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The “M”Word
Here’s a topic I never, ever, thought I’d be writing about— menopause. Yeah, you read that correctly. Menopause! There are a whole lot of things my mother never warned me about, like childbirth and breastfeeding and toddlers and menstruation, male doctors who don’t listen to female patients and the fact that most women’s dresses don’t have pockets even though women are expected to carry everything the family brings on an excursion and don’t want to hold and where are the pockets in women’s clothing to hold all of the stuff? But, let’s talk about menopause.
What the actual heck is that all about? Aside from all of the things I won’t talk about here, I have noticed my hair brush is full of wiry, grey hair. I find I have to scoop soapy, slimy globs of my wiry, grey hair out of the shower drain almost every day. Oh, and I used to have eyebrows! Where the hell have my eyebrows gone? Oh wait a minute, I’ve got chin whiskers now. My eyebrows migrated to my chin. What about acne? Yeah, not one eruption, ever, all through my teen years. Last week, I wake up to a zit the size of a small planet on my forehead near what used to be “my hairline”. I thought it was a tumour. Years ago I did a study on Clearasil while working for the people who manufactured Clearasil. Maybe I should I buy a tube of Clearasil? Is Clearasil still on the market? What about my hair? Should I just stop brushing it or shampooing it? Maybe I should wear a baseball cap all of the time to hold all of those jumpers in place. And, let’s talk about belly fat. Let’s do that! It’s bad enough that now just about every part of my body is jiggly and free-flowing, but now I have become The Pillsbury Dough Granny. There are never going to be enough crunches or sit-ups to squish this glorious muffin-top out of existence. Losing weight means my face gets skinnier and my collar bones stick out, but that pooch doesn’t give a good, gosh darn about any of it. Oh yeah, my mom used to complain about having a belly when she was in her 60s and 70s. She said it just wouldn’t go away—but never said why it was there in the first place. I just assumed it was because she’d decided to skip the healthy lifestyle she’d always lived and created her own little processed food pyramid of tea, coffee, cookies, ice cream, salted nuts and caramel corn. She never once mentioned it was “The Menopause”. I think she knew what she was dealing with and replaced the estrogen loss with cookies and treats.
I know some of you think I might be too old for “the menopause”, but I’m a late bloomer. I woke up one day about eighteen months ago and there was my new friend, a jelly belly, soon followed by the old lady acne, the insane wrinkles on my arms, the funny wattle under my chin and a bathroom drain full of hair. Fortunately, I’ve haven’t had the pleasure of hot flashes—although I have seen a hot flash in action. Have mercy on the women who have hot flashes, it may be an evil super power. And let’s talk about all of the other crap a woman has to deal with like the dry, thinning skin. Come on! What about joint and muscle pain when I wake up in the morning. That’s a treat after spending a night rolling around in bed hoping to catch a wink of sleep. What about that inability to concentrate? Yeah, what about that? All of a sudden I’m a wrinkly, thin- skinned, sparse-haired, whiskered, achey old gal trying to remember why I’m in the kitchen with a magazine in one hand and my cellphone in the other. If I can’t figure it out I’ll make myself a coffee, because cell phones and magazines don’t seem like something to do with any other kitchen activity unless there was a recipe in the magazine or on a social media site which seemed like a good idea three and half minutes ago. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
I am not happy about menopause. Nope. I’m not happy. My mom’s generation didn’t do such a hotshot job of talking to their daughters about our “privates” and how our “privates” function. For the most part The Greatest/Silent Generation took life as it happened. Why can’t I be like that? Why am I a Boomer who can’t just stand up straight (ouch), sweep my hair back (by the handful) and take the menopause as it comes my way?
Or, why not have a laugh about it and wonder where the H E double hockey sticks I put the television clicker—which I thought was my cell phone.
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