Perimenopause: Not Global Warming, Just My Personal Climate Crisis

Hey, so I’m not “leaning into” some stream-of-consciousness writing style to sound cute or anything.

This is literally what I’m going through. No, not as a raging maniac, although I do feel like I’m becoming one. And not even because my body seems to have forgotten the meaning of the word metabolism.

It’s just that I’ve heard so many things in life, EXCEPT perimenopause. Until I realized I was already far too deep inside it, before I even realized it was a word in the dictionary. If that tells you the kind of writer I am, too bad. That’s not even the point of this rant.

Apparently, perimenopause is the 4 to 8 year warm-up act before menopause officially hits. And menopause, for the uninitiated, is the point after the 12 months after your final period.

OK, so, here’s the thing. All my friends seem to be happily baking sourdough bread or strength training and basically living life.

And this is what’s going on with me.

I am calculating calories while sipping drops of Baileys. I often feel this urge to take off all my clothes, not for any reason you might imagine, but simply to feel cold. Because my body feels like it’s carrying its own private summer all year long.

Surely it must be hot. It can’t possibly be just me, all the time. Someone on Shark Tank must have already invented a personalized pool you can carry around everywhere. Otherwise, how exactly am I supposed to quench this fire?

With all this talk about smoldering, I’m worried a smut-novel hero with a tragic past might show up at any moment. Come to think of it, that might not be so bad.

If a guy with big broad shoulders and intellectual intensity rolls up his sleeves slowly and appears behind me, ready to carry me dramatically to bed…. I will immediately put him to work massaging my frozen shoulders.

We may both be emotionally broken, but the plot only requires us to grow about 92% into the story anyway.
“I have seen empires fall, but nothing prepared me for you.” If he says anything like that, though, I’m closing the book on him immediately.

Girl, I’m burning. Not with desire, but with what I’m pretty sure are hot flashes.

I don’t want to hear about how my estrogen and progesterone are throwing a rave and how my body is changing etc etc. I just need this madness to end.

And it’s not even the smell around me, or the exact time I seem to open my eyes every morning at 3:56 am. I just feel like I don’t care anymore. I’ve given away my perfectly comfortable pants and bought the loosest pants imaginable, simply because I now have zero tolerance for nonsense.

For years I believed that if I ate when no one saw me eating, I wouldn’t gain weight. Obviously that didn’t work, but atleast now I have a new thing to blame.

It’s not global warming. It’s my local warning to you. Do not engage with me unless you’re prepared to witness a full meltdown.

Seriously, all this makes me wonder. How exactly did my grandma survive without Google, without TikTok hot-flash hacks, and without trauma dumping onto her children? Boy, mad respect for her. She was a badass, putting up with all this with style.

And maybe that’s the thing, nobody really talks about this phase, or how it feels to live inside it, until you’re right there, sweating through it.

Ohhh, how I love being a woman.

And right now, I feel like no one understands me better than this lady. She’s basically a mind reader.

Observations, Opinions, and Cultural Critique

Cultural Essays from a Life Lived Between Worlds