Women are resilient. They don’t even know it. They just get on with life, which just so happens to be as a woman. How did women get on in the past, without the internet and self diagnosis? The menopause is a bloody nightmare. You don’t just question your body, you second guess your mind too.
For more than a year I’ve struggled with physical problems – am I poorly? Am I menopausal? Am I just a tired mum? Is it my thyroid? Is it something l’m too tired to Google? Turns out I’m peri-menopausal, but there isn’t a test for that…so I just have to get on with it.
Yet, every second week I have a dreadful period. Every week I have awful pains. Every day I feel like I’m having a hideous hangover despite drinking little. The good thing is I have a reference to my female side of the family – menopause by 38 years old is in my genes. And I just have to get on with it. That’s life. My boy won’t have a sibling. Awful to say out loud, because it means I must accept my fertility/ mortality in one sweep. And likely much sooner than most. But what can be good? Well… the hideous pain in all areas will be gone, maybe the hormonal extremes of my emotions will go, the awful physical period and all it’s drama (blankets down etc) will be a distant memory and perhaps I should be excited about the next step in my life?
This general under-the-weather feeling – the idea that it is fleeting is amazing – it helps with envisaging myself in the future; because it’s only for now… just a little longer.
But by god, it’s easy to get caught up in it, to be wrapped up in the hideousness of it all, when really it’s just a phase. Here’s to those women in the past that just did it. And carried on with all the other shit that is a women’s daily duty – kids, work, the home and wife. I hope I can be that strong.
Is it me?