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Jan. 28th, 2008 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gillpolackThis weekend I'm watching Hornblower. Who would have thought that it required so many tissues and would provoke so much weeping? It reminds me that perimenopause sucks.
I can be normal-Gillian (except for hot flushes and those 3 day migraines) for two months, three months, six months, eight months, with no trouble. Then, out of the blue, I get a few weeks of rampant emotion. Friends have been known to take me aside and say "Get counselling" when all I need is menopause. They have been known to tell me which aspect of my personality they want to see and which ought to be repressed. These emotions aren't actually part of my personality, though (as far as I know) and when I asked a doctor way back when this rollercoaster began they just said "Your friends will have to deal with it unless you go on HRT, which I do not advise." The bubbly, passionately intellectual person is still Gillian, not the teary frightened one.
I watch from underneath the tantrums, wondering what's going to happen next.
In the few weeks when perimenopause overtakes me, I have been known to reveal intimate fears and deep secrets in a moment of heart-terror. I have argued with people I never would argue with in normal reality. All sorts of things can happen when my hormones swing: it's like PMT by ten.
The one thing it's good for is that I have an intimate understanding of how universes can shift. I discover more about the limits of others than I ever thought possible. I get through whole boxes of tissues watching Hornblower, and I weep for the world, not just for me. I also rather suspect that the dynamics of The Scarlet Pimpernel are all wrong - people react very oddly when they perceive a different person to the one they were expecting.
When my body settles down I shall think how to use all this data in fiction. Unsettling emotion and human reactions to it have to be good for something, after all.
Still, I can't wait for menopause.
I can be normal-Gillian (except for hot flushes and those 3 day migraines) for two months, three months, six months, eight months, with no trouble. Then, out of the blue, I get a few weeks of rampant emotion. Friends have been known to take me aside and say "Get counselling" when all I need is menopause. They have been known to tell me which aspect of my personality they want to see and which ought to be repressed. These emotions aren't actually part of my personality, though (as far as I know) and when I asked a doctor way back when this rollercoaster began they just said "Your friends will have to deal with it unless you go on HRT, which I do not advise." The bubbly, passionately intellectual person is still Gillian, not the teary frightened one.
I watch from underneath the tantrums, wondering what's going to happen next.
In the few weeks when perimenopause overtakes me, I have been known to reveal intimate fears and deep secrets in a moment of heart-terror. I have argued with people I never would argue with in normal reality. All sorts of things can happen when my hormones swing: it's like PMT by ten.
The one thing it's good for is that I have an intimate understanding of how universes can shift. I discover more about the limits of others than I ever thought possible. I get through whole boxes of tissues watching Hornblower, and I weep for the world, not just for me. I also rather suspect that the dynamics of The Scarlet Pimpernel are all wrong - people react very oddly when they perceive a different person to the one they were expecting.
When my body settles down I shall think how to use all this data in fiction. Unsettling emotion and human reactions to it have to be good for something, after all.
Still, I can't wait for menopause.