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This Is Us
On the Other Side of Menopause
Aging is more joyful than we think
When I think about the way perimenopause shook me, broke me, and made me new, it seems unreal. Like a dream, or a nightmare, it crept up and consumed me. Now, here I stand on the other side, awake and wondering what the hell happened.
The short story goes something like this: I was “fine,” busy and distracted with life. A good and hearty marriage, four wonderful and willful kids, a great mess of a house, animals, projects, work and joy and sadness — a big, “normal” life. Then, I fell down. I found myself in a wonderland of hormones and madness, suddenly living in an unfamiliar body, wondering whether death or institutionalization would come first.
The long story is very long and still not completely understood, even by me. Did I fall into that wonderland, or did I slide slowly into it over the course of many burdened and exhausting years? Did I fall because I wasn’t watching my step? Was I instead watching everyone else’s step, hoping to guide them to the promised land (which I know now may not exist and, if it does, would never be found for them by me)? Did I ignore my own promised land while looking for theirs? I don’t know; it’s all metaphor and memory now, here in the bright and quiet morning. The nightmare is fresh but easily shaken off in daylight.
Here, on the other side, the most surprising fact is this: I’m not sad. Not specifically about menopause and not broadly about aging. Most of the menopause literature I’ve read addresses the sadness that many women believe is inherent to the process. They are sad about what they see as waning femininity, about the loss of blood, the passing of their fertile years. They speak of sadness around perceived invisibility or loss of social currency. They mourn a fading beauty.
I, happily, do not.
I don’t feel bad about my neck. I do sometimes feel bad about my thighs, but that’s not aging. That’s a lifetime steeped in a culture that programmed me this way, and that does feel bad.
I don’t fear gray. Bring on the silver, or the dull tin, or snow white. Whatever. I’ve made it this far. It feels like victory.
