Oh, Look. It’s Another Hot Take on Menopause by Some Random Sweaty Lady on the Internet!

This cat is angrily contemplating the indignities of aging. Created with Canva assets that were never meant to be used together but here we are.

Yeah, that’s me. That’s what this is. What are you going to do about it? As Selma Hayek said so eloquently on an episode of “30 Rock” in 2008, isn’t there a Slanket somewhere you could be filling up with your farts? 

Because yes, I’m a little obsessed. And I’m not going to apologize for it. Because like so many of my peers, this entire situation has come as something of a shock to me, and I don’t appreciate it. 

If anything, we were promised an end to this endless list of demoralizing, exhausting “lady issues” at some point. Yes, yes, our menstrual cycles are mysterious, linked to the moon somehow, and an indication that our bodies are doing what they are meant to do. It’s all good, though I would add that as a very young child bleeding into my makeshift period dam, consisting of a half roll of toilet paper tucked around a completely insufficient maxi pad and a whole lot of hope that I wouldn’t leak (or bleed out) before homeroom... I wasn’t super open to the whole “your body is a glorious ode to the lunar goddess” schtick. 

And then 30 years later, when I was anemic and still bleeding so much every month that I became convinced I was, in fact, magical, but only because I could apparently bleed forever and never die, it was pretty shocking to find out that they still won’t do shit about this situation in a medical sense until you’re actively dying. And even then, United isn’t covering it. 

But hey, they promised, don’t worry! Menopause is coming! MENOPAUSE! There’s an entire Greek root in there that means END. By 2025, I was about to turn 50, which kind of sucked, but there was a silver lining: all of this (literal) bloody misery would soon be coming to an end. Huzzah, I said to all who would listen (and to all who I forced to listen). Hu-fucking-zzah. 

Oh, but, no, dear reader. It was all a ruse. 

Because this menopause situation? Guess what. It’s not even an end to the bleeding!

If anything, it signals to your body that it’s time to just bleed whenever it feels like it. Maybe it’s every single day for 7 weeks in a row. Maybe it’s after not bleeding for exactly five months and three weeks, one week shy of when you get to (start to) think that (maybe) you’re about to cross from the horrors of perimenopause to the end point. The Menopause. It’s hard to say what might happen, since we don’t invest in female medical research (or childhood cancer) nearly as much as we invest in finding the next best boner pill. At any rate, if you have a uterus, blood there will be, even as The Menopause descends. 

To recap, of the list of things that are supposed to happen and things that are supposed to stop happening when you reach menopause, so far, we’re 0 for 0. But rest assured, there’s also a host of hormonal changes on the way that will make your angsty teenage rebellion seem quaint in comparison. 

Suddenly, upon entering The Menopause, I realized that everyone around me is a complete jackass who is trying to kill me on the freeway, and when they aren’t driving around like homicidal maniacs, they are stalking me at the grocery store to stand in the way while I try to search, in vain, for the last thing of protein powder that doesn’t have that one sweetener in it that I could use as part of colonoscopy prep (don’t worry, I have a whole blog in the works about this indignity, too).

Tl;dr? Everyone sucks, no one told me, and now we all have to live with my annoyance about it. Thanks, The Menopause. 

When I wasn’t super angry (and so effing hot) for no reason, I would occasionally, as though powered by a mystical (probaby lunar) force to do things like gaze sadly at the cat on the album jacket for Carole King’s “Tapestry” and burst into tears because he or she is obviously dead by now. 

Concerned Husband was at a loss, as was I. 

These days, thanks to the actual magic that is HRT and the very persistent women who have made it their cause to let other women know that estrogen and progesterone can be really freaking helpful here, I’m actually doing well. I’m not even anemic anymore, even though obviously everyone is still really annoying.  So basically, this is just my long-winded advice to you, person who suddenly feels like you are hovering 6 inches off the ground as the world spins wildly out of control just below you: Try the estrogen. Carole King’s cat will still be dead, but you might not stab someone in the Kroger, and that’s (probably) a win.