Sunday, May 20, 2012

Day 1, May 20

Some time ago, a friend gave me a greeting card with the saying, "Do you notice how all the troubles in your life begin with 'men'?  Menstruation.  Menopause.  Mental breakdown.

Menstruation, over 40 years, was not a fun time for me.  I did not see it as a rite of passage or any other such lovely thing.  I saw it as work.  Hard work, complete with cramps, headaches, and a host of other problems.

 Along the time I was making peace with it, I started PMS-ing.  You know what I mean.  That thing that makes you want to kill those nearest and dearest to you.  I remember one time when my husband and 5 children left a mess in the kitchen and on the kitchen floor.  I swept the floor, dumped the contents of the dustpan on a plate, told my loving family, "Here.  This is supper.  Eat it."  They looked at me in horror.  I then took the plate and dumped the whole thing back on the floor.

Not one of my finer moments. 

So we won't spend time looking at that period (pardon the pun) of life.  We'll look to the here and now.  (For those of you who aren't there,  smile smugly and tell yourself that you'll never be that way.)  And we won't look at men, except as a periphery of our own lives and how they fit in there.

Like menstruation, menopause is hard work.  Our bodies are changing.  (Not in a good way.)  Our hormones took a vacation and probably aren't coming back.  Lumps and humps, not to mention hair, appears where it never appeared before.

Join me in this journey into self-discovery.

1 comment:

  1. Oh, dear. Is this what I have to look forward to? Radiation and chemo fried my ovaries, and I've had . . . let's just call them "flareups." :-)

    Thanks for your lovely card, btw!

    Hugs,

    Sandi xxx

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