Reading harold_maude's journal

I'm writing this tonight because maybe someone who needs to hear what this feels like so that they can understand themselves with it hits or they can maybe gain a different perspective when someone they love is going through it.
Every woman experiences it differently, but all women do go through it, there is no escape.
And for better or worse, the men they are with go through it by vertue of being with a woman who is going through it. I hope that made sense.

I've been living with this for almost a year now.
The last couple of months things have gotten harder all the way around.
Up until tonight when I talked to my best friend who went through this early in life due to nessiary surgery, I believed that because I am allergic to synthic hormones that anything containing a horome effecting or generating substance was off limits for me, in short I was condemmed to ride this ride without help.
I'm doing research and hopefully there will be something I can take that will help.

In light of this place, I decited to write this.

Metapause Madness

Somedays I feel like my mind is already left home
without me.
somedays I feel like the equator disolved inside me and is radiating out into the world from my guts.
somedays I want to leave everything behind and go off
like animals do when they are ready to die.

I feel like I need to appoligize for sounding like my mind has
taken a headder.
What I know about this place:
It feels strange, off the wall and for get lunch.
It's physically and emotionally draining and exausting.
To make it harder I have extreem allergies to hormone replacement.
I'm wading through information and trying to keep a clear head while doing it.
My sense of humor is becomming cynical and biting now.
My patients is thin.
And I'm exausted.
this can last for up to 10 years.
10 years. A life sentence if it were behind bars.

some hours are like being thrown into a thick fog bank and yet I have to keep going and keep working because if I don't it will get worse, I'll be living on the streets.
Even though I'm with someone who says they love me and really does try their best to show it, that does not mean that they will ever see the need to take care of me at all.
That is the reality that does exist.
Yeah you heard right, there are no gaurentees baby.
Never. You just accept that things are ok for right now, and hope that who ever says they want to walk with you isn't just blowing smoke out of their ass.

I know people who are in reasonable health, years away from anything like this who are living like me.
Both men and women people, not just women, but men as well.
( I bet you thought I was going to tell you that men never have to deal with shit like this.)
It's a hard place to live.

If you've never had to go through this in any way shape or form, condsider yourself blessed.
If your with someone who genuinely loves you, i.e. wants the best for you and has proved that by how they live and if they stay and if they support you when the shit hits the fan in your life, that no one avoids completely.
Somewhere and at sometime the shit will hit the fan.

You'll know at that time how much you mean to another person when you become something resembling an unfixable you, and still they stay and step up to the plate so you can stop long enough to help yourself uninterupted. Give you grace to find your way at the very least.
That's how you'll know.

When I write here I try hard to keep my private life just that, private, the kind of private that only a few people know about.
This place for me is not about ranting or rejoicing about my private life, this is a place that I have the illusion of a secret world that no one bothers.
I know in reality that some people at some point read this stuff that I ramble on about.
But the illusion persists.
I like some of my illusions. I like my private dreams too, where everything is better all over.
Where I am ok all over the board and I'm doing everything just right and every peice of work is a masterpeice of living art.
Not for the purpose of parading around like some kind of self asborbed peacock, but for the very sake of being able to create my best everytime I go to create.

In my dreams I'm strong all the time. Impervious to everything that can distroy the soul or mind.
I'm doing a job that is designed for me so it never ever feels like work.
I never get depressed or have to find a soultion to any more problems.
This is ok to put out there too.
I'm sure it won't offend anyone.

That's another thing that keeps happening, I find myself doing things that seem to offend people and it's not like I'm planning to offend them, I just end up doing that very thing.

In this place where everything is crumbling at one speed or another, nothing feels solid.
And there is this voice in my head that keeps telling me how lazy I am and to work harder, how wrong it is of me to expect mercy and how wrong it is to need rest or to expect anything good because I don't deserve it....my life keeps reflecting that last part. Over and over.
I must have been a real asshole in some past life to feel this way and keep experiencing it.
It has gotten better, there was a couple year run back a couple of years ago that it seemed that anytime I was given something good, on the heels of that came some kind of bad crap to beat me up.
It got to the point where I was scared to accept any kind of gift, I was sure that something was waiting to slamm into me...
and it kept doing just that.
For at least two years it went that way.

Now, I cling to hopes. They are anchors for me now.

I really must have been a monster in some past life...
and I appoligize with all my breath for being an asshole or monster or what ever.

I work to keep my focus now days. since all drive to accomplish is becomming dust, more and more, it's sheer determination that keeps me going...mind over screaming matter.
The end result is that I am close to just stopping completely and letting everything in my life crash as much as it needs to or as much as I deserve and just lay there and take what ever is comming and close my eyes and just let it roll over me.

That's how I feel most days anymore.

I've been reading stuff to try and find my answers and what my body needs to help myself.

on some level I see this as a kind of right of passage.
Maybe I'll get a tatoo to mark the seasons of this place.
One for each place of dissasembly that I can get a clear handle on.

I feel like a stranger to me. I'm fighting as best as I can to keep a grip on things.
I have no choice. I have to.

This place makes all the flaws I have known for years loud and annoying.
When the hot flashes come I want to rip my skin off. It's gotten so bad that I have come close to passing out from the heat that my body is generating.
My thoughts go fuzzy and I feel like I've become stupid.
Sometimes it makes me feel intoxicated.
It doesn't respect anything about me or the fact that I work for a living.
It doesn't give a rat's left foot if I'm using sharp tools at work.
My concentration is shit most of the time anymore.

I keep my tears at bay as best as I can. They like to come with no warring.
I feel like a painting that is melting and morfing.

I'm genuinely not ok.
I want to be ok.
But the truth is that for a while at least I'm not ok.

You are the best immatation of you that exists

This post was edited by harold_maude on Apr 20, 2008.