letter #13
we're all making our own sense of things
Do you know what being menopausal makes me really miss? The gradual sense that comes to your consciousness when you wake up on a winter morning…the first real sense you have of the day is that you are safely under the covers, warm and cosy. And you burrow in a little more and give yourself ‘just five more minutes’ and then ‘just five more minutes’ and half-an-hour later, you are rushing around like a blue-arsed fly because you are running late and everyone is waiting for you to get them to the tram and you can’t find your keys, and you’ve got a system so who has moved the fkn keys … but it was totally worth it because you had five more minutes.
Maybe I'm nostalgifying that feeling because it's strongly connected to my memories of childhood--lying in bed on my side, my blankets pulled around my shoulder, trying to find a way to hold my book open at the same time as keeping the hand that’s holding it open warm. That was harder with the blankets we had in the 1970s than the quilts that came into fashion in the 1980s. Blankets don't mould themselves around the shape of your shoulders in the same way quilts do.
None of that is part of my present. Most mornings these days I'm waking in the rising heat of a menopausal flush, no gentle transition between my dream-life and real-life, no slow coming-to-consciousness or gentle realisation that morning has come. No burrowing into the warmth of an extra five minutes in the cosy cocoon of my quilt, just another five minutes, just another five. Most mornings, I’m glad to push the covers away wishing I’d remembered to put a glass of water by my bed (then remembering I don’t put a glass of water there because my dressing table is overflowing with books and clothes and it’s too easy to knock the glass of water over and that’s a rubbish way to begin the day). All this comes this after waking at least once in the night (but often more) in the hottest of flushes, my dreams coming to a half-conclusion in a confused and vivid rush.
My hot flushing experience has come and gone over the last couple of years. They were intense last year, then disappeared altogether for maybe six months, but have returned in the last couple of months. I think they've been exacerbated by winter. By the coming in and out of the heat, and by the fact that my bedroom is ten degrees colder than the rest of the house, and by the fact that (through a long and boring story of domestic miscommunication) my winter quilt was given away and my summer quilt left my body trying too hard to warm itself in my too-cold room.
We bought a new quilt. We went to the outlet shopping space (my god, it was crowded there, so so crowded) and we chose a new quilt. And even though I knew not to choose the one that was heavy weight, it sounded so tempting and somehow I was thinking more about the childhood cosiness than the ageing changing...and as I got into bed that night and felt the weight of the quilt falling across my shoulders for ten minutes (probably more like eight) I was transported back to my childhood, getting into bed on a winter's night, the bed growing warmer around me, the promise of the morning when I would wake to the feeling of warm cosiness, holding onto it for just five more minutes, just five more minutes. And reading, so much reading. Not only in the morning, but also at night, making sure the door was open to just the right angle so that I could read in the thin line of light that came from the passage light through the gap where the door hinged to its frame.
Of course, it will come as no surprise to you to learn that the new quilt, heavy weight, was a DISASTER. At least we got it at a special reduced price, and I'm sure it will suit me again one day. But deadset, what was I thinking?
Overall, my menopause experience has been challenging but manageable. On the challenging side, it ramped up my anxiety at a particularly difficult time, and it provided fertile ground for revisiting the deep sadness and loneliness of infertility…feelings and emotions that I thought I had long since made peace with. Watching my skin dry and my hair split, I felt the deeper truths of what this change means, my bones growing brittle, my dendrites calcifying. I did too much googling which fed into my anxiety which fed into my googling and so on.
However, the symptoms—physical and psychological—in this latest wave are much milder and apart from missing the winter morning cosiness I'm not minding this incarnation of hot flushes too much. The ones in the middle of the night can get in the bin, but the rest are ... as strange as this will sound, I quite like them. They are far gentler than they've been at other times and the first few seconds of each flush are a little like that first sip or two of champagne...felt in my knees and my brain, a brief moment of euphoria. But I also like the reminder that my body has its rhythms. It fells oddly reassuring. Or maybe I’ve grown a little bit addicted to the euphoria of it in the same way experts tell us we grow addicted to the dopamine rush of social media notifications (though I’m going to say here I have all of the notifications turned off, because far from making me feel good, they make me anxious and stressed).
I think too I like woman-ness of the experience. From time to time I feel a little isolated in my experiencing of woman-ness…no sisters, no daughters etc etc…but this experience feels very shared, even thought it is a highly-personal experience, its nuances known only to ourselves. For some it is years of challenge, messing with body and mind for years on end. That sucks. For others it is a fleeting moment in time. Illness and medical intervention take it from some women, deliver it twice for others…that probably sucks the most of all. But somehow, even at this time of great invisibility, I feel very seen. It has been a time of reminder. Of the familial relationships I have with many women even if we aren’t related by blood. In-laws, step-laws, aunties, cousins and a small trove of not only my own, but also my mother’s, deeply-treasured friends.
[redacted] … um, this is not at all where I thought I was going when I started writing this, and here I have just deleted the paragraph I had written in my mind long before I wrote anything else. Because writing through the beginning, the end came to make no sense.
Writing is strange like that. You set out thinking you are saying one thing, but the more you write, the more you realise that there’s more to your thoughts than you thought. Or—as in this case—less to your thoughts than you thought. I’m a bit worried though, that in coming to this ending, this letter sounds like some kind of redemptive menopause story. One of those clickbaity things that leaves you feeling rubbish about yourself because everyone else is out there having a good time while you’re at home in your dusty house and no amount of insta filters is going to make this day look good. Please don’t feel like that. My house is dusty beyond description.
Okay, so as usual, no stunning conclusion, no revelatory reveals. Thank you for reading (if indeed you have, and haven’t skipped through it thinking, ‘Okay, sure, but what’s the point?’).
Sending you love
Tracy xx
At the suggestion of more than one friend and one cousin, I have been watching Jane the Virgin. How did I miss this? So many of my favourite things. Telenovelas especially. Highly silly, but such an antidote to the dreads that I feel every time I scroll through the news these days. (And here, I wrote 'read the paper' then deleted and wrote 'scroll through the news' ... gosh, I feel even stranger about this than I did in coming to articulate the euphoria of a menopausal flush)
I also started listening to a podcast called Cocaine and Rhinestones about the history of country music. I love country music ... my mum was something of a fan of Dolly Parton and I have Lucinda Williams and Jason Isbell on pretty high rotation. I want to love this podcast, but I don't quite. However, was fascinated to learn how many songs there are explicitly about the pill and abortions. Of course the ones by women or that suggest the liberation of women have been banned or never released.
Shameless plug: I am doing something I can't believe I'm doing and remounting The Forgettory in October.
Apology for typos: I've had too much coffee and am finding it even harder than usual to focus