Dear Hormones,
What are you playing at? Seriously, I thought we, as a body, were all in this together; fighting against the odds of EDS and Heart Failure, beating them against all expectations and doing a pretty impressive job of it actually. Then, you took it upon yourselves to go off-piste and take control in, frankly, a hostile-coup! I have been kidnapped and need to be rescued before all the things I know about myself and who I am fail to exist!
Menopause, peri or otherwise, you need to take a long-hard look at your behaviour and attitude to this relationship. You’re walking all over the rest of the bodily functions and just making decisions without consultation, or warning, and expecting the rest of us to keep up. What about some instructions or case-studies to ponder before being taken down a path we did not choose?
Let’s start with emotions; I have always been an emotional person, driven to hasty outbursts of love, tears or anger, not one to hide how I feel about things. I had them pretty much under control as a woman approaching 50 though, and could usually decide appropriate locations to share emotions that might impact others. Now, however, you’ve decided that I need shaking up a bit and even the mention of a sad-pet-story or a child telling her dad she loves him, reduces me to a wreck, crying uncontrollably, with snot-bubbles and everything. I heard Michael Buble singing this morning and cried for almost an hour. When John innocently entered the room and asked what was wrong, I started all over again.
And let’s not even begin to talk about Politics or I’ll be ranting for hours about the injustices on the planet and whom I believe to be responsible for them. This is often followed by me throwing things! Seriously, I had to replace a whole set of glasses last week as we were down to our last three. I go outside almost daily and throw something at the wall, just so I won’t do anything worse. John is learning to spot the signs and has started suggesting we go and cut wood in these moments as I achieve so much more that physically I thought possible when filled with this overwhelming urge.
Night time seems to be your chance to really punish me though, with sweats that mean I have to shower at 2am and anxiety like I’ve never experienced before. I’m worried about everything at night; from our ongoing struggle to sort our accounts out from when I had my surgery to whether I will make it my 50th this autumn, to what might cause the house to burn down. And each worry seems to real, so important, that I am totally unable to resolve any of them with a sense of my usual calm.
I am horrible to John, to myself and even on occasion to our pets. I am ashamed to say I shouted at Branston (our dog) yesterday, just because he made me jump when he put his head in my lap. He just wanted to let me know he’d picked up my mood and could help, but I shouted at him. I hated myself for a whole day for that. I cried over it every time I thought about it. Thank you for that, dear hormones.
I tell myself every day that I will take control and “own” my response to your constant changing, and that I can get through this without being awful or angry or ridiculously sad. And so far, every day, you do your best to scupper my plans. Well, okay, I get it, you want my attention and you want to be noticed. I NOTICED! YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION! Now please, can we attempt to work together on this?
Yours, in hope,
Dinah