Menopause

She lived her life under a tyranny.

Of her hormones.

And it was far from OK.

Infact, it was becoming increasingly intense and at times unbearable. Profound insights were giving way to deep wisdoms as the veil between bullshit and reality lifted to reveal with pin point clarity — life — and all its disappointments.

In these moments it was overwhelming and she could see clearly how stitched up the power was in favour of negating a women’s felt reality. Passively watching it all play out on the cinema screen of her mind. Was this really it? she wondered.

Revelations projected layer after layer of meaning embedded in structural and social norms, behaviour and language so deep — as to render them taken for granted norms. As if completely natural. The way things ought to be. Yet hidden within their gentle clutches a toxic imbalance of power, and only one version of reality allowed to exist.

She was trying to describe this all to Mike, on one of their daily lockdown walks to the sea in an effort to relieve the working from home monotony.

“It’s clear how they maintain a status quo where women of my age are rendered invisible and irrelevant. We have no fertility and therefore no value. Just as our energy for giving a fuck plummets — our fevered anger grows and we realise ours has been a willing and lifelong collusion with ubiquitous and insidious rules that construct and govern every minutiae of our evolving selfhood. Most of us willingly abide here — for decades. And now I can only watch in horror as all is revealed. An invention and imposition of a capitalist patriarchal neo liberal culture aimed to incorporate difference, silence dissent and exploit vulnerability for profit”.

She could feel within her body the weight and bondage of these freely consented to cultural norms — that had been designed to undermine her and incorporate any potential threat she might represent. Her big questions now were about how to stage the most powerful resistance. To demonstrate her lack of complicity with being controlled and manipulated any more. These assumed terms of engagement, she knew, underestimated both men and women. This profound lack of imagination dehumanised all of us. “We are being served up gross injustice in delicate crystal blows” she cried into the crashing waves.

But by now Mike had wondered off and no one else really gave a fuck what she thought.