I’m in Newport Beach, Orange County. I’m driving down this cute little shopping street, looking for my morning coffee because I’m in dire need of caffeine at 11 am on a weekday, as one is when one has recently become an empty nester. I spot the most perfect space on the corner, right in front of the cafe I like. So I slow down, and I realize pretty quickly that it’s not really a spot, it’s right behind a crosswalk, but it’s ok, there’s enough space for me, and I’m only running in for a minute, right? I pull in, start backing up so that I’m not blocking the crosswalk, checking my rear-view camera the whole time, and a HONK comes from behind me. I can see in my camera that I still have like two feet, so I ignore it and keep going for a sec to straighten out. HOOONK!!! Longer this time. I stop and pull up to make sure the crazy person behind me knows I’m not dinging their car. I’m driving a nice new car, so do they not realize new cars all have rear-view cameras?? What the fuck. I open my door and start making my way to the sidewalk when I see the honker behind the wheel, a woman in a giant behemoth of a car. She rolls down the window and shouts out, “THAT’S NOT A PARKING SPOT! THAT. IS. NOT. A PARKING SPOT!!” Her grayish blonde hair is piled up on top of her head and is bobbing up and down violently as she shrieks, and her tan face is all askew. The anger is hissing out of her. It’s all a bit much given the circumstances. So what do I do? Well, I should have ignored her and kept moving, but I just don’t like being assaulted by an angry stranger for no good reason. So I engage, as one does, and I say in a smart-ass tone, “I’m only running in to grab coffee!” And then of course I have to add, for good measure, “By the way, I could see exactly how close I was to your car, I obviously have a rearview camera.” Duh. I’m stoking the fire now. She screams, I mean screams, “TOO CLOSE!!! YOU. WERE. TOO. CLOSE!!!!!!”.
Menopause is a bitch.
I realized later that I should have recognized her behavior, since it mirrored mine before I got help. I’d had similar instances of unhinged rage and other pesky symptoms, and eventually talked to my doctor about it.
My doctor referred me to a gynecologist who specializes in hormone replacement therapy, inserting pellets subcutaneously in a woman’s backside. I went to see her, and she laid out her rote speech, “It’s perfectly safe… the old school medical field, i.e., male doctors, said HRT caused cancer, blah blah blah… it was a flawed study. Now. Lower your undies, and let’s get to it.”
The first week after my procedure, I felt a big change in my mood. The gynecologist had told me that I’d feel the burst of testosterone in the pellet, but that it would protect my mind from developing dementia, so I thought, great—let’s go. And the next few days, I noticed my volatile mood–anger suddenly flaring up for no real reason. I was snapping at my husband for every annoying little thing he did. And there were many, many annoying little things he did.
At the same time, my libido was waking up—yawning and stretching, like after a long nap. More like a winter’s hibernation, you could say. I was suddenly noticing the hot men in commercials. The fit men jogging by as I walked my dog. The handsome weatherman on the news. Heck, even my mailman wasn’t safe from my ogling. I had mom-porn fantasies—a gorgeous shirtless man vacuuming the house while cooking dinner for me.
The good news was, I had a perfectly good man at home. One who would love and appreciate this new me. But his annoying little habits were really getting under my skin. I was horny, but I was too annoyed to want to have sex with him.
The weirdest part of the whole situation was, it felt as though the emotional side of my brain, let’s call it the “feminine side,” was shut off. Sometimes he would talk about his feelings, and I genuinely wouldn’t understand what he was saying. In my mind, I was checking the score of the game. And I don’t even watch sports.
Yadda yadda yadda is what I heard. Whine, whine, whine is what I heard. I started noticing that when I watched a movie, like say a romcom, I wasn’t paying attention to the dialogue or the story plot. I was looking at the beautiful people instead, and imagining them naked. Holy shit, I thought, I have become a dude!
It was such an enlightening perspective on being a man. These male “creatures” suddenly made much more sense to me. They want less talk and more action, I get it!
About two weeks into the treatment, I felt absolutely euphoric. My brain was zinging like never before. I actually remembered what a charged proton was when my son asked me one day for a school assignment. My body felt like perfection, and my self-confidence soared. I thought, so this is why women do hormone replacement therapy! I feel amazing!
This happiness lasted for about two days. Then it started wearing off, and my old self came slinking back. My brain was back to not remembering what I did last weekend, let alone what a charged proton was.
I called my primary doctor and described the whole episode to her. She was at a loss, as was I. She said, “Well, I guess it’s not for you.” Yeah, I agreed. Oh well.
So naturally, I went back and tried the pellet insertion one more time, as one does. I mean, those two days where I felt like I owned the world? I’d do anything to have that feeling back. I thought, “maybe it was just a bad batch?” You know how we women do that. We do the same with bad relationships. We tell ourselves, “he’ll change once we’re married!” We just can’t get enough of torturing ourselves.
Unfortunately, I felt the same the second time around. Oh, hello old friend, I said to the mirror when its reflection couldn’t grasp what my husband was whining about… Something about me not being sensitive to his feelings or some other blah blah. I was already scanning the TV for a Gillette for men commercial.
After that, I learned my lesson. I gave up the pellets. I became my old sensitive self again. The world was back in its natural order. Yes, I felt a little older, but also a little wiser, a little more compassionate, and a little less of a dick. I appreciate that my husband is still nice to me, watches sitcoms for the actual story and not just the beautiful people, and mostly listens to what I’m saying. And vice versa.
Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes act like a smart-ass when an unhinged woman honks at me before my morning coffee, but these days I’m more inclined just to let her blow off steam, and I refrain from yelling back, knowing how much menopause sucks.