Sunday Afternoon in Perimenopause Land

Not a pleasant subject for guys, I'm sure, but let me assure you – it's a FAR less pleasant topic for us women. I'm spending more than ¾ of my life lately wondering if I'll ever feel normal again. I'm emerging from my week of crashing fatigue. A MOST unpleasant symptom you never really hear about, because women try to keep going and doing and hate to admit that they CAN'T. But for days ever month, I CAN'T. I mean quite literally…the effort of getting out of bed is almost too much. It's not tiredness, grogginess or needing a nap. It's more like depression but worse. It is an effort to do ANYTHING. Even think. I mean that quite literally. And a painful effort at that. It's an all-pervasive numbness and weakness of both body and mind. Nothing sounds like it would perk you up, because nothing WILL perk you up. Like most women, I would imagine, my dh doesn't get it, and it is beginning to take a heavy toll on our relationship. I don't blame him – I hate myself for laying around like a lifeless lump for 5-7 days out of every single month. Even going to feed my beloved equids feels like an effort – and when it's an effort to spend time with them, then it's BAD.

But on this pleasant temperate January afternoon, I'm emerging a bit from the monthly cocoon; this time once again vowing to call that specialist in Austin and get an appointment. I want my energy back. I want my life back. I can tell I'm on the end of this month's rollercoaster ride from hell because the simple act of turning off the water filling a water tub for the horse didn't overwhelm me, and when I discovered the tub wasn't stopped up, so all the water was leaking right back out, I didn't feel like just lying down and letting my QH walk all over me until my death. It wouldn't work anyway. He would just have pawed and looked at me with concern, and of course the mule and donkeys would then try to help me somehow, not knowing just what to do. So that attempt at offing myself is just another example of how lackluster I have been.

It's like being a teenager again, I think, in some ways. I don't really REMEMBER the feeling of it, but I know that when you're a teenager and your parents ask you to empty the dishwasher it feels like they've asked you to do something so inconceivably difficult that you have to nap just thinking about it. That's what this is like. Only it's myself telling me to empty the dishwasher, and I go lie down instead. The grand irony is I don't sleep. I just lie there. Even at night. All night long…just lying there, with no energy for even a thought.

Then the energy creeps back in slowly. First in the form of thoughts…like today. When you're lying awake at night alone, and your whole world has been uplifted and shifted and earthquaked for years now on TOP of all the hormonal crap, it gets pretty tough. I cry then. Just cry. For everything. For the ranch I just left in such a whirlwind that I still feel disoriented. The ranch I loved and never ever wanted to leave – and didn't leave by choice. I cry for the losses of 2008. There have been so many. And each has caused a tidal wave of others. Losses of people, equine friends, dreams, and hope. I wonder if my relationship will survive this – just another in a multi-year long list of wedge-creating blows. In my more able moments I distract myself by studying what I've gone through. I now believe that losing Nutmeg and then Pooh Bear (our donkeys that were, respectively, my best buddy-was going to be my lifelong riding partner, and my co-baby-boy, truly my child in so many ways even to how he came to me to show me when he'd done something brave) absolutely affects and affected mine and other relationships that are childless in the same way that losing a child does in those couples.

Many people will hate me for saying that, for daring to say that a donkey is or could be at the same level as a CHILD. As if a CHILD is such a rare phenomena that it is granted to only one in a million rather than happening every single day, rather than, as is the reality, being just one of over 6-1/2 billion other humans. The bonds are the same. And why shouldn't they be? The instincts lie there, ready to be stirred by whatever may cause that bond to grow, and it is not just humans that can nurture and create that bond. My research is really bearing it out and despite the almost ingrained instinct to demand that human lives are more important than non-humans when we lose them, it's just not true. There's one really important key ingredient – the other species don't hurt us the way our own does. That is partly due to our own projection onto them of whatever we wish, but it exists as a phenomena nonetheless, and that alone means the pain of the loss will likely be even heavier and harder. With other humans we can temper our pain with thoughts of how they hurt us or let us down, or with our religious beliefs, or with knowing they lived a full life. But when you've had a love that never let you down and now have lost it? So many questions linger always: Did he/she KNOW how much I loved him/her? Was he/she HAPPY with me?? Did I do all I can? Nothing tempers that pain.

The evidence shows that the losses are often much greater in terms of their depth of grief and length of grieving. I'll be criticized that I can't say this because I've never had a child. But I have --- Pooh Bear. I believe that now wholeheartedly. I raised him alongside his donkey mom after adopting him away from his "birth" human mom while he was still relatively young. It would be like adopting a 10 year old human boy. And he grew under our watchful eyes and learned, and I was proud of him. And I loved him. Quite deeply. He looked to me for guidance, just as a young child would. From his donkey mom he learned to navigate the donkey world, but from me he learned to navigate the human one.

For some reason, having science begin to understand and back that as a reality makes me feel better, and shielded from the sure-to-be-hurtful hatred that will come my way as I continue to write about this topic here and in the book I have planned. The fact that other scientists are criticizing psychologists for not recognizing the validity of the grief of the loss of another species makes me feel better.

And yet, as if asking for the pain to be prodded and irritated, I study it. And I am encouraging it with another being again. This time a Quarter Horse gelding named Magnum. It's not the same, of course. But are two children the same ever?

I study it as a way of dealing with it, since I cannot talk about it with my dh. He is a hider. He buries his emotions – all of them now – and puts them tidily away somewhere locked up and not to be thought about ever again (until….I loathe the feeling of waiting for that eruption). He nearly pretended to not even notice the death at the end of this year of his riding gelding, Casanova, whom I also grieve deeply. Such a sweet boy he was…and he took such good care of Peaches, my mule, which is not how Magnum is starting out with her. And just as with the children, my other donkeys play the roles of loyal friend and companion and listener and sometimes slap me with a brush off when I come weeping…which means, I now know, the weeping is not warranted at that point.

But who am I to criticize? I bury my own emotions by taking a scientific/philosophical tack instead. Put them under a microscope and examine them, compare them, dole out labels and ratings.

Like so many philosophers, I long to do many, many more things than I will ever actually attempt. The idea of doing something is always so much easier than the physical carrying out of the plans. It's so much easier to sit and talk and ponder and write than it is to DO. And then I chastise myself when I look out at the faces of the lives I have taken into my responsibility, feeling guilty that I am not "doing" with them as much as I think or thought or wanted or something. I both long to know their thoughts, and cringe at the idea of finding out for sure if they are happy here with me.

All the philosophical questioning may be just the result of my hormonally scrambled brain right now. The depressing nature of them makes me hope so. I WANT to do all those things. I really do. I hope that this doctor can work some kind of miracle to return my life to me.