There’s a thin sliver of life, right after you’re freed from attending 14 weddings a year and just before the first of those “I can’t believe I’m marrying my best friend” couples start getting separated and divorced, when you hit a sweet spot. You’re old but not too old. Most of your pals have equalised in terms of thinking a 9pm start to a night out is a war crime, especially when you’d all ideally like to be tucked up by 11. If you’ve had kids they’ve hopefully stopped insisting on being within two inches of you at all times or are at least wiping their own bums. You’ve identified your most trusted loyalty cards (Tesco, Boots) and have purged 17 others from your wallet. Things are on an even keel. You’re a grown up and it’s totally fine that you’re technically old enough to be Dua Lipa’s mam, actually. All breezy here!
For a woman, the sliver is thin indeed because no sooner than you’ve invested in a little wicker basket for the bathroom to proudly and maturely display your menstrual products in – menstrual products that you’ve obtained in advance and have on hand when needed rather than purchased in a panic at three times the price in a local convenience store, à la your 20s and half of your 30s – the word “perimenopause” drops into your life and you wonder if you’ll ever catch a break.
I’ve been dreading the menopause ever since the last wedding drew to its 5am close and my most glamorous friend initiated divorce proceedings. The menopause is a nebulous cloud of uncertainty that looms in the near distance and threatens to bring anything from one week to 10 years of sweating, mood swings and hating myself into my life. It’s only recently that I learned it’s preceded by the perimenopause, a transitional stage which starts at the average age of 47 but of course can kick in during your late 30s or into your 50s. Menopause – the complete cessation of periods – itself starts on average at 51 but of course, you guessed it, it can set in much, much sooner or way, way later. And so, the thin sliver of life involves constantly watching out for The Signs.
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When I recently and uncharacteristically missed a period I felt a jolt of joy. Maybe I was skipping it all and had simply stopped menstruating forever and I would be one of those magical unicorns who had no perimenopause and just went straight into the real thing with little to no symptoms. Yes, I’ve already been sweating and moody and hating myself for some time but let’s not let The Signs get in the way of a miracle. I’d be the envy of women everywhere. I could fling the wicker basket into kingdom come and put decades of debilitating pain and discomfort behind me. Everything was coming up Emer!
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When I told an older friend my missed-a-period-and-not-pregnant news she kindly patted me on the head and said: “Oh honey no. This is just the beginning.” After another day or two of living in denial, I googled perimenopause. I’d looked it up before obviously, but the symptoms and descriptions are so vague that it had failed to stick. Sure enough there was talk of irregular periods and onomatopoeic threats of night sweats, hot flushes and erratic flow. The generic health website I’d landed on also threatened that this could go on for four to eight years! I recoiled in horror. At what stage then could one expect the perimenopause to fade out and the menopause to take over? How long are we expected to be stuck in this permasweaty night terror of arid vaginas and surprise periods? The menopause is confirmed as having occurred after you’ve gone 12 months without menstruating. What if you get to 11 months and then have to reach for the wicker basket again? Is the clock reset?
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It feels a little retrograde to be scaremongering like this, but the guessing games that women must play with their own bodies really is quite frightening. There’s a span of potentially 20 years when you can expect to deal with ending one misunderstood bodily function and take on several more. That’s before adding conditions like endometriosis, infertility and mental health problems into the mix. In May 2021 Joe Duffy dedicated five days on the airwaves to talking about the menopause, and topics like menopause in the workplace and supports for women who suffer debilitating symptoms were pushed on to the agenda. Discussions around menstrual issues aren’t quite as taboo as they once were, but we have a long way to go in addressing how they can affect women across decades of their lives. And at the core of it all, there is this real fear of the unknown. I’d sell my soul to the devil himself to see the calendar dates of all the big milestones in my peri/actual/post-menopausal journey. At least I might save myself a few quid on preparatory tampon purchases. Although the silver lining is the points on the Boots card. Every cloud.