What happened to my sex drive?

Menopause has caught up with me.

Menopause has caught up with me. I am trying to make peace with my mirror and am working on weight loss. All those things are minor compared to the news I received yesterday.

The information should have been anticipated. In some part of my brain, I am sure it was. Just not the emotional part.

My gynecologist believes I may have completed my menopause journey. Five years ago, my periods were a nightmare of pain and heavy bleeding. He inserted an IUD to control it.

At that time, he told me I was probably a year away from the end of this mid-life safari. He said I would know when it happened. At that point, I would ask him to remove it.

I waited for five years. I’ve had hot flashes and night sweats. I’ve forgotten why I walked into the kitchen, only to remember once I sat back down in front of the television. I had the ups and downs of hormone surges.

I’ve felt the plummet into an artificial sort of depression. When that happened, I climbed out saying “I know this is some weird hormonal thing. I will ignore it until it passes.” It always passed.

I never “knew” anything. I waited for the five years and went in to have the IUD removed.

“The periods are probably done. Let’s get it out of there. Once it is removed, you may have spotting but don’t expect more than that.” He smiled.

Why did it feel that a huge part of my identity was gone?

I didn’t feel it until I left the office half an hour later. I might be on the other side of menopause. It may have already happened. Why did it feel so odd? Why did it feel that a huge part of my identity was gone? Hadn’t I been saying I wanted this to happen?

Yeah, I’d been saying that. I had meant it. I still do. In a practical way, I am very happy if it turns out to be true. I didn’t know how it would make me feel.

Back in the late 70’s, my mother had a hysterectomy. Can’t we come up with a better name for it? Seriously? It isn’t 1950 and rational, informed people don’t think women are hysterical as a default.

Anyway, mom had a hysterectomy. From the hospital bed the next day, she looked at my 17 year-old-self and asked, “How can I feel like a woman now?” I didn’t understand. That was crazy talk.

Now I understand. Our sexuality and the inability to have children can mess with our sense of self. Whether we want more children (or any) or not.

My mom was a badass. She shook it off. A few months later they found two forms of breast cancer and she lost a breast. Years later she compared healing from the second surgery to healing from a knife wound. I said she was a badass.

I am trying to shake off my unexpected feelings about my own passage beyond fertility. I am looking at other signs that my estrogen levels have depleted.

My sex drive has decreased. A lot. It has been bothering my self-image. I was always the girl who wanted more. Now I’m the girl who is ok with skipping a week or two. I make more of an effort to think about having sex. Do I even flirt anymore?

This caused a flurry of panic. Have I really stopped flirting with my husband? Have I stopped dropping innuendo-laden quips over dinner? Who am I?

My husband laughed until he saw I was serious. He assured me the quips have kept coming, they are just spaced out further these days. He said I hug him as he brushes his teeth at night and when he is waiting to get lunch out of the microwave.

He reminded me we still kiss almost as much as we did when we first started dating. He told me I am still myself, whatever the hell my hormones are doing.

I have wonderful friends who are in the same stage of life. I have equally wonderful friends who have already been through the hormonal ups and downs of peri-menopause and come out the other side as intact, interesting, lovely women. I have my husband of 18 years, hanging in with me as we travel our life paths together.

I am going to be fine. I just don’t know how this new idea of myself fits. That’s part of the point of life, though, isn’t it? To travel our journey, learning and growing? To do that, we have to give away little bits of our old life to accept the new.

I am trying to be excited about a new stage of life. A stage I may have been in for a year or longer. Is a stage real if we don’t know we are in it?

I’m going to have some ice cream. Ice cream always helps in these life-changing moments.

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