The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones (6 page)

In the end there is no one magic bullet to alleviate menopausal symptoms, because women are so different. See your doctor. And try not to get a needless hysterectomy.

Some women prefer to alleviate their symptoms without any hormones at all. Typical recommended over-the-counter menopause-symptom-soothing aids include black cohosh tea, Saint-John’s-wort, soy, chamomile, calcium, vitamin supplements (D and B-12), and phytoestrogens (plant-based forms of estrogen found in alfalfa sprouts, soybeans, chickpeas, lentils, tofu, miso, flaxseed, and spinach).

In short, the literature on menopause confirms that perimenopause could well be a wild roller coaster of anger, depression, sleeplessness, plunging libido, bloating, and vaginal dryness. How should you deal with all of this? Through (go, team!) a healthy lifestyle! Essentially, the chorus of books all agree: We’re to get more exercise, drink more water, do yoga stretches before bed, cut out alcohol and caffeine, and yet (and how does this follow?) reduce stress. Even the flirty exhortations to have more sex feel like yet another job on life’s chore wheel (given that it’s supposed to be with your mate of twenty years rather than with Johnny Depp in his
Pirates of the Caribbean
garb or Hugh Jackman in any garb at all).

ALL OF
which is to say that now, having learned everything there is to know about this wacky hormone dance I’ve begun, instead of feeling free and elated I feel like I’ve just been given an odious homework assignment (what with everyone’s chipper exhortations to “Just eat more flaxseed! And soy!”). To be candid, I am extremely disappointed that there isn’t a magic bullet and that now, as in pregnancy, I am supposed to start doing yoga again and to eat kale. They didn’t help at all then, and I hardly believe they will now.

All the medical advice in these books has gotten me down.

I’m very bad at cutting things out.

I would like to bring things back in. I’m an action-oriented gal.

I’m not going to make it through this thing unless there is a completely other way. Otherwise I’ll just have to resort to what my mother did at the end of every day: smoking.

Life in the (Happiness) Projects

THE THINGS WE TRIED IN OUR JOURNEY TOWARD HAPPINESS

Singing

Dancing

Sculpting

Crocheting

Giving up Solitaire

(Extreme!) couponing

Exercising

Painting our bedrooms mad different colors like Burnt Tangiers

Writing “gratitude” notes to everyone in our lives

If not that, at least buying a bunch of “gratitude” stationery

Weeping

Throwing in the towel and just buying ourselves some damn colorful plateware

Frantic late-night fressing

Xanax

O
F COURSE THE PROBLEM
with perimenopause is forgetfulness. When you’re in perimenopause—even after you’ve been told you are—you keep forgetting who you are. I would advise all women who’ve begun the change to write a note: “
REMEMBER! I AM IN PERIMENOPAUSE! THIS COULD TAKE FOUR TO FIFTEEN YEARS
!” and stick it on your bathroom mirror so you can see it every morning.

The forgetfulness is why, after I got that first attack of the “darkies” in the car, read all those menopause books, and became disappointed that there was no magic bullet—I totally forget about the whole thing. That’s right, I just totally forget about it. All I notice is that I am just sort of depressed. Every morning, I wake up feeling as though something—this nameless weight—is sitting on my chest and neck, gradually pressing the breath out of me. It’s less hat full of rain than a kind of handbag, or purse, full of anxiety. My body is also sometimes suffused with sudden tingling, uncomfortable warmth, but it doesn’t occur to me at this time to call it anything exciting like a hot flash.

On my parenting days off, when I’m not pounding around town with my kids, I find myself becoming weirdly listless. I have a vague memory that there is something I could take for this, like Saint-John’s-wort or black cohosh tea, but I have no idea what black cohosh tea is, and even the notion of getting into the car to drive to where some perky health-food-store employee is going to explain it to me (why are health-food explanations always so
long
?) fills me with exhaustion. In point of fact, daily activities like “going to the store,” “taking a walk,” or even “getting dressed” have come to seem oddly daunting. I feel like some lady staring flatly out the window in a Cymbalta commercial—but of course I never make the connection that
maybe what I actually need is Cymbalta
—whatever that is. I’m too embarrassed at the end of the day to report to anyone but Mr. Y (who sees it) how pathetic I’ve been. What did I do today? I stayed in bed until noon. I perused a home decor magazine. I played computer Solitaire. I Q-tipped my ears. The Q-tipping—that was arguably my happiest moment, as well as my most productive.

“I think it’s because you’re not writing some big new project,” Mr. Y says. “The magazine articles are one thing. But you’ll feel much better when you get a new book going.”

“Do you know how hostile that is?” I flash back, stung. “Telling a person they’ll cheer up if they just get a book going only makes them feel worse! Coming up with a great creative project is a hard thing to do, and if one’s happiness depends on that, one should contemplate quitting life entirely. ‘Be creative!’ Gee thanks! It’s another impossible chore, next to the sink full of dishes and the basket of laundry.”

“Why don’t you call Clare,” Mr. Y pushes on, “from your writers’ group? She’s always got ten things going. You always seem to stimulate each other.”

Not wanting to be accused of ignoring his advice, although ignoring his advice is exactly my instinct, I call Clare, who is indeed a beloved sister-in-arms. She is a middle-aged mother of two who also has three well-reviewed novels to her credit. Like me, she is doing the mothering/writing balancing act, although on her this always seems a lot more fun.

When I ask her what she’s up to, and if she wants to get our group going again, she delivers a grand announcement: “I’ve given up writing.”

“What?” I say.

Clare explains matter-of-factly that over the past few years her books have seemed to sell less and less well, she is not even that excited about writing them anymore, her husband’s business is thriving now anyway, she’s sick of feeling guilty about not writing, and what she has become interested in instead is the subject of happiness.

Happiness?

“Stop it, Kyle,” she says to her son. “Happiness! Yes! I’ve started to do all this reading, and it’s pretty fascinating. For instance, the World Health Organization has done this massive study across five continents. Turns out most affluent nations—not just ours—have higher rates of depression than poorer ones. Isn’t that interesting? There’s also this
National Geographic
guy named Dan Buettner who’s been studying what he calls ‘blue zones’—the world’s happiest cities and villages. Not only are ‘strong social bonds’ key to happiness, also key—check this out—is minimizing things you don’t enjoy. Top three least favorite activities of all people around the globe?
Ding, ding, ding!
Child care, commuting, and housework!”

“Oh my God,” I say, “that’s exactly our lives. Or at least 50 percent of mine. So what’s my excuse?”

“No, no, no, Kyle!” I hear Clare exclaim. “No! You’ve had two already! Anyway,” she continues, “there’s also this thing called ‘the paradox of declining female happiness.’ This was a Wharton School study where, using thirty-five years of data, economists found in spite of educational and employment advances, women were actually becoming less happy rather than more.”

“That’s depressing. So what does one do?”

“Well, of course you can change your point of view. I looked at one book called
Stumbling on Happiness
. It was all about quieting the mind and letting happiness come to you, but it seemed too Zen.”

“Yeah, sure, meditation. No.”

“I do better with more of a project,” she says. “It’s more motivating for me to think of happiness as something I have to hunt down with a club, kill, chop into pieces, and drag home. That’s the idea behind this
New York Times
best-selling book called
The Happiness Project
. Not the chopping and killing part, but where you literally make happiness into a project. The author, Gretchen Rubin, says that there are plenty of us moms who have good jobs and healthy kids and supportive partners but we still feel this sort of malaise. Phew. So it’s not just me. She begins the memoir sitting on a bus, looking out a rain-splattered window and wondering why her life feels so flat, and when I read that page I said, Bingo, that’s my kind of book!”

I
’
M RELIEVED
to hear someone talk about chasing the blues away in such a rigorous proactive way.

Clare and I decide we will both do happiness projects, and we will apply the same discipline to them as when we were writing books. Which is to say we will meet once a week and hold each other strictly accountable. We are going to strap on trek shoes and fill water bottles and, dammit, we’re going to get this happiness thing done.

This morning I am already mightily cheered simply to be sitting on her familiar tan leather couch in her familiar cozy den framed with her familiar light boxes of cheerful garden windows. I like her kids well enough, but I couldn’t be more glad they’re at school right now.

This is great. This is great.

Just the act of smartly pulling out matching yellow legal pads is a reassuring Pavlovian exercise. Tearing off the plastic is a restorative act. Pilot pens are out, herbal tea mugs are filled, and it feels like our lives, like rivers, are coursing forward.

Clare puts on her glasses and begins reading: “A ‘happiness project’ is an approach to changing your life. First is the preparation stage, when you identify what brings you joy, satisfaction, and engagement, and also what brings you guilt, anger, boredom, and remorse.” Clare looks at me. “Guilt, anger, boredom, remorse. What brings them?”

“Ugh,” I sigh. “What doesn’t?” The truth is, I feel so shaky these days anything can tip me over.

“Well, of course,” I admit, “there are the usual quotidian irritants that can suddenly cause the elevator to drop. The overflowing laundry basket, this recent bill for two thousand dollars in back taxes I just got from the IRS, the continual both urgent and completely-impossible-to-understand-in-way-too-tiny-a-font missives from my daughter’s schools . . . ‘Fundraising! Jogathon! Gift wrap! Book drive! Book drive for the Jogathon! Jogathon for the book drive! And also bring lemons! Very important that we have the lemons!’
What
lemons?

“More puzzling, though, are those things that aren’t by nature sad but that still cause the floor to fall out. For no reason at all.”

Clare empathizes, and we decided to call them “gloomlets.”

However trivial, we make up our lists.

Sandra’s Gloomlets

The sound of the voice of this particular classical music DJ we have here in Los Angeles named Jim Svejde—used to love it; now it fills me with an unutterable suffocating sadness

My eleven-year-old’s wish to become a contortionist for Cirque du Soleil—I fear her dreams will be crushed in the big competitive dog-eat-dog world of . . . contortionism (?)

The color yellow

This show on the Food Network called
Pioneer Woman

I really don’t have any great shoes, and this absolutely frustrates me

All manner of muffins (aka can’t have)

Puppies

Vivaldi

Wall calendars from my realtor or from the bank—feels like a used-car salesman actually drove a 2007 Ford Fiesta with a sagging muffler over my grave

The food samples at Trader Joe’s—so limited, always so disappointing

The color yellow—did I say that already? The color yellow? I have no attention span

Clare’s Gloomlets (and “I don’t know why I’m overidentifying with the downward arcs of celebrities, but . . .”)

The fact that Dr. Phil is just not as amazing as he once was—now his show just seems kind of trashy

Speaking of which, the fall of Oprah; thought she was invincible—she keeps putting it out there, but can’t escape the fact that golden age is gone

Cilantro

Smell of cilantro

Spelling of the word “cilantro”

The kind of Lean Cuisine that has only pasta and vegetables

The fact that cake pops are so tiny and yet they are 170 calories each

I am curious as to how depressed Clare has actually been, since experiencing the writer’s block and hopelessness around her latest book.

“Oh my God,” she says. “The massive night eating, the drinking—Scotch, why am I now suddenly drinking Scotch?—and weirdly enough, it sounds strange, but—”

“But what?”

“Computer Solitaire.”

Oh well. I assured her that everyone does that.

“But I mean it’s bad,” she says. “Some days I will play so much my fingers ache. I’m saying literally so much I will look up at the clock, see two hours have vanished, and I’ll be so depressed by the gigantic waste of time I’ll immediately think about having some Valium. This is before ten in the morning.”

“Well, look,” I say. “Even Jonathan Franzen has admitted to a Solitaire fetish. Presumably his close friend David Foster Wallace did not have a Solitaire fetish, but sadly look how that turned out. Perhaps, in fact, Solitaire is the only thing keeping us going. Perhaps being addicted to Solitaire puts us into a kind of emotionally healthy Jonathan Franzen camp, as opposed to a not-able-to-experience-pleasure-at-all David Foster Wallace camp.”

So I manage to convert even that into a win. What can I say? We are flailing. We are taking this happiness thing one day at a time.

“Anyway—good—great,” Clare says, tearing her list off her tablet. “Gretchen Rubin says that’s just the first half of the process. The second is, and I quote, ‘the making of resolutions, when you identify the concrete actions that will boost your happiness.’ As evidenced by Rubin’s subtitle:
Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun.
”