On the verge of tears, I stormed into the hotel lobby bathroom, locked the door, and peeled off all of my clothes. My skin was soaked in sweat. It was a warm, humid day in Santiago, Chile. But, was it really this warm? Did the humidity really justify the pervasive sense that I was suffocating? Was the heat really so dire as to test my sanity? Everyone else seemed… fine. Clawing desperate wads of paper hand towels, I toweled off my body, stood barefoot on the cold tile floor, and wondered what the hell was going on.
Once I collected myself enough to re-enter the lobby and face my trepidatious husband, he offered me a glass of water and a nervously loving look.
“Something isn’t right,” I said, shaking my head as my eyes filled with tears again. “This isn’t me.”
It is, however, perimenopause.
In the two years since melting into a puddle of anxiety on the tile floor of a foreign hotel lobby bathroom, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve sought hormone replacement treatment. I’ve adjusted my exercise regimen. I’ve recalibrated my expectations of my body. All of it helped tremendously. Having survived and solved the Santiago situation, I believed I had a firm grip on the signs and symptoms accompanying this phase of my life.
So, when I recently had a rough week at work, I blamed it on my period. When I couldn’t muster a smile the next week, I blamed it on the death of a childhood idol (rest in peace, Dolly Parton). When I still wasn’t feeling it the next week, I blamed it on the chaos of an impending move. When I woke up in the middle of the night the next week with anxiety about the random list of things I had done, hadn’t done, and ought to have done, I blamed it on the extra glass of wine at dinner. And when I wrapped this past weekend in frothy annoyance at my son’s father, I blamed the fact that he annoys me. Because he does.
I typically rebound from life’s little irritations pretty quickly. I let go, re-frame, and move forward. None of it is so serious or life-altering that it is worth my energy and my peace. But as weeks’ worth of mini injustices compounded, I realized I couldn’t shake it.
“Maybe it’s your hormones,” my husband gently offered while handing me a homemade latte. Apparently handing me beverages is part of his coping mechanism.
“I don’t know if you’re joking or not, but I think you’re right.”
For generations, women have played this detective game. When my mother began navigating the ups and downs of perimenopause, she sought my grandmother’s advice. “Oh, it’s no big deal.” My grandmother failed to consider that her “no big deal” experience just might have something to do with the full hysterectomy she had in her thirties. When I began my sweat lodge sojourn in a Santiago bathroom, I sought my mother’s advice. “That seems really early!” But as I shared more examples of my experience, my mom recounted similar symptoms in her early 40s. Eventually, my mom reflected that she wished she had known more back then, and that in hindsight she might’ve started hormone treatments much earlier.
As resources surrounding perimenopause have grown, so has the acknowledgement of the link between physical, psychological and emotional components of the journey. But every journey remains unique. Despite the thousands of female voices on Substack and beyond seeking to express and know themselves in midlife, I nevertheless find myself seeking the same. Each of us puzzles over a different set of pieces. There’s comfort in the shared detective game even if the decoding is entirely one’s own.
Physically, psychologically, emotionally, and socially, I find myself unraveling and reshaping in so many ways. And as I continue to unravel and reform, I constantly seek the why—the origin and the end point for each twist and turn of midlife. I crave answers.
Which is which? Is my annoyance the byproduct of body or of spirit? Of raging hormones or of raging against a self made too small? Of being tired in my bones or of being tired of pretending to have my shit together all the time?
Perimenopause arrives at a breaking point—when the demands of life are at their highest, and when the body refuses to conform to the “everything is fine”-ness that women are taught to perform. At times, on the cold tile floor of the bathroom, or in the immediate regret after snipping at a well-intended comment, I feel this breaking point fully.
But other times, I feel the breaking point cracking open something else, a different way of being. One that rejects undue emotional labor. One that rails against invisibility. One that refuses to be made small.
It’s tempting to seek tidy solutions to messy situations. In my midlife detective efforts, I often uncover thinly veiled attempts to reclaim control where I feel it slipping. Other times, I uncover new layers of wisdom, strength, and knowing. Most of the time, I question which is which.
It’s a seductive riddle—the quest to tease out the puzzle pieces of biology, psychology, sociology, and spirituality and separate each one into a crystal clear evidence box. But riddles are riddles for a reason. They aren’t always meant to be solved. Sometimes they’re just meant to be played.