It’s hard to explain how different menopause is than you imagine…
Because when you’re 11 or 12 years old, you learn that fertility is a simple “egg drop” period, ending with the gentle beginning of menstruation before and the gentle end of menstruation after. Your first clue might be when you wake up and find a brown stain on your underwear, and your whole life immediately becomes a movie Carriea bucket of blood and a complete mess, someone explains to you that you can put in multiple tampons at once, even though you probably shouldn’t, and even though you’re currently wiping the bathroom floor with your Tuesday and Wednesday panties, you’re going to put it in Buried at the bottom of the kitchen scraps.
But I digress. Because everyone’s experience is different – you might get through menopause with a breeze (laughs) – but I wish someone would have told me 10 years ago:
Your period won’t go gentle into that good night; it will rage, doubling down in a completely weird and aggressive way, doubling down in a completely weird and aggressive way, raging against the fading light, including giant jellyfish sized clots and a color that would be called (if it were lipstick) – black gore. “I feel like I do have more menstrual days than non-menstrual days?” you’ll tell your doctor, and she’ll nod sympathetically and say, “Yes.”
Speaking of anger – you will be filled with anger, with no proper goal and no end in sight. If you have teenagers, advise them not to stand in front of the refrigerator and speculate wildly about what’s not going to be good for lunch, because when you suggest they run to the market and buy cold cuts, the only things that come out are flames and T-Rexes. roar. When you put your hand to your chest, your child’s eyes will widen—”Oh my God, Mom! Did you really have a stroke?”—but it’s just acid reflux from eating all that ham.
Even if your hair moves to your chin and upper lip, your hair will be thinning and receding in some way, where overgrown beards and mustaches require constant vigilance, and as your eyesight continues to decline, You need to use a lighted magnifying glass. You never particularly wanted to look like Burt Reynolds Smokey and the Bandit, but you will. Maybe you even have sideburns, but you can’t turn your head far enough to check because you slept weird and now your neck is broken.
In the words of Nora Ephron, you’ll feel bad for your neck. You will suddenly understand this adjective rope. There are also adjectives crepe, it’s about wrinkled party streamers (your skin), not flat pancakes (your butt). You get tons of weird things growing on your skin: moles and skin tags, and yes, acne, and something that looks like a cracked, waxy patch of skin under your breasts but is actually called As for the seborrheic keratosis And your dermatologist cares so little that she practically dozes off when you show it to her. Given the chest’s almost supernatural relationship with gravity, you might start by pulling on the muscles in your back to lift your chest. Or maybe your back still hurts when you open a tube of Pringles chips.
wait. Are there any Pringles potato chips? You have forgotten. You also don’t remember the name of your high school principal, the book you’re currently reading, or the actors in the movie. Face dance. “Patrick Stewart?” It would be interesting to see what you would say to your partner, and he would unhelpfully reply, “That’s it.” StarCraft If you have any memory of anything from before last April, please refer to that. “Sweezy!” you’d announce triumphantly at four in the morning as you took off your soaked T-shirt because you had a hot flash and you weren’t sleeping anymore. Also be prepared to change your underwear not only because you are incontinent, but also because your underwear sweats during the night.
Your teeth and gums look weird (gaps?), and your fingernails look weird (wrinkles?), and you can’t quite see with your fingers, but you recognize it from seeing older people before. . So does the gray pubic hair that, when you were seven, tinkled faintly in the YMCA women’s locker room as you nervously changed for swimming lessons. By the way, those silver streaks in your hair are actually a bit hot? Unless you hate them – but that’s why God invented dyes.
Picture all those gorgeous Georgia O’Keeffe flowers: lush poppies and soft vulva irises. Now imagine a tumbleweed. If she wanted to capture your menopausal symptoms, she would draw this tumbleweed. Be prepared to hear terrible things vaginal atrophy, which means your hooha has dried up and disappeared. If you plan on having any kind of front hole sex again, you need to get this treated, otherwise you’re going to be miserable and have a UTI every time you think about it. Whatever the problem is? Unfortunately, lube is not the answer. Here are the actionable parts of this entire article: Ask your gynecologist about vaginal estrogen or hormone replacement therapy, and follow Jen Gunter on Instagram and her Vajenda Substack (it’s a great post here). ) Ignore ads savers on Facebook for products called Silky Peach Cream or Beaver. Vaginal estrogen. Say it with me, young Catherine: vaginal estrogen. If your insurance doesn’t cover it, buy it here.
If you’ve already reproduced in your body, you’ll never pee on a pregnancy test again, which can be different shades of bittersweet. But one day, you might be sitting on the beach in a comfy bathing suit, happily burying your toes in the sand while eating a giant fried clam roll, feeling like you can finally get on with your life. Parts filled with beloved people and valuable experiences. That part of it is polished and belongs only to you.
Katherine Newman is the author of this summer’s hottest novel, “Sandwich.” You can follow her on Substack. She’s written for Cup of Jo on many topics, including what it’s like to be an empty nester and raising teenage boys, and will be sharing her 10 favorite things on Big Salad this week.
PS Katherine Newman’s joyful and heartwarming house tour and the beauty of cold dives.
(Photo by Eloisa Ramos/Stocksy.)
