The Elephant in the Room

Menopause -  the elephant in the room. A big pink elephant that sweats and swears and stomps about. We can’t go under it. We can’t go over it. We’ll have to go through it. Squishy squashy goes our tummies. Mushy mush goes our brains. Streamy steam goes our bodies. Wrinkle, wrinkle becomes our skin.

The menopause is embarrassing. It suggests we are getting old. Infertile. Pointless. Boo, hiss! Get off the stage, you hormone-depleted hags, and make way for the next generation of luscious, ripe beauties who can get up from their chair without pausing midway to click spines and say ‘Ooof.’

I swear I went to bed as a young woman and woke up ten years older. My jeans fitted on Monday night but by the Tuesday morning they didn’t go up past my knees. What happened to my knees in the night, people? And why didn’t anyone warn me about the chin hairs? Every time I look in the mirror, another one has sprouted. Grooming is a full-time job.  And the thin skin of my neck… why does my hairless cat look cute, and I don’t? And why do I feel like I’ve been in a fight all the time? What are all these bruises?And then there is the inability to sleep or ever be comfortable in anything ever. The clumsiness, obviously, and the fact my hands feel like I am wearing oven gloves, so I drop everything. Then there is the way I can’t remember the name of anything. Not myself, or my kids or the dog, husband... a mug. Cheese. Yoghurt. What is the bloody thing with the four wheels called? No, not a car. The sucky thing. Henry the Hoover, that's it!

And then there is the sadness. The feeling that I have become an abandoned conker shell, withering and brown. Useless and discarded. Conkerless and carved out. The Facebook memories that show me young and thin and beautiful. Why didn’t I walk round naked in my 20s and 30s? I was one hot wench! I had lovely legs and a bottom that didn’t clap its cheeks behind me when I ran.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, menopause is considered a second spring. Apparently, the shift in qi and blood allows women to access their creativity, courage, and vibrancy. Menopause is supposedly a time when women can focus on nourishing themselves through diet and lifestyle change.

Sorry, what? I have trouble focusing my spoon on the teabag, let alone on nourishment. And I don’t want to diet. I hate it. When your hair goes grey and your chin goes soft and you have to lift your belly up to shave your bikini line (joke - who still cares about shaving?) the only things that makes you feel better are crisps and chocolate and pizza and cake, but guess what? If you even sniff a fucking crumpet you put on 1kg.

And lifestyle change? Do they mean how we become invisible unless a child needs something washed quickly or a lift somewhere? At restaurants, I can no longer catch the waiter’s eye. He sees nothing where he should see me. I have to wave the menu like a maniac just to let him know I exist.

I have become invisible.

And we don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about how we feel lost and obsolete and the kind of tiredness that is scary. A depression that drapes itself over us like a family of sloths. Weighing us down, keeping us curled into ourselves, hissing at the light, but pretending we are fine. Pretending we are happy and satisfied, that nothing hurts.

I’m hurting. I have googled ‘what is the point of life?’ and not because I’ve just watched Brian Cox on TV, but because I genuinely don’t know. My positivity went AWOL with my skin elasticity. My mug is half empty, and I’ll probably drop it in a minute anyway because it’s my favourite mug so of course I’ll smash it and I won’t be able to get another one because LIFE.

And occasionally I’ll put on some old songs and feel better and try a bit of dancing but hurt my hip then half wet myself and I then I want a hot bath but I can’t bear to see myself in the bath so I go to bed instead and I cry because there is so much more to life than getting old and it is a privilege not afforded everyone and yet I still care about the size of my thighs.

I asked my mum about going into the menopause and she said ‘I was on holiday in Italy, getting on the bus' which was not very helpful at all. So, I googled it and all I got was a load of adverts for vitamins and pills and jabs and creams that promise to make me lose weight fast, but I know they won’t work. Yoga and Pilates will not fix me. Nor Zoe or Noom or any other bloody app. Because I am not the person I was. I am someone old, and I am someone new. I need to get to know this lady in the mirror who looks like a crumpled crisp packet. I need to treat her like someone who needs help carrying her shopping, with kindness and respect.

I need to see the nurse and discuss my HRT. I need to see a therapist and talk about this darkness. I need to get fresh air and find a way to make vegetables taste as nice as Tony’s Salted Caramel Chocoloney. I need to admit I am lonely. That I am grieving.

I need to forgive myself for my vanity and my elasticated waistband. To spend time with menopausal women and rant and rave and bang the table and demand the waiter take notice because we are still here, and we have value and there is beauty in laughter and a hand on an arm saying, ‘me too’ and in thinking ‘fuck it’ and having a massive wedge of cake.

It takes a lot to see past that big ol' elephant. It takes a lot just to be alive.