I was drafting a post for this week about old age and whether or not menopause is something modern (I don’t think it is). Then I watched a movie trailer and started tearing up a little. The trailer ended; the tears unexpectedly turned into sobs. I didn’t stop crying for nearly half an hour.
My first thought was, Good god, will these hormones never give me a break?! And then I realized it might not actually be the hormones. Maybe, in this case, perimenopause is not to blame.
Maybe I’m crying because I’m just…stressed out. The anxiety I feel all the time about the unhinged U.S. political climate, the crisis of our actual climate, my unstable employment, staggeringly expensive health insurance, life as a woman in a red state, the threat of losing access to the birth-control pills that stave off my chronic hives, the pressure to overperform as a parent, the upsettingly high price of groceries—! It’s stressful.
And sometimes that stress makes me cry. So are my moods, appetite, temperature, appearance, and overall sense of self affected by perimenopause? Absolutely. Is it the only thing happening right now that can make me feel defeated, exhausted, and tearfully enraged? Nope.
You can be going through the upheaval of perimenopause and also be justifiably upset about what’s happening around you. All tears are not from estrogen surpluses and deficits.
Women—especially those who could become pregnant—have plenty of cause to be anxious these days. Scientific research has only sort of started to focus on female-specific health concerns and realities, and the U.S. at this time is far from an encouraging environment in which to pursue any such area. Instead of expanding our understanding of how female bodies work so that healthcare can improve, many government officials seem focused instead on controlling female bodies by whatever means and at whatever cost.
So, yeah, misogyny is thriving, perimenopause can be a real mindfuck, and the self-inflating story we in the U.S. tell ourselves about how we’re the home of the free and the brave sounds ludicrous to many women right now. It’s okay to be stressed and anxious and angry.
It’s okay to feel like understanding and compassion are double-rainbow rare, even if they aren’t. Watching or reading news outlets, “news” sites, and whatever the hell people are forwarding one another on Facebook might make you think so, though.
What can you do? Vote, of course—vote against people who want to deny you autonomy and refuse you equality and further stratify privilege in this country. But also hang out with your friends. Hug someone or something tight. Try to adopt (even if only for a few minutes) a bigger-picture point of view: At the heart of most humans is the desire to love, be loved, and keep that love.
What we do with those impulses can vary widely in terms of ethics and morality, of course. Still, those drives are something we have in common, and it might help to remember that—to remember that a lot of reprehensible behavior comes from fear of loss. People are afraid to lose love or control (not that anyone truly controls much) or the props they use to feel good about themselves.
I’d love to say that I radiate this forgiving attitude at all times, but mostly I try to remind myself of these things once a day (so I don’t become a complete misanthrope) and then spend the rest of my waking hours immersed in the things that keep me moving forward emotionally and financially (because we don’t live in a world where you can forget about money). Family, friends, exercise, work, reading, writing, music. I’ll be honest: Those things aren’t alleviating the anxiety and stress as well as they used to, because the anxiety and stress are near-insurmountable right now.
I still have to continue trying to improve whatever parts of this situation I can. We all still have to keep trying. Looking at trees and mountains helps me. The trees represent this era—they won’t last forever, I can remember a time before they were saplings, and they visibly change nearly every day. The mountains represent the longer view—they were there before this country was formed, they’ll outlast this president and the president to come and all the presidents to follow, and they probably won’t look too different when this experiment in democracy comes to a close.
Some days I watch the trees and some days I watch the mountains. And some days I just live moment to moment, hoping in the background that the world we leave to our kids and grandkids isn’t as bleak as I fear it will be. Crying about that is all right, I think.
Yours in tears but also cheers,
That Hag
Two Strategies to Improve News-Related Anxiety in the Week Ahead:
1. Pick a specific chair or area in your home and try to limit your news-related thoughts and readings to that area for a set amount of time. In theory, you’re aiming to restrict the doom-scrolling behavior and feelings to one area and one period of time per day (or every other day or however much you deem appropriate). When you physically leave that area, you also leave behind the doom-scrolling and all its attendant awfulness. Sometimes this is laughably impossible, but ideally it can reduce the “all the time” anxiety. Well, about the news, at least.
2. Go for a walk while talking to a friend in person or on the phone. I know I fall back on walks or exercise in general a lot for mood stuff, but it really does help, no matter how often you actually get around to it. Establish with your friend that this walking conversation is a news-free one. Catch up on things you’ve each discovered recently (a show, a food, a book, a hobby) or the last time you saw something outside that made you catch your breath and remember how naturally beautiful this world is.