Women of a certain age

That’s me.* I’m a woman of a certain age.

Wow, don’t I know it.

Turns out it’s not going to be wearing purple, or leather mini skirts and singing my heart out in the rain (couple of Tina Turner references there, some of you young folks** will need to look it up).

Started using HRT a couple of weeks ago, cos I was TOO melancholy – and I know we are all going through crazy times and why would we not be melancholy, but this was different. This was waking at five and thinking random doom laden thoughts until seven. Every morning.

Doom laden thoughts are draining, after a while, especially when all known strategies are not working. They started to intrude on the daytime too.

So, I figured let’s go with the hard drugs. That’s the answer to everything, right?***

I’m feeling gently better. As my brush with T2 Diabetes demonstrated a couple of years back (managed with diet, not hard drugs) we are essentially a giant bag of meat and lots of things we think we really feel are hormone driven. All that anger, (or as I liked to call it ‘my fiery nature’) turns out that was insulin driven.

I wonder what it is, exactly, female hormones do? Make us see the world through sufficiently rose-coloured spectacles long enough to give us time to procreate, if we so wish?

And if so, when they leave us, our bodies having run out of eggs or whatever, are we going to be melancholy FOREVER?

I say ‘we’ but I’ve got the magic gel now. I’ve started to see stuff in a more positive light. I’ve begun writing again. I’ve begun, tentatively, enjoying it.

The moral of this story? Speak to someone if you’re feeling shit? Don’t be afraid of medication? Buy that leather miniskirt?

All of the above, my friends. All of the above.

* This picture isn’t me, by the way. I looked for images in Pixel Free Images for ‘menopause’. There’s a lot of zany women, living their best lives, often on surfboards. I do hope that isn’t mandatory.

** See, that’s what old people do – make jokes about ‘young folk’. See? See??

***Unless you are one of my kids. Then it definitely isn’t. Go exercise and do yoga.