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spare change
Apr. 10th, 2009 12:52 pmWhen I was twelve and we had spent a good week of health class learning how to draw fallopian tubes, I remember being shocked to see another girl my age in the ladies room put a quarter in the machine to buy a maxi-pad. You see, they had told us how everything worked, but not that its working was, in fact, immanent. Twelve seemed very young to be a physical adult to me, and I assumed it was all a long way off. I got an unexceptional a year and a half of reprieve.
Similarly, I have to say, 36 seems pretty damn young to be going through another physical phase shift, but it's become apparent to me over the last several months that sometime in the last year I've entered perimenopause. Night sweats; freakish ill-logical changes in my cycle; and yes, even the occasional hot flash.
It turns out, of course, that 35, while outlying, is considered within the normal range for this nonsense to start. It is unexceptional, except for the part where no one told me that. Thank goodness for the Internet.
We don't talk about menstruation, about menopause. I see a "ladies only" cut on my friends-list at least once a day, and I wonder that we so have to shield men from the fact that we bleed. I don't get it, and I don't like it. Of course, I almost didn't have the nerve to post this. The taboo is huge.
Perhaps it's not about the blood, but about age and utility and sexual vitality, all of which makes the matter more egregious somehow. I was so negligible when I was eighteen; I am so substantive now.
When I was eighteen, I talked about everything, and I said it was important, critical even, that we talk about the ordinary things that most people do, but no one ever confesses too: I slept with a married man. I had an abortion. I grabbed my mother's arm hard enough to bruise.
If what I said back then is to be considered one of my essential beliefs as opposed to an excuse for the loud and perhaps inappropriate self-indulgence of my past, then I have to note this particular set of events as well.
Four days ago my period ended. Yesterday it decided to have another go for a day. Presumably this is the part where my progesterone levels are slightly off, and if it really bothered me, I could go to the doctor and go on birth control or find another medical solution to make this nonsense stop happening.
Except I can't. Because on the list of things I was never told along with the age menstruation begins and the age it takes on a mind of its own was that my grandmother and her sister both died of hormone sensitive breast cancer. My mother had a breast removed in 2007 for the same reason.
This is all unremarkable. Except for the part where my body is perhaps doing me a favor getting this whole thing under way sooner than later, except for the part where I'm telling you goodness this is strange.
I have other lives than this: somewhere I bore five children, always wear dresses and live on the beach; somewhere I've got an entirely different set of tackle. Those lives are no less real, and perhaps no less unexpected; I'm not sure, being unable to be in two places at once, all pretense aside. It doesn't matter anyway, they aren't this life. All times may be now, but all places -- not as much.
I can't imagine this will be something I talk about very much. Like celiac disease, it's one more piece of the background noise. But I've lived most of my life in New York City, and if there's one thing that teaches anyone: sometimes the background noise roars.
Similarly, I have to say, 36 seems pretty damn young to be going through another physical phase shift, but it's become apparent to me over the last several months that sometime in the last year I've entered perimenopause. Night sweats; freakish ill-logical changes in my cycle; and yes, even the occasional hot flash.
It turns out, of course, that 35, while outlying, is considered within the normal range for this nonsense to start. It is unexceptional, except for the part where no one told me that. Thank goodness for the Internet.
We don't talk about menstruation, about menopause. I see a "ladies only" cut on my friends-list at least once a day, and I wonder that we so have to shield men from the fact that we bleed. I don't get it, and I don't like it. Of course, I almost didn't have the nerve to post this. The taboo is huge.
Perhaps it's not about the blood, but about age and utility and sexual vitality, all of which makes the matter more egregious somehow. I was so negligible when I was eighteen; I am so substantive now.
When I was eighteen, I talked about everything, and I said it was important, critical even, that we talk about the ordinary things that most people do, but no one ever confesses too: I slept with a married man. I had an abortion. I grabbed my mother's arm hard enough to bruise.
If what I said back then is to be considered one of my essential beliefs as opposed to an excuse for the loud and perhaps inappropriate self-indulgence of my past, then I have to note this particular set of events as well.
Four days ago my period ended. Yesterday it decided to have another go for a day. Presumably this is the part where my progesterone levels are slightly off, and if it really bothered me, I could go to the doctor and go on birth control or find another medical solution to make this nonsense stop happening.
Except I can't. Because on the list of things I was never told along with the age menstruation begins and the age it takes on a mind of its own was that my grandmother and her sister both died of hormone sensitive breast cancer. My mother had a breast removed in 2007 for the same reason.
This is all unremarkable. Except for the part where my body is perhaps doing me a favor getting this whole thing under way sooner than later, except for the part where I'm telling you goodness this is strange.
I have other lives than this: somewhere I bore five children, always wear dresses and live on the beach; somewhere I've got an entirely different set of tackle. Those lives are no less real, and perhaps no less unexpected; I'm not sure, being unable to be in two places at once, all pretense aside. It doesn't matter anyway, they aren't this life. All times may be now, but all places -- not as much.
I can't imagine this will be something I talk about very much. Like celiac disease, it's one more piece of the background noise. But I've lived most of my life in New York City, and if there's one thing that teaches anyone: sometimes the background noise roars.
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