by Crystal Laramore
...EVEN IF you are a man! Just go back to Junior High English. Ever heard of the INDIRECT object? Yes, menopause could happen to you directly or INDIRECTLY! When you see it happening and you are not the one it's happening to, keep your mouth shut and step away from the direct object. Put all sharp and blunt, heavy objects away.
SO, there I was in my 20's minding my own business and others' too, when my thirties jumped out at me. Happy to have made it through the acid-trip-like adventure of my 20's I embraced my 30's with a vengeance. So, there I was learning to mind my own business in a land far, far away when my 40's showed up in an explosion of shrapnel and ear-piercing noises. Wait. Those were RPG’s! Anyhooo, life was so full of explosions and heat and young men that I barely noticed the earth shift; just a little shift, but a shift none-the-less.
Currently, I am sneaking up on 45. I don't how to define "I" anymore. The person typing this certainly isn't sneaking up on 45 but somewhere in my knees something is definitely sneaking up on something painful. Maybe that's 45?
When the first tremor hit...I was watching some mind altering television show like Grey's Anatomy or something when I needed to channel surf over to Desperate Housewives (I have goals). As usual I picked up the remote but for some reason known only to the mean gods of hahahahahaha you're getting old; the numbers/letters were blurry.
Inconceivably, I held out the remote and was able to see clearly. Only a couple of nights later I was spending the night with a girlfriend. She was cleaning her face and I was getting ready to watch the news or something when I had an out-of-body-experience. It was like dejavue. It was the whole "why are the letters/numbers so blurry” experience all over again. True to a tragic event I screamed like the girl in the B movies being chased by the blob! Deborah ran out of the bathroom with night cream dripping from her chin to save me with her cotton swab and all she saw was a helpless, frantic woman holding a remote control - close, far, close, far screaming every time it got "far" (b/c it was so much CLEARER!
One day I was again, minding my own business, driving along with the top down singing really loud to Rheana, when I was instantly struck with that hot, flush feeling I got in my 30's when a cute guy walked by or when I put that burn your buns dark tanning lotion on right before I went into the tanning bed for half an hour.
Whew, where did that come from?! I looked in my rear view mirror for the devil cuz I was sure he had finally caught up with me for my bad ways in my 20's. I turned side to side looking for him to be in a motorcycle with a helper in the side car and in a "flash" the heat and my overwhelming I-need-Prozac-paranoia, was gone.
And just two months ago my Aunt Flo forgot to visit. Look, when you've waited on your aunt your whole life and she always shows up then one day she doesn't show up what would YOU do? Me? Well, I bought 8 pregnancy tests and waited till I was about to puke from nerves and my whole staff was going to quit to take them.
Negative? WHAT? Look, my aunt is over two weeks late. Hmm. Well, finally she showed up but is now officially three weeks late AGAIN. Lucky for me I still have 5 pregnancy tests left. Yes, that means I took THREE last time. You can never be tooooo careful about these things.
Additionally over the last several months I’ve noticed black hairs in places no one ever told black hairs were supposed to be. Why are all the women in my family who are older than me such bitche$? Shouldn’t you pass along pertinent information regarding getting older to your young? Your friends? Your siblings? What the hell? It’s so NOT romantic for a man whom you are trying to be romantic with to say, with a contorted facial expression, “OMG! Is that a black hair”? Talk about kill joy!
As a preemptive strike to real therapy, I scheduled an urgent conference call with my best friend Jasmine (while having a hot flash in front of the paint man at Home Depot) who is older and oh so much wiser about such things. Getting older apparently does lots of weird things to your body. Without your permission. Anyway, after laughing hysterically and saying, "Welcome to the club, honey!" she shared her own experiences with little memory lapses, soaked-with-sweat bed sheets and outbursts of temper which were totally foreign to her. One of her relatives, Alexa, is currently going through some of the same things and as a matter of fact is about the same age as I am. Whoever “I” is these days…
We all understand that these things are part of the life process, but Geez Louise, we wish we'd had more warning. I guess it's one of those things that - until you go through it yourself - you just can't quite describe it to others but you sure as heck should try. I now have a whole new understanding of the word “sisterhood”.
