Theloopylululog

The BEST excuse I have been hearing of late is this :

SORRY, NOT SORRY! I AM MENOPAUSAL!

From who?

Obviously yourstruly.

You wanna hear more?

Join the ride then.

I hate excuses!

Truly. Madly. Deeply. Hat tip to Savage Garden for coining the term for one of my favorite songs from my teenhood.

Every excuse that has come my way from childhood through adulthood has seen me shapeshift into a wolf howling in a frenzy at the excuser. No full moon necessary or essential.

I hate excusers!

Deliciously. Devilishly. Desperately. Hat tip to myself for coining this term. It’s my new favorite from my menopausehood.

Every excuser who has dared to give excuses has been cut off mercilessly from my life. No questions asked. No answers given. No wonder my friendslist is not a list. It’s just one name.

BUT then, I walked into something at 36, masquerading an Arctic blizzard that left the North Pole frozen.

For over a decade.

The domino effect toppled my carefully built house of cards.

Headaches and eye aches. Ringing ears and tingling toes. Sweaty pits and meaty thighs. Itchy scalp and bitchy bones. Tennis elbows and runner’s knees. Hair loss and weight gain. Impossibly painful periods and unreasonably agonizing ovulations. Heavenish highs and hellish lows. Brain fogs and leg cramps. Hot flashes and night sweats.

A decade of slow burn. Steadily losing touch with who I inherently am.

Symptoms showing up at the door everyday. Uninvited.

Symptoms encroaching my body and mindspace everyday. Without my consent.

I went from Oh…I KNOW myself inside out to I don’t even recognise myself anymore in the last couple of years.

Just waking and showing up for everyday life became tiresome.

I had become a human Rolex Oyster Perpetual. Living in a something’s gotta give loop. So tightly wound by all these unexpected hormonal changes that normalcy entirely lost it’s meaning.

If you know me well, you know that I never learnt to say Enough is Enough. I didn’t know when to quit things. Especially ones that stopped serving my needs.

Obviously, life had begun taking a toll. And here I was going gung ho into all the things I did everyday in the same way I have always done them. Ignoring the alarm bells that were clanging so hard, even someone from the Poles could hear it.

Unwilling to make changes to the disciplined rituals I followed, I tried to keep up. Exercising hard. Working hard. Approaching life at full speed with my entire being.

Boom, boom, boom! Expecting to bloom, bloom, bloom.

Until my body decided for itself that it had had enough with me.

Pig headed that I was, it took more than half a decade to realise I had to slow down. No more chalo, chalo, let’s go attitide. No more swooshing around like the Nike symbol brandishing my Just do it lifestyle.

I had to get off my high horse and learn to walk…correction stroll.And rest. As much as possible. Without a pity party organised every night where I would drown in my own tears.

Once I did start with small manageable changes, like adding a nap and reducing my exercise schedule by a mere 5 minutes everyday, I noticed a remarkable change in my body and mind.

I reduced all my activities to the few that mattered more than the others. Ones that tugged my heart strings. Ones that let me be myself, however I woke up any particular day. Ones that helped me become kind to myself.

I stopped hiding. From people. From life.

I started being an excuser myself.

When life became overwhelming, I excused myself from all the doing and just laid back and rested. Exited from situations that required me at maximum capacity. Sorry darling. No can’t do.

First with massive guilt.

Rest is something that does not come naturally to me. I hate it when I see people sitting around when there is much to be done! Which is pretty much the story of my life…I have always been the road runner who does everything everywhere…wanting to be everything to everyone. It’s no wonder they were all resting since I barely left anything for them to handle in the first place!

Learning to excuse myself from life while saying I am sorry but I can’t without guilt took a long time. But with persistent efforts I got there.

Menopausal is a phase, not a terminal disease. I don’t have to do everything today. There is always a tomorrow waiting for me to continue from wherever I left off from today. It takes time to understand this. I am just glad I was willing to learn about it sooner than later.

Now it’s a running joke in the family. Something remotely unrecognisable in me comes up or if I am just too exhausted to perform my duties as the next Wonder Woman, my family finishes my sentence. Sorry, not sorry! Menopausal.

Has it made me kinder towards excuses? Hmm…I can’t say yes. Sorry.

Has it made me empathetic towards excusers? Honestly I can’t say yes to that either. Sorry. Still learning…please excuse!