Sometimes all you can do is just stay in your lane, watch your speed and go through the tunnel to what lies on the other side. After speaking to my same age female friends, I am realizing that midlife for women can be just like leaving Manhattan en route to New Jersey. We’re entering The Holland Tunnel and there’s no turning back.
My friends and I used to have boundless energy. We would stay out until the city closed down, then go out for breakfast, and then sleep until well into the next day. Now we stay up all night, too. Only difference is we are home in our well-worn PJs, listening to our men snore the night away while we suffer yet another bout of hormone induced insomnia. Sleep deprivation does strange things to people. I wouldn’t say we are having mood swings, but just because I wouldn’t say it doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence to the contrary. One of my friends told of how she sobbed her heart out watching a documentary about salmon. Oh, how those fish struggle to spawn. Knowing just how she felt, I shared with her how I cried my eyes out because Dust finally found true love when the Swiffer Duster came by and swept her up into its fluffy, flexible fibers. I have also cried over Sandals Resorts commercials, SPCA ads featuring unwanted and abused animals and most recently commercial where, right before her father’s eyes, a little girl suddenly morphs into a teenager while sitting behind the wheel of a car.
Sometimes my husband looks at me with a mixture of amusement, worry and pure, raw fear. (Google Dr Oz: 4 signs of perimenopausal rage). Bless his heart, some nights he gets a four course gourmet meal and the next night he has to sort through the pile of take out menus that are thrown in his general direction. Easy for him to judge; he sleeps through the night and he doesn’t sweat profusely in the middle of a blizzard. My advice for him is to just stay in his own damned lane, not even think about hitting the horn, and keep looking straight ahead until he sees sunlight on the other side of the tunnel.
