So many changes, I sometimes am not sure where it all starts and where it all ends. Some days I can wake up and think…you got this and in the very next breath I can be WTF, where do I start. lol I am not sure if this is common or if I am just one of the lucky ones that gets a whirlwind kinda life.
This year in particular has been different and full of change. We expect some of it, you know as we age. we anticipate menopause man or women we have to deal with it. women in it and men with the effects of it. I will swing back to that later. then we have our aging parents. We anticipate that as well, if our parents are fortunate enough to be graced with old age we feel blessed and know that we will in turn have to help them as life becomes more challenging. yep I will talk more about that later as well. But there are some things that we do not really anticipate. Your sibling needing your care and aid, your adult children falling down on their journey and needing more support than you anticipated they would need, you yourself tripping up in ways you didn’t think possible. It leaves you with a bit of a head scratcher at times. its the topper to your knows or anticipated knows, thought we really don’t know because sometimes it still looks like something completely different in your mind than in reality. It can leaving you standing along an edge of a rocky cliff with no real footing, you try to gain your balance and yet each step you wonder fuck am i going to make it. You want to, and your trying your best but man this walk looks nothing like i thought it was going to.
I anticipated my parents getting older, least i hoped they would. I have always felt if so I would be grateful for taking care of them and helping where i could. What i was not prepared for was to check on my father and each day him say he was doing alright but I had my concerns. To one night him not responding, I figured its late. i will call in the morning. I call in the morning….no answer. hmmm i leave a message and give him an hour and let him know i am coming if he doesn’t answer again. I know this sounds strange, however, my dad is a hermit and very much loves his own space and time, he can sit by the phone and let it ring, he can ignore a buzz at the door and you definitely have to give him advanced notice if you want to do anything or make a plan to see him. it is who he is. What I did not anticipate when I arrived at his home was to not see him sitting in his chair.. to not respond when i called his name. I did not anticipate to see him flopped on his bed sideways and not responding to me calling him. I am thankful that I am relatively calm, even though inside i was 100 percent freaking out. He had a pulse, not responsive, but thankfully he had a pulse and with much loud calling and a few strokes to his head he thwacked my hand, no words but a response none the less. THANK GOD I went and called 911. It was a busy day for the paramedics so they sent fire truck to assist till ambulance could arrive. He needed oxygen so I was all about them coming. My point here is we know its coming however i am not sure we are ever prepared for when it starts to happen. I am grateful my dad has survived this health issue, unfortunately it has altered fair bit of his world as it has mine. I have no problem doing the things I have to do, prep food, get meds, change catheter bags, pay bills and take care of things he can no longer do. I just am struggling with seeing him un responsive, unsure when i first walked in if he was alive. My heart is still trying to catch up. so even though i know a day will come i did not want it to be that day, i dont want it to be this day and I do not want it to be any day, though i know one day it will be.
I know that I will go through menopause apparently its a thing that happens so we anticipate it. I am heading into my 55th year and today is my 61 day with no period. Just like that, as regulars as they come, only time i missed periods was pregnancy and one time when i was super sick. Other than that same old same old. So missing one I was like ya, I guess i am getting to that age.. As I have found out most of my friends have been going through this forever and some are completely done. So far I feel pretty fortunate because I am not a crazy bird…lol maybe it is because I am already a crazy bird that the gods were like ya lets pass with he crazy hormones’ on this one she be crazy enough . What I was not prepared for is the sweats, night sweats.. it is not normal, how can it be. I wake up with pruned hands that is nutzo. completely nutzo. oh and the heat flashes. it looks like i am having an embarrassing moment ever few moments and sometimes they happen at the most in appropriate times. like if i am being an ass and someone says something, i am not embarrassed and yet my face will be going red…. then im like fuck, now they think i am embarrassed when really i think im funny or an ass. lol anyways I am like I said a big 61 days in, I have no idea what is to come or how I will be or what this is going to look like, though i can tell you it looks nothing like what i had in my mind. I heard that people go crazy, make no sense, loose there minds on everyone about everything, one bleeds and bleeds and bleeds then stops for a few months then repeat, sex drive goes down and pretty much your blah. I got nothing, and am pretty ok if I do not get another period. I have plenty of kids and at my age do not want more. lack of wanting sex has not dissipated and I do not think I am loosing it as of yet. Its kinda like Russian roulette though I am not sure who gets the bullet, the people around you or you..it all sounds messy and super unpleasant. Knew it would be coming however had no idea was going to look like this.
I am not sure why I decided to share about such personal things today maybe because most of the time we dont talk about any of them. I had no idea how many of my friends had gone through menopause or the things they dealt with in it. Its like some sort of secret or embarrassment. I dont really know why maybe because it is joked about as a bad thing like pms or when a women is pregnant and the moods and the behaviors are dismissed because of or summed up in a negative way. I can tell you that the things that pissed me off when I was pregnant or if my period is coming and your behavior is annoying, it has always been annoying. I just lack the patients at either of these times to tell you for the 100 millionth time that it is. So I might just simply tell you that your annoying or choose to ignore you completely because i do not have the time to waste on telling you yet again when apparently you have potatoes in your ears and can not hear.
maybe I shared about both of these things because i am in the midst of it. possible because I am trying to get my footing and struggling in finding a solid place to step and hoping if i slip I have a safe place to land.