Perimenopause stole my life. And I’d like it back.
In 2010, aged 34, on the back end of a messy break-up, I quit my corporate career, sold my house and bought a round the world ticket. Within a year, I’d turned my travel hobby into a travel writing career, with a slice of fiction writing on the side. My gap year turned into 6 years of bouncing from one country to another with little more than a laptop, a backpack and a head brimming with ideas.
I thought I had it made.
Then, aged 40, perimenopause knocked on the door.
And it was a knock at first. Arm pain. Followed by night sweats. Then insomnia. Tell tale signs that my hormones were also considering making a long term trip (with a one way ticket in their case). But those tell tale signs were only tell-tale if you knew what to look for.
I didn’t.
And neither did the many, many doctors I saw over the ensuing 10 years.
Blood test after blood test. Misdiagnoses after misdiagnoses. New debilitating symptom after debilitation symptom. My health went on a downward spiral that would ultimately cause – nail after nail – my beloved writing career to fail.
At the turn of my 49th year, my age now being sufficiently close enough to put perimenopause on the table of possible causes (despite my periods being more regular than the rising of the sun), and with a huge uptick in awareness and concern for women’s midlife health, I took a further swing at restoring my life; self-diagnosed peri and requested HRT.
A year on, HRT neither sufficiently succeeding nor failing as I navigate the experiment that comes with trying to find the right balance of replenishing hormones, I’m here at my laptop, writing once again.
This time launching my website looks different. My brain is dark and my thoughts are jaded. Excitement reached depletion about 5 years ago, when anxiety turned up at the door. My week days are spent 9-to-5 task-ticking, back in that corporate world I thought I’d left behind; though at a much more junior grade than when I left. Of course. Evenings are slumped on the sofa or setting myself up early in bed with a book and herbal tea (because: sleep hygiene). I manage 10,000 steps a day. Most days. But I do it in stages because that’s the only option I’ve got. Weekends are weak, pathetic, a disappointment to myself. My boyfriend who has only known me since I’ve been in peri deserves a medal for the rollercoaster ride he didn’t realise he was getting on.
Travel has gone. Hiking volcanoes: gone. Hobbies, interests, keeping my house neat and clean. All gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.
Writing creatively? How, when I can’t remember simple words for common things: yoghurt, car, shoe?
But I need something. Anything that hints at the memory of who I was before any more of me is gone. Until I can write again – crime fiction is the goal – here I am. Something. Anything. A small step in the direction of getting some semblance of my life back.
Written with the aid of bran fog.