Change Is in the Air

The Red Bloat has arrived, and so I am torpid and groggy and grumpy. I popped my Aleve, and now I'm sitting here, seething at the world and trying to muster the give a fuck to do ANYTHING. So far, no luck. If I could ask a woman who's gone through menopause anything, it would be this: After you get through the oogy night sweats and hormonal dips and swings, do you miss your period at all? Does your sex drive totally pack it in once the blood font ceases its flow, or do you still have pervy thoughts about that hot piece of tottie rolling down the street? Does your energy level decrease? Your mental acuity?

I don't really have older ladies to ask about this because my grandmother was on HRT until eighty, and my mother and aunt had hysterectomies, so there was no menopause, per se, for them, just sudden cessation. And anyway, they've never seen or treated me as a normal woman. The very idea that my crippled ass has a libido and the desire for hot monkey sex just does not compute for them, and when I first started writing godawful, overwrought het smut at fourteen, they clutched their pearls and debated amongst themselves whether I needed therapy, because a fourteen-year-old writing about sex on the stairs was just Too Much. So no help coming from that quarter.

And with that, what energy I have has ebbed. I'm off to read and find something to pretend to do until I can go to bed.