Is It Real or Is It Menopause?

Some life advice from one is who old(ish) and pretend-wise… try to avoid going through the worst part of menopause while the world is a giant pandemic trash fire. I know that’s not even practical, because logistics, and bodies being on their own schedules, but man, these past two years might have been a lot easier to deal with if not for the pile-on. I mean, when you just start crying almost every day for no discernible reason and you straight-up can’t tell if it’s because of an anxiety attack or due to hormones – that really sucks.

Likewise with the increasingly bad chronic joint pain from changes in the air pressure. Stress? Or lack of estrogen?

Is it real or is it menopause?

And I seem to have completely lost any kind of patience with anything or anyone.

I used to be the kind of person who would put up a fight, stand up for myself, not back down, at least until it was clear that further efforts were futile. Or that I had crushed my opponent. Now, I walk away from everything (and everyone) at the earliest opportunity.

Can’t bother. Why bother? Not bothered.

Of course, I’m the one who loses because of that decision. Some of the things and people I’ve given up on might have been really great. The choice to stay and fight might have been more rewarding than I anticipated.

Most things, people and situations are full-on trash fires, but not all. I used to know the difference but I’ve lost confidence in my own ability to discern.

I’ve lost confidence. In just about everything about myself.

This is not necessarily a bad thing – more than a few people would describe me as being overly full of myself. (Which was definitely rooted in a lack of confidence, but then we just get weirdly circular…)

And menopause is supposed to be freedom, with the world no longer expecting a woman to be sexy (ick) or useful or interesting…blah, blah, blah… With no need to worry about fitting in, you can dance to your own beat, wear that red hat, not care about what anybody else thinks, add your favourite cliche here…

There’s no guide advising how to move through this period if you were already that kind of person. It makes the process extra complicated, actually, because it feels as if there should be something more. Already accustomed to the freedoms and attitudes that many women only discover in menopause, as a cranky old weirdo I’m just confused by it all. Isn’t menopause supposed to feel like a great reset? (Likewise the pandemic – remember how optimistic everyone was 18 months ago that they were going to change how they viewed the world and shift their priorities to the important things?)

So how do I reset and find that confidence when the status quo for this situation doesn’t really apply?

It makes a person not want to bother.

But it’s the bothering that will make it better. So this is me, bothering. Let’s see what comes of it.

No, there’s no image on this post. Part of the reason there are so many gaps in this site is that sometimes I just don’t have a good image to go with my writing, and because the rules of the intarwebs say that people won’t read a post if there’s no image, I often don’t bother to post at all. Which is me, losing out, walking away, feeling overlooked, because it doesn’t match someone else’s idea of “the rules”, instead of being discerning and choosing what works and doesn’t work for me. Maybe people still won’t read it at all if there’s no image but nobody will ever read it if I don’t post it. But if you got this far, you read it anyway, so nyahhh!!!