Perimenopause Is Lonelier Than Single Motherhood

It is early morning, not even 5 A.M. I have not been woken up by a crying baby nor a sick toddler or a late teenager. I have been woken up by my body, a stranger to me now. I am making myself tea and Googling symptoms like “are heart palpitations normal during perimenopause” and “how long is too long to have your period” and “how to know when to take antidepressants.”

There is no one in this house to talk to about perimenopause, not even the person who also lives here with me. I have tried to explain and he has tried to understand but decades and centuries of history are going against us. This stage of my life is supposed to be a secret, a stoic struggle at best and at worst, a punchline. This is the story we have both been sold since forever. That the rolling pain in my body is nothing more than a drum beat at the end of a joke. That my mind, once considered the decider of all things, is now full of fool’s gold. And this, it turns out, has left me lonelier than I’ve ever been.

I thought I knew loneliness when I was a single mom raising my four sons. The nights when they would all be in bed at a decent hour and the house felt alive with all of the people who were not here with me. A husband, a partner, a best friend. Anyone to share the huge weight of our days, to sign the school forms or pack the lunches or worry with me about this boy’s sudden quiet or that boy’s video game obsession. I thought this was as alone as I would ever be.

I was comically wrong.

I did not understand then what was coming for me. That my usefulness to my sons and to the world at large was a shield that kept me from the depth of true loneliness. I did not know what it was to feel wrong in your own body. To wake up in the middle of the night with pain and fear and confusion and have no real recourse. “Anything goes in perimenopause” my doctor told me, and I understood what he meant. My pain is nothing different, nothing special. My brain fog and my sadness, this hollowness behind my ribcage that feels a lot like mourning, is just part of the experience. Like a sharp turn on a roller coaster you weren’t expecting but was always there waiting for you nonetheless. And there’s just no use in complaining about it because you don’t want to be one of “those” women. My mother was not one of those women, the kind who kicked up a fuss or talked about her menopause or her periods or really anything else. It was unseemly, tacky. A reminder to the world at large that she was a woman of a certain age, past her breeding years, no longer viable.

I did not want her to talk about it then either. I did not want to be reminded that this was coming for me too someday, and so I pretended not to notice that long stretch of time when she seemed sad. A little vacant, removed from the rest of us. When she was sleeping too long or not sleeping enough and her sweet face was crumpled like she never slept at all. I did not ask her how she was doing. Because that’s the terrible rotten social promise I assumed we were meant to keep.

There is something worse than this silence about perimenopause. Something even lonelier than not feeling free to talk about what we are going through during perimenopause. It’s the little erasures that happen every day.

If I am upset, it must be the perimenopause. If I am sad or low or justifiably angry about something in the world, it’s not real. It’s just my perimenopause. Most often said with that sympathetic head tilt that is universally infuriating. The “calm down” face without the “calm down” words just in case I really blow my stack. The words I say get measured and weighed to see if they are worthy of consideration. If they are coming from the young me who made all the decisions or the old me who is… well. Going through the change so…

This is true loneliness. To be unheard, dismissed, pitied without sympathy. To feel the end of your own use so profoundly that you just sit alone, at 5 A.M. with your tea and your heart pounding in a way that is either a heart attack or stress or just normal perimenopause, and stare into space.

And I guess the only thing you can do in this case is to remember that the sun will rise. You can go for a walk. You can make lunch plans with a friend. You can find someone who knows. Who might want to talk and listen and share and just get it. Someone who reminds you that you are not invisible, that you are allowed to be mad about anything and everything.

That you are still here.

Jen McGuire is a contributing writer for Romper and Scary Mommy. She lives in Canada with four boys and teaches life writing workshops where someone cries in every class. When she is not traveling as often as possible, she’s trying to organize pie parties and outdoor karaoke with her neighbors. She will sing Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” at least once, but she’s open to requests.