LEANNA MCLENNAN
For two years, I woke up every night drenched in sweat. At the time, I lived in a rundown apartment on the top floor of a converted house so I could afford to rent an art studio. I pictured the retail clerk, who controlled the thermostat downstairs and dreamed of being a fashion stylist, walking around in a tank top.
I mean, it’s winter. Put on a sweater.
When my period stopped, suddenly it wasn’t so hot.
You’re lucky, I can’t wait to not have to worry about my period.
I liked the viscous consistency of my blood and that its monthly return meant that my body was cleansing. I liked having that connection with other women.
But I didn’t like the two days before my period when I felt that no one loved me. Nor did I like having to lie in a hot bathtub to counter the waves of cramps and painful memories.
When I told my doctor that I felt sad, she referred me to a young male psychiatrist, who thanked her for sending him, “this very interesting thirty-eight-year-old patient.” His diagnosis: I didn’t suffer from depression but PMS. Still, he recommended that I take Prozac.
After this, I tracked my moods and realized that I felt agonizingly sad for only two days a month. Each time the sadness returned, I knew it would be with me for only two days, so I bought a box of tissues, a Vogue magazine, and a chocolate bar. Then I stayed home, ate bonbons, admired fancy clothes, and cried until my period arrived and the emotional pain became physical.
When I complained about lying in a hot bathtub enduring waves of emotional and physical pain, my naturopath said, “It’s a gift, an opportunity to see what’s really upsetting you and to not repress it.”
I thought of her words as I lay in the bathtub and later curled into a fetal position on the bathroom floor. Then I let go of those painful feelings.
You need a menstrual hut?
“Your aforementioned request will be duly considered in relation to the specified regulations and directed to the appropriate channels,” my friend the office manager wrote in reply to my e-mail request.
No menstrual hut was provided, but I enjoyed imagining a moss-filled room at the university where women could meet and bleed.
The next week while I was teaching, I put my feet up on the table, leaned back, and said, “I have to put my feet up so I don’t get menstrual cramps…and if I can’t say this in a feminist theory class, where can I say it?”
Maybe I’d said too much.
Don’t worry, everything will dry out and your eggs will shrivel up.
The doctor in her late twenties smiled sweetly, confirmed I was post-menopausal, and said not to worry, most women didn’t miss their periods.
I walked home, through streets lined with Victorian houses, toward my apartment on a busy street on the edge of a quiet neighbourhood, the renter’s block. I imagined my tubes withering, like a snake’s shed skin, a thin trace of myself inside me.
After my period stopped, my vagina got so dry that one winter afternoon when I was walking down the street, I could feel the sides rubbing against each other.
I added more oils to my diet and put Vitamin E capsules in my vagina every other day, but I didn’t like what they did to my smell. I tried coconut oil instead, but it melted as I put it in.
After menopause, the hymenal ring loses its elasticity, and it can be uncomfortable to have sex. I asked my doctor about using estrogen cream. She thought it was a good idea, but my naturopath wasn’t so sure.
You’re lucky, you don’t have to worry about getting pregnant now.
In my late thirties, I went to a gynecologist because I didn’t think I should be experiencing such intense menstrual pain. An ultrasound revealed that I likely had endometriosis, and an x-ray showed that my tubes were blocked.
“You can’t have children,” the gynecologist said. “Your generation was told you could have it all, that you could have careers and have children later in life. You hear about women who get pregnant after forty, but what you don’t hear about is how much work it took for them to conceive. Women who really want children should have them before the age of thirty-five.”
When I asked about in vitro fertilization, she said, “You could try, but in a study done by a clinic in Boston, the success rate for in vitro fertilization for women over forty was zero.”
“Don’t date her for these last few years when she can still have children if you’re not serious,” a woman had told my boyfriend.
“I don’t have more time. I need to try this now, or I’ll lose my chance,” I told him after I visited the gynecologist.
But he wasn’t ready to have that conversation, and the relationship ended shortly after that.
I wept, longing for the sleepless nights about which my friends complained, for a baby’s cries to interrupt my sleep, for tiny arms to reach up for me.
Later, at a women’s gathering, I squeezed into a crowded room and sat between two young women, our knees touching.
When our life-giving force was celebrated, I quietly grieved.
Really? I was glad to be done with that.
Many women speak of their period becoming irregular, or stopping for six months and coming back. But mine just stopped one day and never returned. If I had known that it would be the last one, I would have thrown a party. I would have spent more time looking at the glob floating in the water, like paint mixed to a perfect shade of red. I would have held my belly and felt the blood flowing under the surface, and said a prayer.
Wow! You don’t look like you’ve gone through menopause.
At first, I accepted it as a compliment. Then I wondered, what does post-menopause look like?
If you had asked me when I was in my twenties, I wouldn’t have imagined that being post-menopausal would mean that I would sell my belongings, move across the country to live by the ocean, and become a dancer.
Now, as I dance, I connect with others. We begin slowly, moving together on the wooden floor in the dance studio, flowing to a gentle wave in the music. We dance alone. We dance together. A woman joins me and we leap like teenagers. A young man gives me a warm hug. A woman in her seventies dances past, palms up. The dance builds to a crescendo before we meet again in stillness. Sometimes I weep. Sometimes I am elated, joyful. I hold my belly and say a silent prayer.