I’m late writing this week because I spent five days in Scotland with my family, wrestling two kids under four and persuading my mother that I’d be safe walking from one end of a village to the other via what she described as a ‘rape alley’ - in reality a lovely wooded path where I witnessed several rabbits frolicking. We discussed the probability of a local (or even big city) fiend waiting by this path every evening hoping for a hit but she wasn’t persuaded by my assessment of the likelihood. And fair enough, I don’t fully understand statistics.
My husband rolls his eyes at the way I insist on my Scottishness. I think to him, it comes off like an American wearing a fanny pack talking about how their great, great grandmother was from Dublin to the bored waitress in Ballymena. Maybe you will agree with him, as I proudly bore on about the DNA test which informed me that I’m 67% Scottish. Just know that his DNA test showed that he is wildly English (and middle England to boot), so he has a genetic persuasion to try and make me acquiesce. It’s in his very un-Scottish bones. Anyway every time I go back, I feel very comforted and safe. My mother says she misses the language of home, the dialect and the way of talking. She had a five minute chat with a man about the wind and was pink with pleasure. I think I could live there, I really do. And not in a I’ve been on holiday for ten days and imagine I could make a home in this large villa and drink aperol every night way but in a ‘it’s chucking it down and there’s a snell wind howling and the main colour I can see is grey’ kind of way. I could take it, it’s in my DNA (ok now I’m being insufferable, I hear it).
The other reason I’m tardy is because I’ve got CUBITAL TUNNEL SYNDROME (I think). This is a painful nerve in your elbow which makes your littlest fingers get pins and needles so typing is hard. It is also, as about fifty women - slightly too gleefully it has to be said - informed me via Instagram DM, something perimenopausal women are prone to. I think about writing about this stage of life a lot and then fail to do it for two reasons. One is because my sister tells me I go on about it too much already (and I already chose anxiety as my whole personality) and two is because I’ve yet to read anything which fits my experience of it. Everything I’ve read on the topic seems either to be a mournful screed about how the writer has lost themselves (totally fine, but not for me) or it’s a defiant rallying cry about not giving a shit anymore, coupled with some fruity rhetoric about being a joyful old crone. Also not me. So I haven’t written about it because I think it’s probably almost impossible not to slip into cliche. But fuck me, when the hormones start leaving the building they do it slowly and then suddenly. The suddenly bit is appalling, happening in the way I imagine a people attending their first support meeting with anxiety would leave the building if a fire alarm sounded - half bashing into each other and screaming, half sitting down on the floor and rocking in fright. Anything you fucking imagine can be a perimenopausal symptom but also, don’t put everything down to that or you might miss something deadly! You’ll be constantly thinking you have something deadly anyway because of the new and supercharged anxiety which has taken over your nervous system and bedded in, so at least that aligns. Take that as a rare win, the rest of it is less coherent and more humbling. Itchy ears? A sore elbow? Skin drier than my uncle Jimmy’s sense of humour? Peeing a million times a day? The people who say it’s like a reverse puberty are liars. At least with that stage you grew boobs and got to get out of PE. I can’t doom scroll on my phone without my fingers hurting and I wake up at 3am thinking about climate change which then confronts me during the daytime too because what do you mean it’s 39 degrees in Paris in June. Oh, maybe I am the grim and mournful screeder. See? Impossible not to fall into cliche.
I realised while I was away how much I enjoy changing my mind. Not about the big stuff - I’m never going to pivot to spouting mad right wing nonsense or suddenly start proselytising - but the low stakes stuff. A windswept rainy beach with tiny children is decidedly not a holiday I’d have gone on in my twenties but last week it was just gorgeous. I eschewed eating fruit for decades, feeling strongly it was a hippy’s way to mainline sugar and much preferring the clean hit from a Mars bar, but suddenly I make heart eyes at the sight of a plump English raspberry and lovingly caress cherries. Red wine is disgusting, I thought. Except it’s not! It’s absolutely manna from the Gods and I’d drink it by the gallon if I didn’t fear judgement from the GP who says even one glass a night is too many. Let’s think of a negative one - ooh I used to like Richard E Grant a LOT and now I don’t at all (ask me why, I beg). I once thought Family Guy was really funny and now I think it’s supremely hackneyed. This one is niche: I read The Go-Between at school and was left cold, I read it last year and had a cathartic weep. A low stakes change of opinion is a treat. It’s getting a new experience for free, shaking up your life and making you feel more interesting for your own malleability. What small thing have you changed your mind about?
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.