Alternate Terms for Perimenopause

HAPPY LOVE DAY! LOVE YOUR BODY NO MATTER HOW IT FEELS!

THE THICKENING

Your body changes shape. Rolls and curves undulate. You put on a sweatshirt one day and wonder how the arm holes got so small. You look seven months pregnant and gain what is called a “meno-pot” or “apron belly” just by thinking of a cookie, or a grape. You look in the mirror and don’t recognize yourself—all you see is the little old Irish man all the women in your gene pool turn into. Wiry hair sprouts daily from your chin. You wonder if you have the energy to care.

Your microbiome is growing yeast and bacteria at rapid and fluctuating rates that make peeing a personal hell. You wonder why your underwear smell like Chinese food. You sometimes bleed for so long and so heavily, you ponder if you need a transfusion. You find out you can grow polyps in your uterus—delightful. You have an ablation where they cauterize said uterus so you don’t continue to grow little internal sea creatures and bleed to death. 

You have a friend with a fibroid the size of a grapefruit. Let it be known that hormones can grow hideous free bleeding meat babies. Luckily, now they can take out your uterus from the inside of your thigh. They schedule hysterectomies like oil changes and women go in and out all-day-everyday hoping they run smoother and get more mileage. The doctors sell the surgery as a tiny nip and tuck. In the pitch they don’t tell you that later they might have to put a net in your vacant womb to keep your bladder from falling out.

THE THINNING

Your skin starts to become a transparent, crepe-like, wispy fabric curtaining your increasingly frail bones. You can see your circulatory system mapped out in the mirror. Veins start to bulge and web purple like national geographic river maps on your legs. Your body webbing stretches and fat seeps through creating dimples in places that were once tight and smooth, even in your armpit. Your hair grays and grows glacially with increasing space between follicles. With intrigue and dismay, you find your first white pube. Your fragile dry vaginal tissue burns at the mere thought of touch. You hear things like vaginal atrophy and want to give up on the world. 

THE GREAT SAG

Everything starts to sag and melt off your bones. You can’t decide which is worse, jowls or turkey neck. You wonder how much time will pass before your eyelids prevent you from ever looking awake again. Your resting bitch face is somehow still there even when you smile.

Your boobs change shape on the regular—they are so sore and tender it hurts to shower. They ripen to the point of skin stretching explosion and they can’t fit in any of your bras. Then they rapidly and dismally deflate. Gravity works its magic on each stretch. One day, you are sitting on the couch wondering how your nipple is actually touching your belly button. You realize you have been slouching, so you excitedly sit up. Sadness rolls in when you realize it’s still not that far away. 

THE PRIMORDIAL FUCK OFF

Hot flashes are an internal hell-scape. Sometimes they are euphoric, a drug-like high bringing nostalgia for parties long ago in your first puberty. Then you remember you are in your second, longer, backwards puberty, and it’s an angsty buzzkill. You desperately step outside naked in the winter cold. It doesn’t really help, except you feel primal and witchy.  

While in meetings, you stoically pretend the internal nuclear fission is not happening. You try to focus while your body melts from the inside. There is no hiding, everyone sees it as your skin turns bright red and your clothes start to soak through. If you are lucky, others will play along like they aren’t watching you become a human version of a roasting marshmallow. If you are unlucky, someone makes a bad joke or looks at you like you are a crazed and it is contagious. You heroically restrain from telling everyone and everything to fuck off. 

THE RIGHTEOUS TANTRUM

You either want to fight or fuck—or sleep for the next 5 years. You sometimes irrationally snap at whoever is closest to you and don’t even apologize anymore. Sometimes you shake in rage for no reason––except for maybe the forty or more years of pervasive sexism. You listen to moody teenage girls complaining about life not being fair. You have empathy, want to be supportive, and also think bitterly, “little sister, hold my beer.” 

The people you live with think you are crazy. They are not always wrong. They give you the same compassionate and placating looks parents give their feral toddlers. It’s so exhausting. Your sleep is totally jacked up. You regularly wake up in the night to your sheets wet from copious sweat. Your speeding heart is full of existential doom. You work out terrified diagnostics to differentiate panic from a heart attack. You might have to go to the ER a couple of times to rule it out. 

THE DISAPPEARANCE 

Your memory starts to fade. You walk around in a fog. You do odd shit like put the creamer in the oven. You forget basic words––including your own fucking name. You repeat the same stories or information, sometimes in the same conversation. You distantly realize you are getting old and boring, resignation washes over you, or you do weird and expensive mid-life crisis shit to prove you’ve still got it. No one cares.

Becoming socially invisible is both an exponential relief and fundamental irritation. You go to the store and nobody asks you if you need anything. You go to a bar and nobody looks at you, let alone buys you a drink, let alone offers to serve you. You show up at a party and never have to bother with small talk. You sit back and people watch instead. You notice how much energy everyone is expending on being noticed, you remember what that was like, you remember the unwanted awkward attention of youth and you finally see a benefit to becoming a social hag.

THE EPIC CUNT

You delight in the epiphany that you can now wear whatever you want because it doesn’t matter. You can say whatever you want because no one is listening. You wonder if you should use this to an advantage and become a stealth ninja and start swiping valuables or become a hit woman. 

You like to point out stupid obvious shit, especially about men and white male culture. You like to say NO a lot. You like to not smile and not be nice because you officially don’t have to anymore. People call you bitchy or bitter, but you are just being observant, realistic, and honest. You have reached the point in your development where you see all the bullshit so clearly. You have no desire to accommodate it, not-even-one-day-more. 

THE SET-UP

Technically, “perimenopause” just means “the period before menopause.” You wonder if it means the period of time before or the period of blood before. Either way it sucks, period. 

You look around with all these changes and wonder, why did no one prepare me for this? Why did I not know this biological shit storm would happen? You go to research and find medical science has no solid answers. There isn’t enough information because apparently all the funding went to erectile dysfunction. 

You read all kinds of stuff that say if you just buy their shit, take their course, or think positively you will feel better. You filter through a ton of snake oil scams. Usually it’s some old white guy in a lab coat or some Karen with diamonds and yoga pants. You want to punch both in the face. You still buy ungodly amounts of skin care products, wellness herbs and fitness apps. It all sits on your countertops and you ignore the notifications and scroll socials while eating chips instead.

You go to a lot of doctors. You have limited options. Most options involve hormone replacement therapy because you clearly have no fucking estrogen. They discuss the risk assessment of feeling better from all the above, but then you worry about breast cancer. They tell you that without it you risk dementia and heart disease. Another female damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You have zero surprise.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

You rhetorically wonder why crones are called dangerous old women and cannot wait for this phase of life to be over. You daydream of the moment when your body levels out again and you get to take all the wisdom with you. You wonder how old you have to be before you get to just start farting loudly whenever you want and no one says anything. Something to look forward to…

Skipper Jenn Harkness: Serving CUNT throughout the universe.