Unleashing the Furies!
The transition period is well upon me (the one-year period between perimenopause and menopause where you stop ovulating and your period finishes) and despite HRT, a vegetarian diet, an alcohol-free life and a good fitness routine, I am struggling. Not so much with the hot flushes, night sweats and sleep disturbances. I have some good tools to manage those symptoms. The sugar cravings are annoying, but again I have some good tools to deal with those. It’s the absolute rage that has filled me to the core. It’s this deep-seated anger at the injustices in the world.
Last week it was an old man driver and his middle finger. This week it was a cranky middle aged male driver impatiently beeping at a pedestrian crossing in the city, angry that we were still walking when the red man was flashing (despite having started crossing when the man was green). I was walking with my daughter holding her hand and his ire quickly deflated once he got a serve of my raging hot fury. Not that he didn’t deserve a mouth full, but anger at this consumed me for hours and really – he learnt his lesson. He will shake with terror every time he sees a middle-aged woman and child crossing a city street.
Then the café with the rude man who chatted away with his mate and ignored us standing at the counter for a very awkward 95 seconds (yes, I counted) and then said hello to the bloke in the line behind me and went to serve him. When we just walked out, he literally chased us and told us we just had to be patient. I told him where in his rear end he could stick his patience and pointed out his café was half full-on Saturday at lunchtime in the busy city. Maybe he needed to be less of a twat.
Then the large groups blocking footpaths, forcing kids onto busy city streets to pass. They just got an excuse me.
All of this combined in one day meant my tween (let’s not talk about her current penchant for bickering with me constantly like I’m a sibling and for discounting everything I know to zilch) – promptly declared to my husband on our return. Mum was a cranky pants at the world all day. You should have seen how many people she told off! Seriously! Does she know how much I didn’t say?
A netball umpire in our professional league last week pissed me off so much I broke down his mistakes on tape and sent them into the league (he wasn’t even umpiring my team) – he did get dropped so I felt vindicated in my anger, but really. I was boiling hot.
Get me onto social justice issues - lack of funding for women’s sports, lack of support for domestic violence issues, misogyny in the media, poverty, suffering children and my rage boils over to the point I can barely see for the fury.
Maybe that is what the Furies really are - an extension of the Greek and Roman Goddesses of Fury, maybe they are the vengeance of women for oppression. A raising up of our consciousness. A, we’re not going to take this shit anymore attitude. We will stand up for ourselves because we can’t help it. We’re fuelled by menopausal rage.
Menopausal women often get characterised as crazy, middle-aged nutters or dismissed as past their use by date. I think this is actually the age of the activated middle-aged woman. The age of reason fuelled by menopausal rage and the ‘I can’t put up with any bullshit so don’t even try’ attitude. Far from insane, maybe this is when we find our voice and our power. When we don’t care about mass opinions but instead care about what is right and just.
I for one am proud to be a difficult, menopausal woman and I’m embracing the wisdom of the furies. Beware!
