Day 56 Great News – I’m Not Pregnant

But it certainly explains the blueberry-sized pimple percolating unicorn-like on my forehead. It’s an evil joke that puts chin hairs and zits on the same face, but I know of many women around my age that are dealing with this. Hot flashes interspersed with menstrual cramps. Mood swings and memory lapses, (which is actually a good combination when you think about it.) Insomnia, cravings, and get-the-hell-out-of-my-way rage. PMS on crack, that’s perimenopause, except it’s less predictable and it seems to last longer.

Yay, right?

I’ve been in it for the last three or four years and, between herbal supplements and bioidentical hormone replacement cream, I’m dealing. Sometimes better than others, but I haven’t killed anyone, so that’s something.

I always told my girls that the emotional ups and downs that sometimes – but not necessarily – accompany the menstrual cycle are not a “bad” thing, but rather a tool we can use to identify something that perhaps we’re unhappy about, but that three weeks out of four, we’re pretending is just fine. My daughters have all inherited the “nice” gene, I’m afraid, so I always felt this was information they needed.

We try so hard, us nice girls, to deal, to make things good, fine, okay, great, happy, smooth, peaceful, that we sometimes roll right over those aspects of our life that aren’t quite as they should be. We don’t ask for help when we need it; we don’t say when we’re disappointed; we agree to things when we really want to argue. PMS rips off the veil, forcing us to see what’s real, instead of what’s easiest.

So, yeah, now that I seem to be in a permanent veil-lifted stage, the lessons I taught my girls are coming home to roost. I might look a little more selfish, crabby, argumentative, and a little less compliant and obliging. What I am definitely more of these days is honest. And I think that’s the real task of mid-life.

It comes circling back to that central question: what do I really want? For myself, not anyone else, just me?

Because as my primarily-mother years wane, I’m back to me, myself, a woman I need to get to know all over again.