Monday morning, I wake up thrashing and screaming from a psychotic nightmare, drag myself out of bed, use painkillers on my anguished lower body, then lie in a steaming hot bath until until their attenuating effect is felt.
As for my mood, depression isn’t even enough. I feel terribly miserable, barely energetic enough to get dressed.
Of course, objectively, I see that it’s a beautiful spring morning. However, for me, there is no purpose in it. I’m almost 53, a week after my last period started, and I’m as miserably hormonal as a 15-year-old waiting for a math test. Or should I say biology? Question of the day: “Why the hell do I still have long, regular, painful periods even though I’m approaching 50?”
I have menopause envy. I’m not afraid of change, I want it. I’m tired of staying in the generational void, writes Hannah Betts
Menopause and its countless deleterious consequences are never far from being in the news these days. Fabulous celebrities in their 50s, from Mariella Frostrup to Davina McCall, are talking about advocating action meno. Parliament has a UK Menopause Task Force and a Menopause Tsar.
And, obviously, all of this is wonderful, wonderful and necessary: progress not only for women but for humanity itself.
It’s just that, in my case, I crave menopause. I’m not afraid of change, I want it. I’m tired of staying in the generational void. Give me my #menorights now!
First of all, I need my period to stop: now, before the next one, scheduled for next week when I turn 53 (because that’s the way to celebrate birthdays, with clots, cramps and a brain loaded with misfortune).
I know that menopause – officially the state that follows 12 months without a period – probably won’t be easy and can come with significant health problems. Women may experience cardiovascular problems, brittle bones, urinary incontinence, difficulties with sexual function and weight gain.
However, it’s perimenopause – that phase when hormones rise then dip, hot flashes flare and tantrums flare – that can often account for most of the trauma. And that’s the perimenopause I suppose I’m experiencing right now, or the histrionic view of my body.
After all, I swapped my birth control pill for HRT a while ago to treat hot flashes, but there’s still no sign of the endgame, where the well thankfully eventually runs dry.
Instead, I endure potentially more years of the constant corpse-like exhaustion of a slumped woman in her fifties, with the physical and mental anguish of an unstable teenager.
My period hurts, like it always has. They hit hard every month and last more than a week. My mood plummets, my head and stomach hurt, I can’t sleep, my daytime lethargy is extreme.
As an added spice to the story, prolonged periods can also make you sick. If you go through menopause early (before age 45), you will not benefit from the protective effect of estrogen on bone density and cardiovascular health. However, late menopause (from age 55) is not ideal either, as it increases the risk of breast and uterine cancer (from which my mother died at the age of 69).
I worry about the impact on my partner, Terence, who jokes that he has to put me on monthly suicide watch. He must dread my cycle almost as much as I do.
Hannah says her period hurts and always has. They hit hard every month and last more than a week, she writes.
From my teens to my thirties, my mental health was at its lowest right before my period. Now it’s most problematic at the end, when, since I’m already depressed, I myself become alarmed at my despair.
And I don’t even want to think about how my period makes me a bad employee. The irony, of course, is that menopause, when it arrives, will actually be good for my career.
My inbox is full of emails inviting me to attend panels, protests, and empowerment nights. I can’t seem to order coffee without someone giving me an earful about adding collagen for vaginal atrophy or how matcha might be better for estrogen-drained bones.
The meno-link is such a phenomenon that women look at me with suspicion when I don’t participate, as if I am indifferent; not play the game by volunteering within the club.
You may tell me that I am not far from the average quitting date. Maybe, but no one else I know my age is in the same boat, with a cycle that shows no signs of abating, and I’m irritated by every second of it.
My mother and younger sisters all stopped bleeding at age 40. They, and especially my brothers, are incredulous that I am still complaining about period pain on the family WhatsApp, with the guys satirizing me for “faking it to look young”. .
“Maybe you started later?” experts try to console. I was 11, barely in high school, also an exception until all the other girls joined around 14. “It’s not easy,” I want to bleat.
Forty-two years – and for what? It’s not like I always wanted kids. Forty-two times 12 occasions of fainting, leaking, pain, dizziness and depression.
I got my period during my first week at Oxford, my final exams, crucial job interviews and vital moments in my career, during countless holidays and while caring for my dying parents. But they come anyway.
Obviously, I’d like the village elders to adopt an attitude that doesn’t sweat the small stuff, as I’m told that’s the benefit of post-period existence. But I’d be content to live pain-free and without the risk of becoming a duff, as fashionable as Tana Ramsay and co. make it appear. So here I am, still buying condoms in bulk just in case, while my friends are enjoying their freedom from all this anxiety.
Honestly, I’ve had enough. It’s time to abandon my Nurofen and my grill baths, my Tampax and my torpor, for freedom and calm.
Mother Nature, I beg you, give that battle ax a break.