Menopause

Menopause the word, seems to mock me and dares me to figure out what this monster is all about. The word seems to say everything loud and clear that it does to a woman or doesn’t let a woman do when it is at her throat. Does menopause without any compunction say ‘me, no pause, come what may’ as in I am a deadly monster, I don’t spare anyone and will inflict myself upon you in all my glory whatever might be your fate or is it bellowing at me to say aloud ‘me, can’t pause, whatever I might be dealing with’ thus forcing me to speak out my fate? Both are true, neither life or its motions and other myriad stuff we call life stops nor does the ferocity of the onslaught of this monster abate. It continues to unleash a toxic mix of sometimes mysterious, inexplicable mostly invisible symptoms and a woman who looks hale and hearty from the outside is on the verge of a volcanic eruption triggered by a seismic emotional tremor from inside. It is a very complex state of mind that one finds oneself in. Hormones and chemicals inside a woman are having a free run, physical strength and appearance is taking a beating and most of us don’t know what to do with ourselves. In my case I have had what I call a ‘bonsai career’. I never let go of my profession completely but adapted it to suit my maternal instincts and I must add out of free will and as a choice made by myself without any external factor influencing my decision. As a result I have had a career but it could never reach its potential as I wanted it to grow in a certain way only so that I didn’t lose touch with it and at the same time didn’t get consumed and subsumed by it. I was confident that the day I decide to go full steam in to my profession I would be able to do it. Today I am working towards it in my own way but it is tougher and I still don’t know, how many more order of magnitude tougher, than I had thought it would be. It’s not a rant, I am just stating facts. I don’t need pity, I might do well with empathy. I wanted everything in my life and I was confident that I could achieve that if I change the order of doing things a little bit. The years that usually in an ordinary course women spend nursing and nurturing their careers, I spent nursing and nurturing my children and I wanted it that way. I carried on with a bonsai career and at the cost of repetition I must say as a matter of choice. I wanted to take a leap of faith and go full steam in to my career after I thought I was done with my active motherhood duties. I knew that this would coincide with me being peri-menopausal but never fathomed that it could upset my plans in any significant manner. I still don’t know with certainty how my present state of mind is affecting my plans. My plans are not going as per my schedule, something is amiss in me as a person, in my motivation, tenacity and focus and for good reasons I am tempted to pronounce this monster guilty. I was and I still am hopeful of being able to carve myself a niche despite life having become what it has become. Menopause to me was another milestone that as a woman I knew I would reach one day. I didn’t know the journey to this destination would be fraught with so much anxiety, physical discomfort, unexplained ennui and emptiness in ample doses. I didn’t have even the faintest clue that it would be much more arduous and protracted than I ever thought, to say the least. This is when I am not suffering from any of the symptoms in extreme at all. I have been experiencing anxiety and nervousness occasionally but most of the time I can counsel myself to my senses and other times I am ok after talking to a friend or reading something or distracting myself by doing some physical activity. The strangest part is that no one talks about it, even us women, amongst ourselves, as much as I think we should. We don’t warn one another of this impending storm that each one of us has to weather. We don’t get to prepare ourselves to deal with this life altering experience mostly because it is not a part of the discourse. No one around us usually know or let’s say can fathom the extent of our grief and pain both physical and mental when we are going through pre-menopausal and menopausal phase. I think everyone, including us women, feel that it has been happening since always and women before us never made much fuss about it so why are we making a big deal about it. Since we women aren’t talking much about it amongst ourselves in a meaningful manner I am sure at some point each one of us feel that may be we are overeating or being hypersensitive or behaving in a very entitled manner. We have a sense of guilt thinking that since I am not the only one going through this upheaval then why am I the only one complaining and talking about it. Once you start to talk with other women you realise everyone is struggling in one way or another. Very few women have an easy ride. Every battle is unique in the sense that each one of us get different symptoms in different measures. Some have excessive bleeding while some get hot flushes all the time. Some feel weepy, some feel anxious, some have panic attacks, some have palpitations, some have a sinking feeling, some have a foggy brain, some get a weak gut, some have a disturbed sleep pattern and some get pigmentation, some have mood swings and some get full blown depression. Some symptoms will stay with us for life and some abate with passage of time. I was talking to my gynaecologist and she told me about the entire spectrum of symptoms that a woman could experience and the bandwidth of that spectrum was absolutely mind boggling. She advised me to be more aware of my health, my heart and not to dismiss everything that I feel as a side effect of being in this phase. She wanted me to take care of both my physical and mental health, look after my diet and keep myself hydrated. Incidentally the timings of this monster’s arrival in a woman’s life are also perfect. The moment usually a woman starts to breathe a little easy after having raised her family and is either settling down in her career yet another time after innumerable breaks ( talking about typical middle class women who immigrate to cities for earning their livelihoods, this description might not fit everyone) or struggling to reinvent herself to find an occupation suitable to her education, experience and aptitude, this monster starts to knock at your door. This is usually a time in a woman’s life when her nest is either empty or on the verge of getting empty, parents are growing old and she herself has come a long way in her life without actually realising it. You are in the process of reallocating your time and energy more towards your own well -being, dreams, ambition and desires when suddenly you start to wonder that there is something really wrong with you. Either your mental health or your physical health is definitely compromised. All of a sudden the energy level starts to dip, multitasking for which most of us women pride ourselves, looks the most difficult thing in the world. A feeling of inadequacy and worthlessness starts to engulf you. You find yourself a different person in the mirror, the greys on your head are breeding like rabbits, the adipose comes uninvited as if with a vengeance and settles down at all unwanted places despite having successfully enforced a very strict ‘no vacancy’ and ‘no trespassing allowed’ rule all your life. Skin is not as soft and supple as you remember it was when you last saw yourself in the mirror. The laughter lines, crows’ feet, pigmentation are a few other uninvited but still expected guests I would say, who come to settle down with you for good. Everything that people say seem to either hurt you or make you feel small, is an unwarranted feeling, that you can’t most of the times seem to get rid of. You start to analyse your life and don’t find anything you have done in your life worth giving yourself a pat on your back. Every decision ever made by you in the past looks either suspect or bad. Even if everything is fine in your life you are hell bent upon nit picking and find faults with everything. I must say that though these thoughts don’t stay with you forever but such moments keep coming back to you with startling frequency and its scary if your life in reality doesn’t have any problem as such. I think if we have more open conversations about this stage in a woman’s life, both amongst us women and with men, navigating thorough it could become easier. We might not have to explain every time we are indifferent, uninvolved or disinterested in something or may be snap at someone in that moment when we are feeling the lowest in our lives. We all know that this too shall pass and when women feel assured that there is nothing wrong with them it would be an empowering thought. The fact that everyone is actually going through something makes you feel that you are not alone and don’t have to feel bad or guilty about the state of mind that you are in. People around you in the family and friends could become your support system and with their understanding and empathy life could become a wee bit simple in these years.