I knew perimenopause was going to give me hot flashes, maybe some insomnia, a little vaginal dryness. Perhaps I’d suddenly become one of those women who carries a portable fan everywhere and has extremely strong opinions about linen. I was prepared. I am a gynecologist, after all. Menopause is literally my job. I know what happens when estrogen packs a tiny suitcase, flips you the bird, and heads for the door.
What I did not anticipate was the complete and apparently irreversible shutdown of my internal customer service department. You know the department. It has been open 24 hours a day since approximately puberty, cheerfully processing requests from the general public.
No, no, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Whatever works for everyone else. I don’t mind. Sure, I can do that. It’s really not a big deal.
For decades, this department was fully staffed. Frankly, we deserve a pension.
We ate the chicken when we ordered the salmon because the server looked busy. We attended parties we didn’t want to attend. We volunteered for things because someone sent an email saying, “We just need one more mom!” with 17 exclamation points, which is apparently the female equivalent of the Bat Signal.
We spent 20 minutes composing a text explaining why we couldn’t do something that could have been communicated with the word “no.” We smiled through conversations that should have ended six minutes earlier. We made other people’s awkwardness less awkward. We remembered birthdays, bought gifts, filled out forms, replaced toilet paper, found missing shoes, made appointments, smoothed things over, kept the peace, and somehow became the only person in the household who knew we were out of mayonnaise.
And then perimenopause arrived and apparently fired the entire fucking department. There wasn’t even a meeting. Nobody from HR called. I just began noticing that things I once would have swallowed, softened, explained away, or quietly fixed were suddenly producing a very different response.
Actually, no.
Actually, that doesn’t work for me.
Actually, I’m not doing that.
At first, even I was a little startled by myself. This is usually the point where someone explains that menopausal women are “irritable,” and I have some thoughts about that. Because I’m starting to wonder whether we’re describing the wrong phenomenon.
Maybe we’re not becoming more difficult. Maybe we’re becoming less willing to make difficult things easier for everyone else. There is a difference.
Somehow, I learned that being a good woman meant being accommodating. There wasn’t a Girl Scout badge for Advanced Emotional Labor, but I learned the rules anyway. Have opinions, but deliver them pleasantly. Be successful, but don’t make anyone feel inadequate. Need things, but not too many things. Be capable, but remain endlessly available.
You may become angry when absolutely necessary, but please submit your anger in writing with three supporting documents, two character references, and a smiley face so nobody mistakes you for a bitch. And above all, don’t make anyone uncomfortable. I was very good at this. Generations of us were.
Then somewhere in midlife, something changes. Maybe it’s hormones. Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s the sudden mathematical realization that there are fewer years ahead of us than behind us, and I simply don’t have enough Tuesdays left to spend one of them at an event I don’t want to attend with people I don’t particularly like while wearing uncomfortable pants.
And remember that salmon I ordered? I’m sending back the chicken. That’s my salmon.
I’ve also stopped producing elaborate alibis when I don’t want to do something. For years, if I couldn’t attend something, I felt obligated to provide documentation that would hold up at The Hague.
I am so sorry, but Wednesday is difficult because my child has an appointment, then the dog has this weird butt thing, and I’ve got a work thing that might run late, and Mercury is in retrograde, and my left rear tire looks a little low…
Now? “I can’t make it, but have fun.”
And then I perform the most advanced maneuver available to a midlife woman: I stop typing. No explanatory paragraph. No supporting exhibits. No closing argument. Just… send.
The first few times you do this, I recommend having someone nearby. Your blood pressure may drop precipitously from freedom.
And here’s the really interesting part: When we’ve spent decades accommodating everyone, simply stopping can look suspiciously like a personality change.
We’re different. We’re difficult. We’re angry. We’re selfish.
Are we now? she asked, in a tone that was definitely not helping her case. Or did we simply stop providing a service everyone had grown accustomed to receiving for free?
Sometimes I wonder whether estrogen wasn’t holding our personalities together at all. Maybe it was subsidizing everybody else’s comfort. Because underneath all the jokes about menopausal rage, maybe we’re not getting meaner. Maybe we’re just getting honest.
I can love you and disagree with you. I can be a good mother without solving every problem before my children experience the deeply survivable sensation of frustration. I can be a good friend and decline the invitation.
And this one has taken me more than 50 years to learn: I can disappoint you without immediately trying to rescue you from the experience of being disappointed. My God. Imagine knowing that at 25.
For years, we’ve been warned about everything menopause takes from us. Estrogen. Sleep. Bone density. Our waistlines. Occasionally, our ability to remember why we walked into the kitchen.
But nobody tells us menopause might give something back. Maybe it’s simply the ability to say, “Actually, this isn’t working for me.”
So yes, I still get hot sometimes. I occasionally wake up at 3 a.m. for no discernible reason and begin thinking about something mildly embarrassing I said in 1997. There are days when I would happily climb inside the refrigerator and close the door.
But the strangest symptom of menopause is becoming my favorite: I can’t pretend this shit is fine anymore. Maybe that means I’ll lose you. Or maybe it means you’ll finally see me.
Either way, I sincerely hope this one never goes away.
Dr. Heather Bartos, named one of the nation’s top five menopause experts by Oprah and Maria Shriver, is a celebrated OB/GYN reshaping women’s health discussions. Featured in Cosmo, Shape, Glamour, and as Poosh’s “resident gynecologist,” her innovative approach empowers women through menopause with compassion and expertise. She is the author of the forthcoming novel, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Menopause.”
