive.
Yet another indignity. Ah, well.

Valentine's Day

I meant to write something good for once, a happy bit of news from the other side of fifty for those who fear it or those who are already looking back at some peak, never believing they'll feel that good again. But, hey, good news lacks conflict, therefore momentum, therefore interest. My travel tales that play best in repertoire are the insect stories, the vermin difficulties. Non-travelers would rather hear the horrors than the glories, since they continually scavenge the newspapers for reasons not to leave home. And if you're looking, you can find.
Anyway, love. I could write about my relationship with my husband, how great things are, how well we understand each other, tidbits on the physical side of things--but I cannot. Unlike the tell-alls on TV, or unauthorized biographies, shows like Sex and the City, I can't reveal details. I'd like to, but it would feel like treachery, betrayal. The real person I'm having this intense relationship with deserves my reticence. If I tell others, I am actually according them greater intimacy than the person I really feel it for. So--no deal.
I dislike Valentine's Day for just the same reason. It is more about being seen to have a sweetheart who will publicly declare his affection than the quality of that affection in private. Another horrifying example of the modern preference for being seen as loved over really being loved.
I do like chocolate though.

Disequilibrium

It happened twice yesterday. One moment fine, the next in tears. This has got to be the mood swings of menopause. I have felt nothing like it since pregnancy, and if there are some women who are subject to this sort of bumpy ride their whole life, then I feel for them. Do we all go through periods of equilibrium and disequilibrium like toddlers do? We may fool ourselves for a few years that we've got it all figured out, we're over the hump, should be smooth sailing from now on in! Then--this.
Is it writing, discovering what I think as pencil presses into paper, that has made me all trembly, emotional and adolescent? Is this the way all writers feel? Or just all menopausal women? For some of my age cohort, I believe it is the growing conviction that they have made a bad bargain--they have put others' needs before their own for so long, they don't even know what they want any more. And they're furious at the whole world for not having mentioned this would happen if they waited so long . . .
How can I scientifically discover if it is writing or menopause or the stress of the sandwiched generation? If I stop writing and it continues, is it menopause or generational stress? Since I can't remove menopause or escape the sandwiched situation, perhaps writing is the only release valve available to me, and if I stop doing that, I may implode. You can only live your life in one direction. No do-overs.
Also, I find I have no peers. I have not had many over the course of my lifetime, but at this moment: none. I know no one who has been mated as long or as fruitfully. No one with both a teenager at this time of life and four aging parents who are as demanding and emotional as teenagers. Who vacillate between shouting for my help like toddlers and pushing me away to regain their adult autonomy. All of them believe I should just be able to intuit which they need when. I continually miscalculate and am blamed for not helping them the right way, for not allowing them to be masters of their own destiny.
For my friends with no children, any word I utter about my son is a squirt of acid in their face. If I complain about his behavior, I am ungrateful; if I praise him, I'm bragging, rubbing their nose in their lack. For those with no husband, again if I complain (even humorously), I don't know how lucky I am. If I praise him, I am preening and showing them up for not ever getting that perennial female brass ring: a man. Or not being able to keep one.
No, no, and again I say, no. I am only seeking to share my version of the human comedy. We all need to hear one another's stories. This is the only way any of the crazy things that happen or we do or we do to or for each other will ever make sense, fit into the chaotic puzzle we all live inside.

Not Crazy (Yet)

I woke up with the strong impression that someone had sneezed, someone else had slammed a door and shouted, "Gesundheit!" But recently I fear I am subject to auditory hallucinations. Sirens, timers going off, the heat turning on, the refrigerator cycling off--all clang with the crack of gunshot to my ears. I wonder if I am losing my grip on reality. I mean, more than usually losing it. When I was younger, my strong devotion to the separation of reality from unreality was like the difference between sun and shade at the equator. Now I'm not so sure.
From the bathroom came a percussive report. He--my husband--was on the ceramic bowl releasing quick blasts of gas, louder and stronger than most sneezes. Ah, once again, my dream was reordering actual events into a slightly elevated understanding, taking gross reality and transforming it into something fit for polite society. Likewise, his snores became cave winds, lion roars, train whistles, lovers' whispers. Am I crazy or just inventive? Mad or imaginative? The thing that seems to be changing fastest as I age is the length of time it now takes me to decide between dream and reality.