I turned 47 a few weeks ago and on what should have been a day of lightheartedness, celebration and merriment, I sat in the parking lot at our local Safeway, blubbering on the phone to my husband. I’d hit a wall with all the “stuff” that had been going wrong with my perimenopause body, and in my rant told him I was tired of looking like a “bag of dicks” (thanks Mila/Bad Moms for this colorful descriptor of my middle-age appearance). A few weeks prior I’d invested good money in a BBL skin treatment. Holy OUCH!!, but I wanted my face to look fresh and spot-free again. Little did I know there was a chance this effort “just wouldn’t work”, according to my aesthetician, and would actually make my skin worse! Really?! I thoroughly enjoyed tossing $350+ into the Fountain of Youth only to have it vomited back up on me and I equally enjoyed my gal’s parting words of “maybe go to a dermatologist, see if they can prescribe you some hydroquinone”. Ummm, ok…
Then, there’s the hair frizziness, dryness and loss - including, but not limited to, my eyebrows and eyelashes. Again, I tossed $110 into that trusty Fountain, giving the lash serum from a well-known MLM company a try. Like many others, brows and lashes grew nearly Kardashian-long at first, but months later they’ve been falling out at a frighteningly rapid pace.
As a continuing glutton for punishment, I got suckered into a Facebook ad for Prose. Coining themselves as “a customized hair care system formulated just for you”, they ask questions about your hair's texture, whether you struggle with oiliness/dandruff and then create a hair care mask, shampoo and conditioner to suit your needs. Sounded really good, especially with my previously mentioned thinning, dry, frizzy hair struggle, and I was willing to kick down the $88 for the 3 tiny bottles. I had such high hopes of finding a solution to get my tresses back to good but these were, hands down, the worst haircare products I have ever used. My hair felt instantly and incredibly dry and sticky, I couldn’t run a comb through it with how scraggly and tangled it was; I joked that I would’ve had softer hair using a bar of Ivory soap. I ended up having to lop on another, non-Prose conditioner just to get my hair to a place of slight manageability.
The glasses I used to wear “on occasion” for night driving and long-distance vision are now a lifeblood. The satellite TV guide cannot be navigated without them and forget about watching a show sans spectacles.
I relish the 2 am random wake ups with a side of insomnia, for absolutely no reason, except as a courtesy reminder from my pal perimenopause that I’m getting old. She cackles “buckle up bitch, you’re in for QUITE a ride” and wrings her hands together like the scheming a-hole that she is.
It’s a treat to have my debilitatingly-heavy period for 6 days, enjoy a 3 day respite, only to have my crimson tide show up again for another week-long visit.
I do also find it kind of ironic that while my head and eyebrow/lash hair is falling out at an alarming rate, moustache, chin and nipple hairs seem to making their debut. I have this awful vision that one night hubs and I are going to be heading full-throttle into Funky Town and I’ll toss my head back in a moment of passion only to leave him gazing at a thick, wiry chin hair. Here’s hoping he doesn’t make a Harlequin romance move, like cupping my chin in his hands, as that sharp sucker could poke or injure him!
I’m still able to pluck the 5-10 grays that stand up, erect, atop my head each year. They honestly gross me out, like a revolting intruder, and I know it’s only a matter of a time before I’m screwed and their quantity soars to heights that will catapult me into mandatory hair coloring. I’ve always loved my deep, dark, natural mahogany locks but they also offer me no way to hide the ivory and ebony situation that’s budding on my scalp.
There’s not too, too much to be said about our post-babies boobies. They’re Nat Geo-style, seriously. We hoist them into push up bras during the daytime, but in a nighttime tank, our breasts can nuzzle our hip bones.
I’ve also acquired toenail fungus from my many youthful, clueless visits to cheap San Francisco salons. While it’s only on 2 nails, if my gals wonder why I decline every “let’s get a pedi together” invite, you now know why.
What else?? Oh, the BO, body odor... THIS has been a wonderful new development for me and, I just learned, several of my girlfriends. Over wine and apps last week a friend said she’d noticed she’s stinkier—needing deodorant much more than in the past. Coincidentally, days later, another friend texted that she’d recently had The Funk a mere 15 minutes after a shower! I felt bad for both girls but said an inner ‘thank God’ as I’d been busy Googling and Web MD’ing to find out if my first-thing-in-the-morning damp and stinky pits are a sign for some obscure lady-disease. I was relieved not to be the only one, much as I’ve been relieved hundreds of other times when a girlfriend and I share that we’re both struggling with our kid(s), or work, or saving for retirement, or getting enough exercise, or eating healthier, or hubby-headaches, or diminishing sex drive, or even whites that just don’t come out of the washer as bright as they used to… Point is, these ladies save me. They remind me that I’m O.K. and while I oftentimes forget, others are walking many miles in my same shoes. There’s a kinship we women have and it’s funny, silly, sanity-saving and valuable.
While I do, and always will, look in the rearview mirror and remember the young me – the cute brunette with bronze, flawless skin - shiny, luscious hair - and a trim, fit body with perky ta-tas and a tiny bum - I’m doing my best to embrace this me, too. Surely the aging road ahead will be even more twisty and bumpy, but I’m certain I’ll clutch the hands of my dearest girlfriends, drink some wine (ok, at times lots of wine) and giggle, vent, struggle, commiserate, relate and cry as we maneuver this path together. Remember Thelma and Louise-- holding hands with the wind whipping their hair as they zinged that convertible off a cliff? Yeah, that’s me, me and my girls. Wish us luck with a semi-soft landing on our growing older gracefully journey.
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