As I age I become more acutely aware of my body's limitations. I can no longer run, dance all night, stay up past 9:30 or drink to excess. For the most part, I have accepted these limitations with ease and without a great deal of strife. Oops, not true - giving up running and drinking were excruciatingly painful, of course not that ever did them together. Running is more of what happened after I stopped drinking as it is very difficult to run anywhere when you often wake up still drunk. I am not a big fan of puking either so it was definitely the drinking and then the running.
When I turned 40 I realized that my memory was shot. Oh, I was not forgetting to pick up my kids from school. But I could not remember if I ate the sandwich that I brought with me or whether I forgot it on the kitchen counter. Nothing fatal - just unnerving. A visit to my 45 year old doctor proved damning as he told me to get an iPhone and just accept that my brain would need technological assistance from here on out.
So all of this aging and I am aware and present and relatively accepting of all that is coming to pass...except my period. Almost 41 years old and still having it. I was a late bloomer at 15 so I guess I should count my blessings and quit my bitching. I have never been one of those women who tracked it or paid much attention to it. In my 20's, it went unnoticed unless I was not on the pill and then its arrival marked a cause for celebration. I didn't really have any symptoms and it was, well, unremarkable. I spent my early 30's on Deprovera so I didn't have a period at all and it was GOOD! No pregnancy worries, no period - NO PROBLEM! At 33, I saw that perhaps I might want to have a baby so I thought it prudent to stop the shots and allow my body to regain its natural rhythm. Less than a year later I was pregnant and happy. Stopped nursing my son in July 2006 and got pregnant with child number 2 in July 2006. The years from 34 to 39 were pretty much again period free as being pregnant or nursing for four years required that my body devote its attention to other things.
So at 39 my period returned and I treated it with the same summary judgment that I had in the past and got another dose of Depo. Three months of bleeding daily was enough for me so I tried the pill. Nasty PMS and the threat of divorce allowed me to see the light and forego hormone treatment for the little bugger. My husband, being a wise and generous man, agreed (read kicking and screaming) to get a vasectomy. He did - problem solved.
Not really. I still have the period. It comes seemingly with increasing frequency and symptoms. I am a bitchy, crabby, bloated, chocolate craving maniac for most of the month. But here is the weird part - every month it is the same and every month I forget. Every month when I try to eat my husband for breakfast, I cannot figure out why I am behaving that way. Every month when I cannot fit into pants that I just wore last week, I am perplexed. Every month when I eat all of the Halloween, Easter, you name it holiday chocolate I despair. If I were a crier, I would cry my heart out. But I am not so I just eat and yell my way through the month. Right before I get it, I think to myself that I should make an appointment with a doctor or a psychiatrist because clearly there is something WRONG with me! Then it comes and it all makes sense. The entire last month is immediately put into perspective and I slap my forehead and vow to remember next month and spare myself the drama.
Funny thing - next month I do it all over again. I am not sure whether I am the only woman who suffers from period amnesia. The only one that seems doomed to relive each menstrual cycle in a proverbial fog only to awaken to the light of day and 7 to 10 days of yuk. I think that as I age, I should be more in tune with my body as my relationship only grows longer with each passing year. That I would be able to dial in its subtleties and use this information to my advantage. I know that I can be in tune - I knew that I was pregnant at 2 weeks both times that I was pregnant. So what is up with my period? I have done a lot of soul searching on this topic and what I have come to is that I don't like it - never have and apparently never will. My period has always been a pain in the ass that I have actively avoided. So I will continue to be amazed every month as I cycle my way through the symptoms and confusion. However, I have started praying for menopause or a hysterectomy...whichever comes first.
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