Am I going Cray, Cray? Or the lesser known perimenopausal funny.
Hot flashes, dryness, memory problems, libido in the sewer, weight gain (or the Buddha belly).
I’d heard it all. I’d even bought books.
This particular one is my husband’s favorite.
Or maybe this is his favorite cover.
Yes, I’ve read how Suzanne Somers stays so vital and talked at length to my doctor but for the last two weeks, I haven’t been myself.
Blue. Down in the dumps. Missing all my early morning classes at the gym because I just didn’t want to get out of bed. Well, I never want to get out of be at 4:10 in the morning but I always have. Now I was too tired and just didn’t care.
Crying on the ride home from Walmart. Opening the dishwasher and peering in brought be to tears. I had nothing to be this sad about but sadness filled my chest.
I thought it could be related to my hormones. I had been on an estradiol patch but at my last doctor’s visit, I decided to try the daily pill. My patches had run out and I hadn’t mustered the mojo to go get the pills.
Because I really didn’t want to. I don’t want to take hormone replacements for the next twenty years. And I don’t have many of the traditional systems of perimenopause. Okay my middle is stretching out a bit and my body doesn’t respond like when I was a 25-year-old newlywed,
But I am getting older so I better step up to the plate and play the ball where it lies.
Mixing metaphors.
I was going cray cray.
Between freaking out over my hair color and wielding a tape measure to the circumference of my head to the length of my toes and all points in between — I wasn’t myself.
Maybe I should have that prescription filled.
Last Saturday I went for a run with a friend. As running tends to cause diarrhea of the mouth, this whole mid-life depression, body issues, is-it-all-in-my-head thing came up. I started crying.
For pity’s sake, I needed to get hold of myself. You know what happens when you start to slam shut a sob mid run? Hyperventilation.
Great Jamie. You’ll be the only woman in history to die of perimenopausalprobz asphyxiation.
That’s when I made up my mind to try the pills. If nothing changed, nothing changed. But if things improved, I’d have decisions to make.
As I got in the car after picking up the prescript that familiar sad weight in my chest nudged. Popping out a pill, I swallowed with a sip on my impulse Pepsi Max purchase.
Can’t say it was a Road to Damascus conversion, but mid-afternoon when I was cleaning out the refrigerator it occurred to me.
I’m not crying.
And if any task would have made me cry the last two weeks it was have been throwing out yellow lettuce.
I feel so much better people. On Friday morning, I got out of bed and to the coffee pot by 4:17. Hating it but doing it.
I seem back to my usual, mostly positive, occasionally weepy self.
Now I still have the dilemma of the consequences of hormone replacement. But at least I know that perimenopause affects our emotional state. Or can.
Like my friend said after I broke down on our run last Saturday, “It’s okay. You’ll be there for me when I turn 50.”
And that’s what I want you to know. It isn’t all in your head. You ain’t going cray cray.
At least no more cray cray than usual.
Any thoughts on hormone replacement?
Linking up with the Moonshine Grid.
