Worse Than Bitching About Menopause

You want to know what is even worse than listening to someone bitching about menopause? SOMEONE BITCHING ABOUT WOMEN BITCHING ABOUT MENOPAUSE.

Allow me to demonstrate:

Here I am, fifty years old, sitting down on the toilet. Dripping blood from my period, opening my phone to enjoy some reading material via Blinkist.

I wonder what the free Blink of the day will be? An interesting biography? Something about money? Science? An overview of some historically-relevant event?

No. None of those things. Instead it is a synopsis of a book about MENOPAUSE:

The Menopause Reset: Get Rid of Your Symptoms and Feel Like Your Younger Self Again

:(

Honestly it is nice to see something featured on Blinkist that strays out of the typical dudebro content category; I would appreciate it a lot if not for the fact that I've become quite weary of hearing and reading so many women bitching and moaning about menopause and speaking about it like everybody assigned this sex at birth or who has a uterus MUST be suffering just the greatest TOTALLY IGNORED AND UNDERACKNOWLEDGE HORRORS for AT LEAST like a DECADE or more of midlife. Certainly I must be able to relate to this AGONY!

From the way they're talking about it, you'd expect "perimenopause" to be a major focus at my age and having been born with a vag. But it's just NOT. So instead what I have is a big reminder that "WOMEN" are not automatically my people. Women do not automatically represent me and my experience -- physically, hormonally, or sexually -- to the extent we're led to believe our cohorts should.

One factor in my lack of appreciation for all of the conversation and literature about these topics is that I was, fortunately, better prepared by my mom than a lot of people were, apparently. This shit was never as big of a mystery as it seems to be to other people the way that they are framing it. On top of that, I was not prepared for it to only be shitty. It was called "the change (of life)". A normal shift to be expected that could come with some dramatic symptoms (hot flashes, for example), and also, potentially, something that could lead a mentally-ill or struggling person to ... yeah; have things get worse and potentially kill themselves (as it is rumored one of my ancestors did). Okay, so that IS pretty shitty, and ignorance about women's bodies and healthcare and sexism in general and stigma around talking about it for sure made those trials worse when they needn't have been. So maybe I am just lucky I had a pretty good idea of the range of experiences that could be had. But I also got the idea that "the change" was only ONE factor in this person's life and that the tragedy wasn't just that she didn't get appropriate help at that stage of life that brought her problems to a head, but that she was suffering throughout her life, and that a lot of that suffering probably came from or was exacerbated by hormonal issues.

A large part of my irritation is probably resentment. Resentment over how many decades of shittiness I experienced from irregular "periods", horrible PMS, and debilitating cramps. I only started to understand in the past ten years as my periods became regular that I had been living SO STRESSED OUT my whole life that I wasn't ovulating -- your body suppresses all of that shit when it is in fight or flight mode. It has only been as I've entered the past decade of my life (when they tell me I'm supposed to be having a terribly unpredictable and dramatic time because of "perimenopause") that my body started functioning more like the clockwork fertility machine the books and ladies tell you is normal. I started having that 27-29 day cycle I was promised, and like ONE day of PMS per month, and rarely any cramps worth writing home about.

Overall I feel grateful about a lot of the circumstances this specific gripe is seated in, but personally just annoyed thinking about all of the ways throughout life women are supposed to all feel the same and look the same and be in pain the same and want to talk the same, and at a lot of the most crucial moments where we're called to be in solidarity with each other, I have not been described or acknowledged or comforted by them. While I am loving how many people are now addressing these bodily functions and experiences in specific ways that zero in on the actual functions and anatomy, rather than the gender of someone experiencing it so that we can recognize our experiences if the shoe fits and not think there is something wrong with us if it does not, and not make us all present the same, I still feel like I always have in so many big conversations about sexual health and wellness for people with vaginas: my uterus doesn't look like that. My thighs don't look like that. My desires don't look like that. My pain doesn't come from that. My problems are not addressed by this, and I *do* have problems. That may or may not be at least vaguely related to some of this ish, but wow -- none of all of these words are even coming close to what I've experienced.

I don't think most of the people I see writing these books or having these conversations or creating content addressing peri/menopause is intentionally trying to exclude people like me, but I have seen next-to-nothing about the shit that has plagued me and how my cycle and adjacent symptoms could have been a clue that something was seriously wrong with how I was forced to live as a minor, and tried to conform to living as an adult. If I had known, I would have had so much more hope and confidence to find and try healthy solutions beyond hormonal birth control (which has been GREAT or at least instructive for me when I availed myself to it). I could have been living my best life as a hermit, detached from The Tyranny of The Social, instead of constantly feeling internally like my life was in danger to the point where my digestive and reproductive systems were chronically on pause because of the amount of stress I was under, trying to be "normal" and of course failing (other people and myself) dismally.

Ask me how reading Bukowski is part of how I figured this shit out in the past few years, and why, I suspect, perimenopause hasn't been something I'm enduring even at this ripe golden age of fifty.

As far my reproductive functions go, I do not want to be "like my younger self again". As far as my ovaries and uterus go, I am now functioning like my younger self SHOULD HAVE BEEN FUNCTIONING. And none of these bitches are addressing my experiences or answering my questions.

I'm happy you all have each other, but yeah ... I'm rolling my eyes at so many of you. The ones complaining about their big "womanly" thighs and asses that I never had the privilege of enjoying, or their unpredictable and never-ending harrowing hormone rollercoasters THEY HEVER HAD UNTIL NOW but I was on from fucking eleven or twelve years old until forty (with only one small reprieve in my twenties when I was running  multiple times a week AND living alone with a reliable job and income AND frequently fucking strangers for the first time in my life).

Perimenopause? It's not my fucking problem. And that right there is what I need to focus on when I feel these niggling sourpuss resentments and left-out bitchiness; THESE BOOKS AND CONVERSATIONS ARE NOT FOR ME. That doesn't mean they're not for a whole lot of people: clearly they ARE. Everything doesn't need to be for me. Everybody with a pussy does not need to speak for everyone else with a pussy. I don't need to be represented by everybody else talking about not-everybody's bodies. I don't need to be annoyed that these conversations about peri/menopause are going on; I don't need to feel an opinion or object to their existence. Just shrug and be grateful to move on to all of the bazillions of other interesting things that ARE for me, and that I can be helped by and/or positively contribute to.

Ask me how Ryan Holiday / The Daily Stoic is helping me apply this wisdom -- "maybe it's not FOR YOU!" -- to everything I make and present to others, and see presented and available to me.

Eventually I am going to go through "The Change". And I'm going to be glad it's not a completely taboo mystery, and that I am not the only one. I am glad I've been experiencing this time of my life differently than the majority of people seem to.

We are none of us bitches for wanting to talk about the changes we go through and have our experiences acknowledged and seek help with our challenges. I am going to stop negatively reacting to other people going through different changes at different times than I am, and focus on what IS relevant to me.