Things will get weirder and weirder before your period stops—something every woman should know before the stopping starts.
Maybe it was around the time your mother took up flamenco dancing. She might have cut off her hair and dyed it purple, or started dressing like Stevie Nicks. Maybe she divorced your father or came out, embarked on a serious relationship with yoga or ceramics. Whatever she was up to, it was clear something was going on. But no one was going to talk about it—at least not in public. You might have overheard a whisper: the Change.
The Change sounded like one of those black-and-white horror movies. I had to make the wire coat hanger antenna touch the windowsill for Channel 50’s Creature Feature to come in. Soon a monster would appear in the doorway with yellow fangs, brittle claws and wiry hair, asking if I wanted to join her for a performance of her friend Deborah’s avant-garde marching band.
My grandmother thought she was dying when she got her first period. We were watching The Thorn Birds on TV, shoulder to shoulder in bed, when she told me that she had been away at boarding school and no one had told her a thing. I knew it wasn’t fatal, but menstruation was still tinged with shame in the 1980s, when I was in middle school. Ads for ‘sanitary protection’ featured blue liquid poured from beakers. With clandestine glances, we checked one another for spots on our pants, passing tampons and pads with elaborate handshakes. We used the euphemisms “on the rag” or “time of the month.” But whatever our mothers were going through—if we had perceived it at all—was unmentionable.
While periods are out in the open now, The Change is still a monster hiding in the dark, creeping up on many women silently. I didn’t think I was going to die, but for a while, I thought I was losing my mind. Perhaps the invitation to Deborah’s avant-garde marching band was my mother’s way of trying to tell me something back then. I was too busy singing along with “Like a Virgin” to listen.
And unless it happens to them, the whole business is still a bad joke to most people, like the women ‘of a certain age’ frantically fanning themselves in sitcoms. I had imbibed the misogynist notion that The Change makes women become “difficult,” but all I really knew about menopause before I hit 40 was that hormones and hot flashes were involved.
With clandestine glances, we checked one another for spots on our pants, passing tampons and pads with elaborate handshakes. … But whatever our mothers were going through—if we had perceived it at all—was unmentionable.
Myths dissolved as my vocabulary expanded. Turns out perimenopause is the main event; you only graduate to menopause after a year without a period! I also learned that my information on HRT was woefully out-of-date and useless at best, like the Summer’s Eve douche hidden under my grandmother’s bathroom sink, way in back behind the toilet paper.
And I began to understand that things will get weirder and weirder before your period stops—something every woman should know before the stopping starts.
It begins with some mild brain fog. You’ll walk into rooms and forget what you came for. Soon your existence will acquire a crawling ticker, broadcasting physical sensations non-stop: too cold… too dry… too loud… too damp… too hot!… too hot!!! You will start dressing like an onion to adapt, yet nothing will fit quite the way it used to. Beware of shopping, though—you might be drawn to sequined animal prints, Peter Pan collars, leather pants or the color electric lavender. Your brain cannot always be trusted to decide which, if any of these, is a good idea.
Like your figure, sex might seem like a slideshow of a tropical vacation you once took: familiar but just not the same. Your vagina is an aging diva, demanding a lot of attention. Periods will take days to start but then they just won’t stop. There will be less blood than gore, and as in any horror movie, just when you think it’s gone: It’s back! You’ll count yourself lucky to find a half-unwrapped, 10-year-old mini tampon at the bottom of your bag but wish you had a portable bidet. Looking at strangers in the mirror as you wash your hands, you’ll wonder how many others are being terrorized by The Change.
Anyone who tells you to relax does so at their own peril; the guy at a party who insists that men go through menopause, too, will be lucky to escape alive.
You will wake up drenched in sweat or shivering cold—that is, if you can fall asleep at all. You’ll be urged to try supplements like ashwagandha, black cohosh and agnus castus, eat foods with phytoestrogen, to avoid sugar, alcohol and caffeine. You will amass an arsenal of herbal tea that stains your teeth and keeps you wondering: Why does it all taste the same? And what nitwit set the thermostat at 800 degrees? You are suddenly one of those sitcom ladies, fanning away and dabbing your brow. It was never funny, but now the joke is on you.
“On edge” does not begin to conjure the state you’re in. Anyone who tells you to relax does so at their own peril; the guy at a party who insists that men go through menopause, too, will be lucky to escape alive. But then clouds can elicit a quiet awe. Certain animals or songs—the right cookie at the right time—can bring gentle tears to your eyes. Moods will come and go, but the weird new smell of your body will stick around.
One morning your feet will ache terribly for no reason, the next your vision will blur. Your back will itch. You’ll pee your pants. Pimples will erupt, hair will fall out, whiskers will sprout. You’ll wonder if that pain in your ear is a perimenopause thing, too. Googling it will confirm your suspicion and offer a host of new symptoms to look forward to—tingling extremities, dry eyes, dizziness, burning mouth, panic attacks, depression… as well as the irritating caveat: Some women experience menopause without symptoms!
If you’re not one of those unicorns, you might supplement your supplements by demanding action from your gynecologist. There will be patches and gels, pills, and yes, more herbal tea. Eventually you will get used to the weirdness and make it your own, just as you did with your period, because there was no other choice.
Then something else will happen. You will begin to notice a large chunk of the world, nearly invisible until now: an army of cool, older women, the ones who have emerged on the other side and flourished. In their eyes you will catch a glimpse of the person you want to become. You will do away with pretense then, giving up whatever is keeping you from beginning to live the rest of your life. And this is where the flamenco dancing might come in.
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