38. Rub it in

This is really happening.

It feels like Christmas.

It feels like an important gift, one that, until now, not enough women have been lucky enough to receive.

(Fear and misinformation have robbed them. Or they were just born in the wrong era.)

My heart quickens as I hold the package.

A little white box full of body-identical hormones. A little handful of hope.

The gel is cool and smells like a hospital.

I rub it in and will it to work —

to calm my anxious mind,

to clear the fog,

to cool the internal furnace,

to soothe the joints,

to bring me back to myself again.

I pop pills into one of those Monday to Sunday plastic organisers. Might as well embrace my inner old lady.

Unfamiliar words and terminology. I’ll get used to it all in time.

I flip and flop between excitement and dismay —

This is really happening,

I’m in deep now, entrenched,

no denying my middle age.

What that really means is that I am ageing, I am getting old.

It means things are ending.

There is loss, I am losing things —

my youth,

my fertility,

my life force?!

Stop. Reframe.

I consciously flip back to the positive side: with this treatment I’m gaining control again.

I’m making a choice.

I’m benefitting from the privilege of modern medicine.

I’m embracing my own wellbeing, holding it gently, cooing at it, caring for it, like I (we, women) do for others every day.

I’m taking action. And I’m being honest with myself.

I feel like celebrating before the ointment has even been absorbed into my skin.

I want to write about it, I want to tell people about it.

And, simultaneously, I want to run, I want to hide. I want to keep it a secret. Why?

I’m tainted by inherent / ingrained / instilled stigma and a special breed of embarrassment (women’s shame about our bothersome bodies: bleeding, bloated, barren, bereft…)

But mostly I feel empowered.

Mostly I do not care what others think.

Mostly I’m just happy —

to be loved,

to be lucky,

to be reaching this milestone.

Joining a club, rich with wisdom and life experience.

It’s the next step,

a new chapter,

a sunrise.

I’ve sat on this post for almost a month, too shy to put it out there, or to even give it a more direct and obvious title. But my social media feeds are full of other women talking about this, and the more we do, the better off we’ll all be.