Bear in Mind

So, I'm in perimenopause. Not officially diagnosed, but age + symptoms means, yeah, it's happening. Periods are...still surprisingly regular with the exception of a couple months last autumn, but they're funky and the blood is old and dark. The egg carton is empty; no more cakes here. Also getting more sharp mood issues, hair loss all over (most dramatically on my head, but I've lost shitloads from my legs and arms already without really noticing), panic attacks with bonus heat surges, memory issues and generally just being stupider.

Now tonight I read that 'during/after menopause your labia minora fall off'. I beg your finest fucking pardon? That didn't sound right, so I clicked the clickbait. And technically, it's not true. I'm not going to wake up one morning and have my genitals fall out of a pyjama leg. But they are going to shrivel up and disappear, apparently, as is my clitoris (if it doesn't just atrophy into the hood and, I can't think of the medical word, but stick together/merge with everything else in my vulva to make one big dry dead nothing.) I guess boobs stick around though, sagging like they have since circa 1990. Those fuckers were never perky even for a second.

So, great. Nobody warns you about *any* of this shit. It's all just jokes about hot flashes and 'lol woman old'. I tried to read up about it a couple years ago but I, as a functional human adult, am so phobic of my own fucking reproductive system that looking at Wikipedia about it gave me such an anxiety spell that I didn't quite make it to the bed to lie down and passed out for half a second just before, falling down and fucking up my knee(s) and smashing my face onto the mattress hard enough that my glasses went flying. I'm sure it was hilarious if I weren't in agonising fucking pain.

I never wanted this shit. I never used it and I never for a second truly thought I would. I'm comfortable saying I'm a cis woman; I don't want to be a man and I've never wanted other plumbing. I'd have accepted 'none at all' but a) I don't think that's an option and b) I think I'd still be a woman, anyway.

Look, 12-14-year-old me was phenomenally, profoundly stupid. I can't overstate this. She kept shilling for a church that hated her despite it having multiple core beliefs she could never, ever reconcile with herself and her conscience and reason. She was a constantly-anxious, hyper-critical, goody-two-shoes know-it-all. She was eyebrow deep in internalised sexism despite believing herself to be feminist, she was racist because she didn't really have any inclination to challenge her racist culture and beliefs, she was homophobic, she was...she sucked, right? She used to go round saying she was 'pondering the mysteries of the universe' when she was ten and didn't know diddly from squat. She deserved even more bullying than she actually got.

But you know what? She was fucking right about hormones and reproduction, and she was right about anti-natalism too. I wouldn't learn that term for another...god...10-15 years at least, but I'd got there already on my own without reading any philosophy. (Got to at least two schism-worthy heresies too. Lol.) Hormones suck, and the whole process of human reproduction is hot garbage which should actively disprove the existence of any benevolent or competent or sane creator deity. And human suffering could be stopped entirely if people just stopped making more people. It's not even hard! It doesn't require any active effort whatsoever! (No offence to all you parents and people who think life is good. I just. Yeah. Life is not a gift, it's a curse. 'Life' is a euphemism for the process of dying. Sorry I keep pulling back the curtain on the tissue of lies sustaining all of human existence from the incomprehensible reality of nothingness, or whatever, but it's true and I'm not the delusional one and I'm tired of pretending. Sisyphus is not happy. He is screaming every second of every day, and Camus can kiss my cellulite-riddled ass.)