Standing in the kitchen on a cool early fall day, chopping the last of the sauce tomatoes, I’m suddenly overwhelmed by a bloom of heat. Rapidly expanding heat from head to toe, no more chilly fall, but a heat wave flush like a sweltering summer day.
Is it me or is it hot in here?
The hot flash is the darling of menopause symptoms, the signal marker of what some consider midlife female malfunction. Hot flash is synonymous with menopause, and those without a clue (men, young women, lucky women) begin their short, practiced list of meno ills with the flash. Flashes (or flushes), insomnia, and irritability seem to top these novice lists. If only a flash, a bad night, and a worse mood were the worst of it.
If only.
The flashes are interesting, in the right light. In bed, or in a safe, quiet space, the sudden burst of internal fire is remarkable. It’s like a blooming, an expansion of interior landscape — me filling the surrounding space and becoming more, somehow. It can be almost empowering, as if a previously unknown strength within is suddenly exposed.
Flashes also, however, make for their own special kind of misery, especially when they show up for many years. I am almost four years post-meno and still entertain the random flash. I never counted my flashes, never had a “Flash Count Diary,” but at peak production, I probably had more than a dozen a day, sometimes several in quick succession, almost like pulsing flashes.
An intense hot flash in an unwelcome setting (almost anywhere other than bed, with almost anyone other than your closest familiars) is alarming and extremely uncomfortable. It was a source of anxiety for me, as I was quickly overwhelmed by a power and heat that could not be contained. A real, weapons-grade hot flash (of which I had hundreds, if not thousands) is accompanied by aggressive sweating and a racing heart. It’s alarming and exhausting and, in a mind like mine, begs explanation.
What is this? Why? Will it make me better, or will it wring me out and leave me fluttering on the breeze, a husk of my former self? I entertained the notion that a new, better me was being forged in the fires of this seemingly random and sourceless heat. But that’s just poetry, flirting with meaning in the blood and the stars. My hormones were simply thrashing about, as they do in midlife, rattling my cage and making me feel hunted and edgy.
Is it me or is it suddenly hot in here?
I asked this question for years, my knee-jerk-response brain refusing to accept reality. The reality, which made little sense after a lifetime of reliable internal climate, was that it was sometimes very hot in here, meaning inside me and nowhere else. There was a cartoon quality to it, as if someone had turned the thermostat knob aggressively to the right, cranking the heat unreasonably and, sometimes, unseasonably high. The speed of the rising heat was dazzling and impressive, contributing to its power and my attendant panic. It’s unsettling to lunge from perfect comfort in a civilized group of likewise comfortable people to leaping up, tearing clothes off, and exclaiming, “It’s so hot in here!” Unsettling becomes the norm, and you learn to grin and bear it or strip and exclaim, depending on the crowd.
Everything good — all the things you want — can cause a flash: Coffee, cookies, cocktails, spicy food, tennis on a hot day. It’s as if a riot in your body awaits to scold you for having too much fun. Anxiety can supposedly cause a flash, too, which is a rich equation: Flash = Anxiety, Anxiety = Flash. A pulsing cycle of misery, for an unknown, seemingly endless number of days.
To quell the heat, I dashed outside, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes in winter, barefoot and barely dressed. I pushed my face into the freezer and clutched cubes of ice until they melted. I guzzled copious cold liquids. I stripped and felt a brief, primitive impulse to never dress again. To renounce this world of walls and wood, armor and even people, all of it hemming me in, not allowing the drama inside me to roar out and dissipate in the great wide expanse. I wanted to run and scream, I wanted bodies of water to swallow me and quench the burgeoning madness. I felt simultaneously rooted deep in the earth and completely untethered, a howling electric body waiting to explode.
In the early violent days of perimenopause, as if hot flashes weren’t disorienting enough, I had cold flashes. Worse, these cold flashes were never expansive and powerful like the heat could be; they were reductive and terrifying. I’d wake shivering and, no matter the layers I wore or the blankets I piled on, I’d still freeze as if my bones were made of ice. It felt like dying and I was certain that something wicked and dark was pulling me under.
Hot flashes were expected. I could strip and seek comfort, rave, and wait for them to pass. The cold flashes were a descent into terror, a thing I did not understand and could not figure how to manage. Research provides very vague support to the idea that both cold and hot flashes are “likely caused by hormone havoc in your head.” The word “likely” is doing a lot of work in that sentence — during menopause, we are asked to put a lot of faith in words such as likely, probably, possibly. Nobody seems to know, but it’s good to believe that death isn’t imminent in the dark predawn, while swaddled like a northern baby and shivering uncontrollably. Likely was my life raft and the havoc was not going anywhere.
Thankfully, the havoc finally did begin to calm. The settling was very slow and continues still, with brief flares reminding me of my body’s capacity for upheaval. The crisis largely abated, though, and now (too many years later) I don’t miss the devils that tormented me. A hot flash these days is almost like a visit from an old, not entirely welcome, acquaintance. It’s no fun, but not devastating and always transient. Hopefully, the days of bellowing half-naked and shivering unaccountably are behind me. I’m tired.
🔥 Lisa
Things to share:
Reading (inhaling) The Shame, a sharp, short novel by Makenna Goodman. It’s startling, probably because it pokes all my bruises.
Watching the second season of Winning Time, which is astonishing as I don’t care or know a thing about basketball. But so many people said watch, and they were right. It’s very good!
I love giving books for Christmas and the game has begun. I need a few more, but the hunt is fun:
Cooking for Artists for the foodie, artist DIL.
The Jazz Loft Project for jazz head dad.
Galloway for my mom who will swoon.
Why the Dutch are Different for the son who is moving to the Netherlands(!).
1,000 Deadstock Sneakers for the sneakerhead son.
I loved your descriptions of wanting to become primitive again, especially during the rough bouts of internal temperature chaos. I still think one possible idea of the middle aged woman living outside of the village in the forest being called a witch is sourced from menopausal middle aged women in medieval time and beyond ( if they lived that long). They were dealing with hot flashes and hormonal rage, simply wanting to get away from all the expectations and possibly truly wanting to curdle the cows milk of some mean, spiteful folk and make the cruel jackasses in the village get scabies.
A hot flash can be so disorienting sometimes as to feel like a kind of magical fire power revving up, only you have NO control of it, so you wait for the relief of dissipation. I have had many a fantasy of being able to take the heat and fire you feel, and push it out in a focused way to make it go away. Like a dragon or Godzilla or a sorceress.
But, as I have said before, I have adopted the meme of the dog sitting at a table in a room on fire and stating, “This is fine,” as my mantra for my hot flashes. I breathe thru it and tell myself it will eventually pass.
But I still sometimes imagine shooting flames out of my mouth or hands at times, and it gives me a bit of wicked delight, depending on the circumstances.
“I entertained the notion that a new, better me was being forged in the fires of this seemingly random and sourceless heat. But that’s just poetry, flirting with meaning in the blood and the stars.” So good. I have applied this magical meaning making to a diversity of unwanted events.