I’ll be flashing, aching, and spinning, with a little rage on the side. Desperately clinging to the last tiny threads of sanity after being whipped by the lashes of gender and genetic lotteries for years. And it’s probably not over, which means I get to observe another World Menopause Day! (If I make it to October 18, 2023.)
Yay!
Does anyone know what this means, exactly?
I get the whole awareness thing, education is important — especially for those who haven’t spent years reading every word printed about this hellish season. I, however, do not want to read another word about the change or passages or transition. I don’t want to learn one more thing about hormones or why my body went bonkers. I’d like a return to blissful ignorance, before I became a walking Wiki of wacky. Let me out of this infernal chrysalis.
My gynecologist told me that my protracted, miserable experience suggests that I have very young ovaries.
“You’re a young fifty-three,” she said. Five years ago. Now, I’m an old 58.
She didn’t see the rage fire flickering behind my eyeballs. I must have kept the roar inside — the beast gentle in the belly, for just a minute. She meant well.
I digress.
Back to the celebration, the special day — World Menopause Day! 😬 Is there an appropriate dish I could make? A celebratory sweet to push down the burgeoning madness, a signature meno cocktail in which to drown the misery? Should I be decorating? Balloons? Is there a color associated with this day? Perhaps I should be wearing red. Or grey. A hood? Or tearing the clothes from my weary, thousand-degree body.
How about spontaneous combustion in a gold crown in the halls of SCOTUS? Or naked primal screaming on the South Lawn. Anyone?
2022 is one hell of a time to be doing this, but Judith figured her way around Holofernes, didn’t she?
Again, I digress.
It’s alarming how much of my writing life has been given over to this bend in the road. I didn’t know we were stopping here for a fucking DECADE, but there it is. Nothing to do but sit and wait when the wheels come off. Perhaps I’ll use the time to create the perfect World Menopause Day cocktail.
Or just weep softly in a corner.
Happy WMD everyone!
(WMD — how thoroughly and terrifyingly appropriate).
Cheers!
Lisa
👑🔥⚖️ LMK when this is scheduled. I would join you!!