Keep the Change

Funny how I've had this blog long enough to write about my own personal experiences with fertility and pregnancy (like getting stuck in a booth at a restaurant), and now I'm here writing about WHAT THE FUCK, PERIMENOPAUSE. Because yes, I'm old now, at least in the eyes of most of society (and of 20-year-old me who never fathomed being this age). 

I turned 45 this year. And I swear, the instant that happened, my body was like, "Welp, time to go haywire!" I can't sleep any more — seriously, I sleep less now than I did when I was getting up with babies in the night. I feel ready for bed by like 6pm but then when I actually do go to bed, I can't go to sleep. And when I do go to sleep, everything wakes me up — not least of all, the times I have to get up to pee, and the times I wake up drenched in sweat and so hot it makes me physically nauseous. And after all that, my eyes automatically open around 5 a.m. every. Single. Morning regardless of whether I went to bed at 9pm or 12am. After which, of course, going back to sleep is next to impossible. 

I'm over here popping supplements like candy in hopes that one of 'em will be the magic bullet that makes me feel ... well, not like an old lady in the making. I take stuff for better sleep (which is working like a charm, clearly), for gut health, for hair skin and nails, for my immune system, and a multivitamin thrown in to cover all the bases. I have faith in all this, even though my husband tells me I probably just have expensive pee. I'm keeping up with my regular exercise routine; if you've been here before, you may remember that I used to teach Zumba. I stopped doing that during the pandemic when the dance studio where I taught closed, but I never stopped exercising at home. (And now, I even lift weights! Like bigger ones!) In essence, I'm doing all the things that experts say will help handle the symptoms of perimenopause — yet here I am, sweating through my clothes when it's 30 degrees and hobbling stiffly for at least a few feet when I get up from a sitting position. If my healthy routine and supplements are helping at all, god forbid I stop taking them — because what would happen then? I'd probably just, like, spontaneously combust or something.

I feel largely unprepared for any of this, and I think it's because growing up — and, hell, even well into adulthood — nobody really talked about it. (Or if they were, I wasn't paying attention, which is entirely possible.) Either way, my "education" on menopause consisted of once overhearing my stepmother hissing to one of her friends on the phone about going through "The Change." Like it was some sort of metamorphosis akin to what caterpillars go through to become butterflies, only gross and weird and scary. And since I was like 11 at the time, it was so inconsequential to me, so far-removed, that I just ... didn't care.   

I don't know if it's because I'm in my forties now and this info is more targeted toward me, or because there really is a new-ish collective focus on actually warning women about perimenopause, but I feel like I'm seeing and hearing stuff about it everywhere now. Podcasts, websites, social media posts. And everything I thought I knew is coming into question. Like, I always thought estrogen supplementation would cause breast cancer but now they're saying it's beneficial to start estrogen in your late thirties?! The whole thing is like a wave that keeps toppling me over.

There's an episode of the best show ever — a.k.a. The Golden Girls — where Blanche realizes she's going through menopause (it's called "The End of the Curse" if, like me, you want to watch it and then cry because you realize you're old enough to identify with the goddamn Golden Girls). The actress who played her, Rue McClanahan, actually won an Emmy for that episode. She's talking to a psychiatrist about it and she says it makes her feel like she's "not a real woman any more." 

I'm not quite to that point yet, but I do feel weirdly like I don't know (or maybe trust?) my own body any more. At least not in the way I used to. Because all the time now it's surprising me with some new malfunction— albeit minor, thank goodness, but still annoying and uncomfortable. And I know that I'm just at the beginning of it, so it feels like I'm on a roller coaster and trying to brace myself ... but I can't see exactly how far I'm gonna drop.