And that’s why menopause makes you crazy…

It’s come to this: I am now answering Facebook quizzes in my own head. Without the computer.  And not the normal ones like:

Which Disney Princess are you? 
Which Shakespearean character would you be?
What breed of cat are you?

Nope, this mostly Pagan gal has this one pin-balling around her cranium:

Which Bible character is your alter-ego?

We’ve got to go to Judges 16 for that one.  Samson.  I am Samson.  Delilah cut Samson’s hair and he lost his great strength – his power.  I cut my hair and lost my mind.

It’s been a swift ride to Crazy-Town for Heather.  I got my hair cut 3.5 weeks ago and in that time all rational thought has departed.  I was getting ready for a wedding with the new ‘do’ on Saturday and I could actually feel my sanity abandoning me.  Rissa went to get David.

“Uh, Daddy?”

“Mmmm-hmmm?”

“Mummy’s, uh…”  (I can only assume Rissa made the ‘she’s batshit crazy’ gesture beside her own head here.)

David came upstairs and found me weeping; a curling iron clenched in one hand and sweat dripping down my spine.

“Oh love, what is it?”

“This HAIR!” I wailed.

“You’re beautiful.  You’re always beautiful.”  He stood behind me, attempting to smooth my shoulders down and press a hug against my back.

I pulled away violently.  “NO!  I’m NOT!  I look like fucking BOZO the CLOWN!!!”

I could see it then.  I could see the look of concern in David’s eyes – the wondering if this was it – if this was the moment I had finally given in to insanity.

“But love, you’ve been fine this past week.  You liked your new hair.”

“I was LYING!!  I HATE it!  I HATE this hair!  I want to shave it off and start wearing wigs until I can put it in a pony tail again!!” You know when you really lose your shit and you have an out-of-body experience watching yourself do it?  That. 

 Dozens of people have complimented me on my hair.

“It makes you look 15 years younger!” 
“You look so sassy!” 
“It’s adorable!” 

They are ALL – every single one them – LYING to me.  I try to be good and politely accept the compliment.  I really do.  I smile and nod, ready to move on and behave like a normal tamped down human being, but then they ask “Do you LOVE it?” and I can’t keep my irrational mouth shut. Brutally honest, I spout colourful invectives, minutes-long vituperation which, naturally, takes people aback.  That, plus my wild-eyed cuckoo-banana-ness.  Because really?  What person actually says how they’re truly feeling?  We’re not supposed to do that.  Most of time, I can playact when a person asks a direct question.   But for some reason this hair thing has caused me to lose the ability to deliver bland social conversational norms with any believability.  My inner truth tap switched to ON when I lost 10 inches of hair.

But I didn’t fucking LOSE the hair!  I am not on chemo, I do not have alopecia!  I ASKED for something shorter.  It’s not like the stylist went rogue, tied me down, gagged me and madly began chopping – I’d been toying with going shorter for years.  The problem was that pretty much as soon as she started to take it off the top, I knew I’d made the wrong choice.  I left the salon thinking “Okay, in a year I can grow 6 inches of this back.”  And no matter how many people love the ‘do,’ no matter how much my husband smiles and says he loves kissing the back of my neck – something was lost for me.

“I look like a MOM!”

“You are a Mom.”

“But I LOOK like one.  I feel MA-A-A-AAAAAA-TRON-LY!!!!!”

And that’s what it really comes down to.  I had long curly auburn hair that turned heads and now I don’t turn heads – unless I’m walking with my 16 year old daughter who is always turning heads – which is somehow worse because at first you think they might be turning heads to look at you and then you realize Nope – this head-turning is not for me at all.  I cut my hair and I am now an invisible, middle-aged woman.  The male gaze slides over me – it’s not that they’re ignoring me – it’s that they don’t even recognize that I exist.

I tried on a dress for this aforementioned wedding a week ago – a purple, chiffony, deep V neck
that swished and was lovely.  I asked David’s opinion about the dress
and he was underwhelmed.  “Oh, that’s nice.”  He didn’t look like he
wanted to lick his way from my collar bone to my navel.  He blandly
smiled and part of me died inside.

As we were driving
home from the mall he knew that something was up.  I was quiet,
desperately rationalizing my crushing sadness.  We got home and I went
upstairs and laid upon the bed, taking calming breaths.

“He just didn’t like the dress.  It’s not you.  The dress wasn’t the best colour…”

And these are basically all the same things that he told me when he followed me upstairs and sat on the bed beside me.

“I
know,” I said.  “I know that.  You don’t have to like everything that I
put on.  I don’t want you to lie and say something to appease my
vanity.  It’s just that there are these times that you look at me and I
feel like I’m the most beautiful woman on the planet and this was NOT
one of those times.  Seeing myself reflected in your eyes can make me
feel desirable and… sexy and… POWERFUL and you didn’t look at me that way
this time.  And right now it’s killing me, but I’ll get over it.”

The look on his face when I shared that shit?  Deflated.  I made him deflate.

“I’m
not saying it to guilt you.  I’m being honest. And in a
few minutes I will be able to move on, but right now my coping skills are at a minimum and I need to reboot.”

My regularly programmed personality has been usurped by this short-tempered, weepy, bitch – whose behaviour is psychotic attention-seeking at its finest.  I am not this person.  This is NOT me.  I want me back.  I used to be the gal with a quick off-colour joke and burlesque posturing. My ‘shoulders back, tits out’ coping strategy got me through the day.  Bravado was my secret weapon.

Somewhere around Victoria Day I started having night sweats.  Two months folks.  That’s all it takes.  Two months of disrupted sleep patterns and I have morphed into the stereo-typically irrational and moody menopausal woman who believes she had super sexy powers in her hair length.   This is why middle-aged women seem dissatisfied and bitchy all the time.  They’re not crazy – they’re fucking sleep-deprived.  Night sweats create an atmosphere very similar to early parenting exhaustion, except that in your late 40s you don’t have the energy stores to power through the exhaustion, and when someone touches your naked body you want to strangle them.

Tonight I’m taking a sleeping pill.  It’s time to reboot.