Casualties of menopause

My gallery was known as “The Gallery,” the way a café or lounge or rumshop has a name. It was not just mine. My friends visited at no set time. No occasion was necessary, and no ceremony was stood upon.

But most of all, there was no outside world; we banished it at the gate. It was not something I could have hoped for or contrived. It just happened.

From my very first place to the one I live in today, the gallery was wherever my friends could find the fridge and converge on my dying Morris set. From there we did everything.

How to make the world better? Sorted. How to make one friend happier? We tried.

So when I decided I would not go blindly or stupidly into the world of menopause, I took the conversation to the gallery.

This was before any of us had hit perimenopause. But – thanks to too many novels featuring older aunts, and lots of friends and relatives older than I – I’d seen it and I felt it would soon start claiming us. Because that is, absolutely, one hundred per cent, what it felt like.

What I had seen made me think a force for evil coming for us, and I was preparing for war. And the first thing I wanted them to know was that I was not prepared to lose a single one of them. If I had a dollar for every woman I know whose menopause was lined with the corpses of old friendships, I’d definitely have some dollars.

I know I have a few too many soapboxes, but this is a really big one. Maybe it needs to be big because I want other people to get on it. Maybe it’s because I want it to be big enough to be seen. Because right now, I don’t think people are seeing it. Now, still, even though menopause has been happening since, oh, women were invented.

We’re not doing the biology lesson, but just a reminder, menopause comes in three stages: perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause. There is no end of literature available. If you’re at all interested in finding the perfect example of a distinction with no difference, get in some reading on “the change.”

I am telling you what I said to five women I love that evening. It went something like this.

I know we are getting older. I think the phrase “a lady of a certain age” is hilarious. I know our bodies are not plotting against us. This is normal and has been happening for ever and ever.

Here’s what’s not going to happen. I’m not going to pretend it’s not happening. I’m not going to pretend I have a million other medical problems but not face up to the biological reality that is occurring.

And I am not going through this alone. Please don’t let me go through this alone.

Perimenopause slips into menopause and all you know is you’ve stopped menstruating. But many of the symptoms are the same. For some people the lack of a period is about the only thing that changes.

But on the days that I feel like I can’t remember my name, I want my friends to remind me that I do have one. And I have my keys, and I can drive, and I can write, and if I don’t think about it too hard, I can do sums.

On the days when my skin does not fit and I can’t stand the sight of myself and it seems unimaginable that I will survive the darkness rage devouring me, please, may I call, or will you come over?

I saw this New Yorker op-doc on menopause and women from their early 30s to an age we’ll call much older were talking about how it affected them and their ideas of being a woman and their femininity.

That was all great, but what did it for me was the one who said she thought her heating was broken and she needed to call British Gas. Too funny, I thought. But she was dead serious. Because she just had not thought about it happening at all.

And that’s the big problem. No one seems to want to think about it.

Try to remember what it was like to be an adolescent girl. But feel old. There, you got it.

The gallery is not what it used to be. Covid happened and that changed a lot of things.

But that conversation is one of the most pivotal of my life. Because, if nothing else, we had it.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.