I’m at an age when it feels natural to take stock of my life and sort out the decisions (and people) I would likely not make over again if I had the chance. Part of that process is forgiving myself for how I conducted myself once or twice.
It’s appropriate to start with how I treated women of a certain age when I was between 18 and 24 years old. In other words, I’m sorry for my thoughts toward the menopause queens who may have been classmates of mine on occasion in college and, more importantly, dared to ask questions. Not only were they present, clogging up the system intended for fresh young idiots not old nutty ones, they always seemed to take up space in the middle of the room so everyone could hear them ask what could have been a short question. Or what should have been no question.
I didn’t call them out. I didn’t roll my eyes. But I mentally wrung their jiggly necks. So, I’m sorry. Yes, it took me this long to get my apology locked and loaded, likely because I couldn’t relate. But now, well, I can. Maybe not the waddle but definitely the tendency to use more than the required number of words to make my intended point. If only I could remember what that point was I’d probably use fewer words.
See, I tend to lose my train of thought, and when I realize it, instead of stopping and remaining silent until the words can sort themselves out and scurry back into the ol’ word chute, I sometimes keep yabbering. Or I chuckle softly and let my voice trail off. That’s about the time I hear people I either gave birth to or married saying, “Oh my god” or “Oh jeez” under their breath. The people not related to me smile and wait it out. Bless those people. My people, not so much.
I think menopause is the weirdest age of all of the ages I’ve endured as a human (so far). Weirder than the onset of puberty, weirder than the fucked up teenage years, weirder than being pregnant and bearing children (absolute science fiction), weirder than the child-raising years (see “childbearing years” description, but add “fairytale-horror”), and far weirder than the decade before my fifties: the fabulous forties. Man, those were the days. Kids were getting themselves out of the house by themselves, going to their jobbies a couple of nights a week or on the weekends, eating anything I cooked, spending time in their bedrooms doing god knows what. I exercised regularly, day drank if I could, and enjoyed my synapses as they fired on all cylinders. Life was so good.
And then, I ended up here. The same age as that old broad in my Feminist Literature class, who squished up her little face and giggled when the professor assigned a critical analysis of Eva Sedgwick’s essay, “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl.” And while I am now that old broad’s age, I’m not that old broad. I’m a lot of other types of broad, but I’m not that broad. Still, I’m sorry.
I may not be the version of the early-1990s menopause mavens I observed from my twenty-something vantage point, but sure enough, here I am. Reflecting. Feeling bad I couldn’t put myself in their shoes. Their silly, Naugahyde, slip-ons, to be exact. See, there I go again.
I find menopause to be the time when you get less of what you want and more of what you want less of, and you have no choice in the matter. Or, very little. For example, I want to say fewer words. I want the words I say to make more sense. Somehow, they don’t. No matter how many pre-dawn intentions I whisper to myself before dragging my ass out of bed to seize yet another long day doing all the things, the words spew forth. So many words. So little meaning. I also want more muscle tone. I want more energy. Now, I have to work very hard at all those things I took for granted while sitting in a literature class smirking, thriving on a Monday morning with barely four hours of sleep in the last 48, and able to stand without saying, “oooofff.”
These days, I have to stick a Post-it note on my mirror to remind myself to do that compelling thing I must do tomorrow. This is fine because the number of Post-its on my mirror does wonders for my face. These days, I head upstairs to do the laundry, and two hours later, I’m beaming with pride after organizing the laundry room cabinets. Then, I leave the room without ever actually having done any laundry. After dinner, when I wonder what I need to do tomorrow and that I’ll most likely need to wear clothes, I remember the laundry; but it’s too late to start a wash because I’ll be going to bed soon if only that damn sun would ever set, and I don’t want the washed clothes to sit in the machine all night.
So, if you’re reading this and you’re still in the sweet spot(s) of life, before things go soft, fall out, or dry up, be nice to us old broads. We were you once. And someday, you will be us.
That is a threat and a promise.
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