Clutch your pearls and shield your eyes, lads; I’m gonna rant about subjects deemed gross and taboo for absolutely no logical reason.
So, being a child of the 80s I was never really taught anything about menopause and don’t think I had ever even heard of perimenopause ’til I hit my forties and started googling around to work out what the fuck was wrong with me, and I’m gonna go ahead and say that’s not ok lol, like it’s genuinely embarrassing for us as a species and society.
The whole wall of uncomfortable silence around “women’s issues” has always struck me as deranged and counterproductive, throughout most of my life discussion of the mere concept of periods has been received like some kind of crippling kryptonite by a lot of men/boys, you’ll have these guys talking about how they’d probably be able to fight a gorilla or survive an apocalypse or do war real good, but you bring up how vaginas bleed sometimes and suddenly it’s like something just brushed their leg in dark water. It’s just blood, my guy (it’s actually blood and some other fascinating things which we are finally learning have immense medical value, so basically we could’ve been way further along as a species if dudes weren’t taught to be such silly little wussbags).
We seem to be gradually moving past that now, advertising, accessibility and discourse are far more sane than I remember in the 90s, but the whole menopause thing frankly has me pissed. What do you meeeeeeeean we’ve been going through this for upwards of 300,000 years but there’s been so little out in the open and easy to find research, and discussion is only available through directly asking other people who might be going through it or if you find a good (generally afab) doctor?? It’s so offensively stupid, it’s a good thing the peri seems to have robbed me of a large portion of my lingering fucks otherwise I’d be way more angry lol.
(I should acknowledge here that my early life was extremely lacking in familial bonds, support systems, communication etc, so maybe others have their elders and cool aunties to fall back on or who prepared them for it better but for me and a seemingly large number of people it seems to have been forbidden knowledge.)
My education in the whole menopause process amounted to; You hit fifty-something and stop having periods, and you might get a bit hot occasionally.
No one warned me that before it even fully kicks in you actually have a few years of your brain and body becoming filled with goblin arsonists on top of still having to deal with menstruation lol, I kind of figured it was an all at once dealio and never gave it any more thought. “A bit hot”, translation: “there is a furnace in the middle of your back now that fires up at random, no it serves no purpose, we just kinda jiggle the switch when the mood hits, have fun with that.” That’s been the worst part for me personally, a couple of weeks ago I had one full night’s sleep and woke up *not* drowning in sweat, and it has become my new vision of paradise lol, this glitching mortal husk has brought the bar to the floor. Legit one of the best purchases I’ve ever made in my life has been an electric hand fan, I wield that shit like a Sailor Moon wand now, you can pry it from my boiled, dead hands.. You need to understand I truly suck at keeping properly hydrated at the best of times, so after a couple of months of sweating out what felt like 70% of my body weight every damn night I began slightly fearing for my life, texture and sanity and so threw the query out to my FB friends;
“Anyone got any experience with HRT for peri symptoms?”..
Suddenly I’m hearing from people I hadn’t spoken to since the 90s, all sharing their plights and singing such praises for HRT that it started to sound like forbidden dark magics.
Let me be clear, I never recommend taking medical advice from facebook lol, but in some instances (ie non-injurious, standard phase of life stuff) the consensus of your peers has merit and this definitely felt like one of those, so I booked a GP appointment and got a shitload of blood tests to make sure it was indeed peri and not an evil mutant thyroid or anything, and now I should be getting my hands on some hormonal goodness next week; thoughts, threats and prayers that it works because if I don’t get some restful sleep soon I’m gonna start taking kneecaps.
A lot of people mentioned increased anxiety and shorter fuses, which I found interesting because I’ve experienced more of a numbing of my anxiety, possibly because my general base-level anxiety is often maxed out so the only way to go was down lol, so that part has been kind of pleasant but I absolutely feel for people for whom it went the other way. One thing I wasn’t sure had any connection at all to peri but apparently could have; fuckety shoulders for no apparent reason. Yeah so your hormones keep your arms attached and lubricated I GUESS.. I mean, they still work, they just hurt like a bastard in the process. All this for a reproductive system I never asked for nor ever had any intention of using.. The universe is mean lol.
Hopefully this lil HRT quest will pay off, I’ll likely post more updates here in case it’s helpful or reaffirming to anyone going through similar bodily shenanigans, and to make prudish weirdos uncomfortable, obviously.
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