Woman-ing In Menopause

I stand at the bottom of the flight of stairs, the task seeming unsurmountable. My heel screams in pain when I put my weight on it. I trudge upstairs, stopping in the middle to take stock of this life, this moment. I stare into the mirror moments later looking at myself critically. My face is obscenely large, wrinkles overly pronounced. My hair is thin and brittle, the scalp obvious under a sparse hairline. I want to cry, but I gather laundry instead.

After lunch, I impulse buy clothes, selecting XL morosely. I pick extra wide leg pants because I am feeling rebellious. I hit Pay before I can regret my choices.

My doctor’s office calls me with a change in prescription and a script for preventative scans. I log into my healthcare account and see multiple overdue tests. Colonoscopy, Pap screens, Mammogram and, Ultrasounds. I feel despondent and I want to cry, but I log back into work instead.

A few hours later when the kids have been given their snacks and repeated instructions to ‘go shower’, I walk around the house, my eyes scrolling through the endless For You feed of Twitter. The slap, slap, slap of my flipflops getting on everyone’s nerves. Taylor Swift croons into my ears “Who is afraid of little old me?”

Who indeed?

I’m fearsome and I’m wretched and I’m wrong

I feel every word with a vengeance and sing along, loudly.

I will be fifty in a couple of years. On my Twitter timeline, people are melting down about a 41 year old Anne Hathaway playing a 40 year old woman. I find the conversation funny.

I want to say age is a number, but it isn’t, as evidenced by my ballooning body overwrought with hormones and complex things that are out of whack. Most days, I wish for a miracle drug that will take away the minor aches and pains and hand me that machine that can be lithe and nimble, be powered by endless energy that can then fuel my endless interests.

Instead, I focus on the things that make me feel young. I embrace rap with gusto, the breathless verse in my ear making me walk faster. I jump into pop fandoms with aplomb, memorizing acronyms and religiously listening to past discography on repeat. I snap ties with the mentally middle aged me, centering the early twenties me, and embracing what I would have done then had I had the chance.

I rewire my internal clock, disregard the physical reality and navigate this weird space in the hope that a few years from now, my body will catch up to where my head is.

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