Trish's Dishin'
Is It Hot In Here, or Is It Just Me?
This year holds an exciting monumental birthday for me, I
turn 40. So many women dread the years of maturity but, I’ve been looking
forward to this for the past 3 years. With age (should) come wisdom and it’s
empowering as one becomes more aware of who they are. There’s an unmatched
sense of self to that of a 20 or 30 year old me.
The 20 year old me thought that I knew it all...You couldn’t
tell her anything without meeting resistance. The 30 year old me, began to
realize that she didn’t know much at all...She set out on a quest for
knowledge. The 40 year old me...Has no idea what has possessed my body and is
taking over at random moments.
To qualify, all of the women in my family have experienced
the ultimate change in a woman’s life at an early age. Peri-menopause has kicked
in between 36-40 years old. My doctor has been trying to tell me for two years
that this is the case for me and I have been in a strong state of denial. I’m
too young and that’s all there is to it.
I have loved watching the women in my family mature. I’ve
sometimes thought that they’ve been a little crazy from time to time but, aren’t
we all. (That's a risky statement to make.) Emotions run high as they stand for what they’re passionate about,
sometimes for each other and sometimes opposed. It’s like there’s a peak of
passion and then the mellowing that follows. Regardless, I’ve always loved and
been proud to look up to them.
Now however, there’s an understanding that I never had
before. Something is happening to me. At any given moment my body will betray
me. The temperature will rise by 10 degrees and I’m having my own “tropical heat
wave”. This was a term I’ve heard the aunt’s use and I would think well, that
couldn’t be so bad – I love the tropics. My mom would always have the heat at a
steady 20 degrees in the dead of winter and while all of us froze she would
say, “Put a sweater on”. We would think she was from another planet. Now, I
know.
At night, our
thermostat is at 17 degrees, it’s -12 outside, the ceiling fan is on, I’ve got
a sheet covering me and I can look over and can see my man’s breath, I am a
furnace. I will wake from an already restless sleep 2-3 times a night drowning
in sweat, only to change clothes and crawl back in to a cold damp spot. Now, I
know.
Let’s not even TALK about the weight gain in my curvy spots.
One would think that with the 5lbs of water I lose a night, that I would instantly
be thin and svelte, but nooooo. Mother Nature
has boosted my knockers another size, my tummy is soft and my hips are meaty.
My guy LOVES my ass but, when he grabs it all I can feel is everything from my
boobs to that rump, ripple like a wave crashing into shore. That’s attractive.
What I didn’t expect was the evil entity that would possess
my mind and my tongue at any given moment without notice. The venom that spews
out of my mouth could strike a Viking down. Yet, once the words have parted my
lips, I can easily snap back into the ME I know and go about biz as usual. In the
meantime, my partner is looking at me like I’ve just escaped the loony bin and
I’m thinking...WHAT?
These are things that he or no man will ever understand. We
as women hardly understand what planet we've been transported to for
experimental probing by aliens. We are strangers to ourselves, fully aware that
we are bonkos but, don’t you dare think you can get away with telling us that.
We can pitch your head off faster than a major league baseball player, then
turn around and be as Zen as a monk in a monastery.
Because all of this is relatively new to me, I’m not
prepared to ingest cancer causing synthetic hormones to quell my madness. I’d much
rather “sweat” it out and go the au naturel route of herbal supplements and
vitamins. A friend has ordered a “chillow” (look it up - www.chillow.com) for my
birthday AND I’m sure that I can expect to be ripping my clothes off this summer,
while I have short but often pit stops at “Trish’s Tropical Island for One”. If
only it came with a cabana boy...
When will it end? I wish I had a definitive answer to give
my loved ones. An answer that would quiet
my mind and bring comfort in knowing that there’s a timeline to work with.
However, there’s a part of me that secretly hopes to embrace an aspect of this new
person. She’s got balls. She’s gutsier than before. There’s a more assertive,
no bullshit attitude that can serve her if she holds it just right. She's always possessed these attributes but, it’s different now. This could be
shaping the 40 year old me.
In all of the things that I didn’t understand...Now, I’m
getting to know. This experience can be powerful if managed and consciousness prevails. Give me and mine patience and grace to make it through.
If there are any men reading this, please know that you are
not alone – there are other men that are experiencing another woman within the woman you love. And the woman you love is
still in there...somewhere. We may seem certifiable and there may be days that
you want us committed but, know that underneath all the hot flashes, damp
sheets, and split personalities, we’re still the same loving woman you chose.
Fingers crossed, we all come out alive. ;)
