Hey, how are you doing? If you’re feeling pretty good and not at all insane and haven’t even yelled at your most beloved humans once today, congratulations: you are not in perimenopause.
This is the real shit, right here. Two years ago, I was a lovely, delightful human being. Today, I’m a total dick, or else an unstoppable bog witch who is coming into her own, one or the other. You could ask my husband, but he’s too afraid of me to answer. You could ask my daughter, but she’s got a lot of goddess energy herself, so the best you’re gonna get out of her is, “Ha, ha, yeah, Momma is crabby sometimes. Don’t knock over her coffee! She will get very mad and maybe cry.”
It seems like we should be able to do something with all this rage—power a nuclear reactor, end racism, at least get some of this fucking laundry folded and put away—but instead, it just seethes in me, like the emotional counterpart of the hot flashes I get all the time now.
The rage even feels like a hot flash. It starts from zero, deep in the center of my chest, and radiates outward like a blast. The triggers are unpredictable—but not trivial. The things that enrage me right now should enrage me; they always should have. Only a warm, nurturing blanket of estrogen and progesterone kept me from telling everyone and everything to stick their behavior right up their asses, apparently. Now that it’s gone, I’m perpetually one interaction away from winding up on the news.
A short list of things that have filled me with debilitating rage lately, so you can see how bad things are (and also how right I am):
Republican legislators who try to fool their constituents into thinking there’s ever a time when a lawmaker should have authority over a woman’s body (or any uterus-haver’s body). There are no “reasonable compromises” when it comes to an adult human’s personhood, you absolute pieces of trash. How about you sign over your junk to my authority and care? I’ll buy you some lovely underpants with seams in uncomfortable places and fill them full of fleas.
The fucking guy who almost backed into my car at the dump yesterday. I was already mad about being at the dump because it was a weekday and I was supposed to be working, but also, our house was starting to look like the Clampetts lived there and I couldn’t deal. Then this jerkface decides that the only place for his Ford F-150 is right next to my car. Guys, the parking lot was EMPTY. I stood there stunned as he pulled right in next to my car with maybe half an inch to spare. “Don’t worry,” he said, seeing my face. “I wasn’t gonna hit ya.” I laughed rustily, a faint echo of the giggle I used to make when I wanted to get out of uncomfortable interactions with men. Which is fine, I guess, if less than satisfying. But what happens when that laughing instinct fades, you guys, and I start acting out instead? DO I GO TO JAIL? I THINK I WILL GO TO JAIL.
I put my glasses down somewhere and I couldn’t find them for 15 minutes. This might not sound so bad but keep in mind that I can’t see without my glasses. So I was basically stomping around like Velma on cocaine for a quarter of an hour, sweating and swearing and kicking things until I realized that my glasses were on my desk…where I always put them. YOU GUYS. SEND HELP.
Anyway, I made an appointment with a gynecologist to talk about HRT. If you’d like to leave me a signed testimonial to the fact that I need this medication for the good of society, I would really and truly appreciate it.
HRT was a game changer for me. There is hope!
We feel you! We just wrote about meno rage too! https://themidst.substack.com/p/divorce-or-is-it-menopause